Venice to tourists: Don't feed the birds

VENICE, Italy, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Venetian city officials hope a measure that outlaws throwing rice at newlyweds will help get flocks of pigeons out of St. Mark's Square.

The rice-throwing tradition, a way of wishing a newly married couple fertility and happiness, also feeds the pigeons, which have been declared birds non grata because they threaten human health and are destroying the Italian city's Renaissance and Baroque architecture, the Times of London reported Tuesday.

About 120,000 pigeons nest in Venice’s plazas and churches, twice the resident human population. While feeding pigeons on St. Mark’s Square has been a tourist attraction, officials say the pigeons are damaging buildings with their corrosive droppings and are attacking the marble and stucco facades with their beaks “like kamikaze pilots,” a recent report said.

So in the next few days, the city will ban street vendors from selling bird seed and well-wishers from tossing rice on St. Mark’s Square.

Venice Mayor Massimo Cacciari said the city had offered to help to find the vendors “alternative employment.”