I had a colleague who had a problem with House Sparrows nesting in his eaves (or really in the eaves of his house).  He asked me what to do about it, and I came up with a great idea - I would lend him my stuffed House Sparrow (a skin I prepared in an ornithology class) which he could put near the nests.  The hypothesis:  the birds would be so devastated by the sight of this dead bird near their homes that they would all abandon their nests.  He tried it, and came back the next day to report that not only did it not work, but that the live sparrows ripped the skin to shreds, leaving nothing but little bits of cotton (which they then probably used to line their nests).  Perhaps that was more a testament to my skin preparation skills (and why I ended up an engineer and not an ornithologist), I'm not sure, but in any case it proved my hypothesis wrong.  And given the continued rise in House Sparrow numbers, I'm guessing that my colleague never was able to solve his sparrow problem!
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Best,
Paul Pisano
Arlington, VA