Birds Given A Council Snake-up
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday November 21, 2007
EVER since Tamworth Council tried to beautify its town centre with new trees, hordes of nesting starlings have done their best to deface it.
"You can leave a car under one of those trees and go shopping for an hour and you won't recognise your car when you come back. It's just covered in bird droppings," said the mayor, James Treloar.All attempts, including spraying the birds with high-powered water cannons, confusing them with strobe lighting and bombarding them with subsonic sounds, have failed to eradicate the feathered scourge. The council says it will now try something low-tech after last season's heavy hitting failed to make a dent in the starling's love of the town centre.Early this morning council staff will begin placing more than 100 rubber snakes in the upper branches of trees along the main street. It is hoped the fake 60-centimetre snakes, which come in black, green and yellow, will scare the birds into looking for alternative accommodation when they begin to roost this summer."Rubber snakes has come forward as a community suggestion," said the council's waste and cleaning services manager, John Davis.There was anecdotal evidence to suggest some bird species were frightened by fake snakes, he said. "It's a low-cost option for us to trial as one of the deterrents. If it works, that's good, but if it doesn't, we haven't wasted a lot of money to do so."Last year the council spent about $50,000 on cleaning up the birds' mess and a further $25,000 in trying to get rid of them. The rubber snakes initiative is one of several being trialled, including bird traps and t placing fine webbing in the trees. "I don't think anybody knows what works best, apart from getting all guns out and start shooting, which obviously we are not going to be able to do," Cr Treloar said.
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald
