Back-yard bird coops fly under modern radar in Richmond Hill
Complaints of pigeon droppings, noise prompts motion

YorkRegion.com
Sept. 23, 2014
Kim Zarzour

Is it time for suburban birdkeeping to fly the coop?

Town staff are going to review and update a 26-year-old bylaw that allows residents to keep pigeons, doves or birds in back-yard coops after complaints from local residents prompted a motion at last night’s council meeting.

Regional councillor Vito Spatafora raised the issue following a request from an Oak Ridges resident concerned about noise and health hazards resulting from bird droppings from a neighbour’s pigeons, being kept in a bird loft in his back yard.

Since the animal-keeping bylaw was last revised in 1988, Richmond Hill has changed significantly and it’s time for staff to review and update the bylaw to address new concerns, Spatafora said.

New building lots have smaller back yards with insufficient depth to place pigeon, dove or bird coops at a distance that would muffle or minimize noise, and a concentration of fowl increases frequency of bird droppings and potential health problems, he said in a motion calling for a review and update of legislation related to keeping pigeons, doves or birds in residential zones.

Ward 4 Councillor David West seconded the motion, saying it may not be appropriate in the “new kind of urban we’re creating”, to have birds such as pigeons and chickens on smaller, closer lots.

“I can’t imagine how wonderful that’d be, at 5 a.m. or the crack of dawn to have a rooster crowing on a 25-foot lot.”

Ward 1 Councillor Greg Beros disagreed, saying that while the issue of back yard chicken ownership has been debated recently in the GTA, it wasn’t the right time for staff to look into the issue.

“I, for one, am not going to tell residents who have one or two chickens to get eggs that we are now going to be restricting what they can and cannot be doing in their back yards.”

Ward 2 Councillor Carmine Perrelli agreed. He referred to noise from dogs or air conditioners that also can annoy neighbours and said staff has “some real work to do on some real motions”.

“This was a real motion,” Spatafora said, adding that current legislation allows for more than two dozen pigeons in back yard coops “and that is really the crux - the cluck - of the problem.”

(It was, at this point of the discussion, approaching midnight on the last council meeting before the election break, and the debate was eliciting a few muffled giggles in council chambers.)

Ward 5 Councillor Nick Papa also spoke out against Spatafora’s motion.

“I’d rather live close to some pigeons than some German shepherds barking the whole day and night.”

Planning and regulatory commissioner Ana Bassios told councillors that while the town does not set a limit on decibel readings for barking, there are “specific descriptions for what’s tolerable for dogs”.

Mayor Dave Barrow said his neighbour also keeps pigeons and they are “all over the place... They are more than a nuisance”.

Another neighbour also kept chickens to harvest their eggs, he said.

Urban farming is “something that is happening” and bylaws need to be updated to deal with that, Barrow said.

A majority of councillors, excluding councillors Beros, Perrelli and Papa, voted to ask staff to review and report back.