Pigeons are a persistent nuisance in many UK gardens.

They're as plentiful as vermin, they mess up raised beds and patios, and they snatch away the much-needed food from smaller, more endangered birds that you're trying to assist.

This was the problem in my garden. I set up a bird table in an attempt to support the local robins, who are struggling due to green belt house building and climate change threatening their habitats.

For a few weeks, everything went smoothly. Using a combination of mealworms and seeds, I attracted a variety of charming little birds to my garden - robins, finches, bluetits, starlings and several other small feathered creatures whose names I'm not yet familiar with.

However, after about two weeks, things took a turn for the worse.

The pigeons, akin to the mafia of the bird world, caught on and began arriving in groups of two or three, intimidating the other birds.

They are insatiable. A heap of bird seed that would usually last two or three days was suddenly devoured in 30 minutes, reports the Express.

Worse still, they'd monopolise the table while they stuffed themselves, preventing any other birds from eating, then they'd leave their messy droppings all over the patio once they were finished.

It appears my error was placing the bird table on a flat surface. The patio is elevated above the rest of the garden, so putting it here allowed both ground-feeding and height-feeding birds to access it.

That is, until the pigeons arrived.

After trying various methods to deter pigeons from my garden without success, I stumbled upon a top tip from gardening experts. They suggested that pigeons are too large to fit into bird feeders with roofs.

So, by simply hanging these feeders near a wall or hedge (avoiding windows as they might fly into them), you can prevent pigeons from accessing the food because they simply can't fit.

I put this advice into practice and it worked like a charm. My smaller birds have returned, able to dart into the gap in the feeder, while the pigeons have admitted defeat due to their size.

To implement this, I merely hung the feeder from a hook on the side of my garage, adjacent to a nearby ivy hedge.

The other birds discovered it within a few days, but the pigeons have kept their distance.

Since then, I've extended this strategy by adding an upright hanging bird feeder stand.

This too has proven too challenging for the pigeons - they're too large to land on it and their hefty beaks can't fit through the mesh.

This forces them to abandon the hanging feeders, leaving them free for the more deserving little birds, rather than the troublesome pigeon pests.