The flag goes out when the Huisduinen bell can ring again. But how? The Huisduiner Church has been quiet for quite some time. Pigeons have taken over the bell tower and defecated on the ancient bell, causing it to no longer make a sound. Manager Rob Dol is powerless: “They eat, but of course some comes out the back. And that is a lot.”
Poo on the tower, poop on the clock and especially a lot of poop on the sidewalk of the church on the recently completely renovated Dorpsplein. Anneke Dol tries to remove the muck with a hoe and broom. “Look at it, it just goes into the church and look at those doors. With weddings, of course, it all has to be clean.”
It does not work
Everything has been tried; a net around the tower, a falconer was able to catch some birds and hundreds of steel pins have recently been installed to keep the pigeons away. There’s already one on the floor. “You see, it doesn’t work,” says manager Rob Dol resignedly. The pigeons are behind the clock face of the tower. “You will just see that they are not there now, but there is even a nest with young ones. We are not allowed to remove that.”
In the video you can see how bad the pigeon droppings are”:
A clean sidewalk is nice, but what is even more important is the historical importance of the clock, says Dol: “The bell dates from 1537. It hung in a church that stood on the spot where the Razende Bol is now located, so from a historical point of view It is an important clock and it has to work, strike and make sound.”
Gauze
Last week there was another conversation with the Den Helder Housing Foundation management, which owns the church. It is now being investigated whether sturdy mesh can be the solution to the problem.