1/15/08 - County may buy device to spook crows

(As published by Cortland Standard, Evan Geibel reporting)

The county General Services and Budget and Finance committees decided to purchase a portable noisemaking device to chase crows out of sensitive areas in the city, where thousands of the birds tend to congregate for food and warmth during the colder months.

The $2,116 expenditure would still have to be approved by the full Legislature.

County Buildings and Grounds Superintendent Brian Parker said he began researching the possibility of a portable unit when the YWCA on Clayton Avenue asked for some help in dealing with crows that had rendered the playground in the back of the facility unusable due to the excrement left by the birds.

He contacted Phoenix Limited, a Nova Scotia-based company that built the noisemaking system that keeps crows out of Courthouse Park.

That device produces more than 13 different sounds, and runs from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. The portable device, which would be small enough to fit on the back of a pickup truck, would cover a roughly 2-acre area. “It’s programmed bird-specific,” Parker told the committee.

He said the Courthouse Park system has brought a definite improvement over last winter, when many of the sidewalks were covered in the slick, foul crow droppings. “You don’t need an umbrella to go to the parking lot,” Parker joked.

County Administrator Scott Schrader said several legislators expressed concern about the city’s inability to deal with the crows.

Although the city in past years had contracted with a local pest control firm to use noisemakers to chase the birds out of their nightly roosts, the city’s financial problems meant that no such contract was signed this year.

“It was an expense that wasn’t making anything happen,” Mayor Tom Gallagher said. “We were just chasing them from one part of the city to another.”

Committee member Gene Waldbauer (R-Cortlandville) wondered if the city would be willing to run the noise device.

Schrader said he needed to talk with Gallagher about the city’s need to control the crow population; he said Gallagher told him that the city was already waiving the $35 fee for pest control operators to work within city limits for private citizens.