LYNDEN — Keeping swarms of starlings away from ripening blueberries is hard work.
That was the common theme Monday as a variety of experts gathered at the Lynden Library to share information on a wide range of starling control techniques, ranging from live and captive predator birds to balloons, kites, traps, poisons and propane cannons.
The meeting was organized by a new organization of berry growers’ neighbors called Creative Scarecrows. Members of that group hope to promote alternatives to the cannons, which can make for a nerve-racking and noisy spring and summer around the berry fields.
“I hate the propane cannons,” said group organizer Lisa Neulicht, who has lived in her north county home for 28 years. “They ruin my summer every summer.”
Neulicht said the cannon blasts disturb more people each year as more acres are planted in blueberries, a crop that is enjoying a boom locally. Farmers see profits slipping away when starlings, a nonnative species introduced from Europe at the end of the 19th century, swarm over their fields by the thousands. Henry Bierlink, public policy director for the Farm Friends agriculture group, said local damage from starlings has been estimated at $700,000 a year.
Creative Scarecrows member Jeff Littlejohn told the gathering how he worked with his neighbor, berry grower Orinder Singh, to keep cannon usage to a minimum last season.
At Littlejohn’s urging, Singh said he used bright helium balloons called helikites, as well as kites shaped like birds of prey. Both devices soar and dive on gusts of wind, helping to scare away birds. “It works,” Singh said.
But both Singh and Littlejohn agreed that it isn’t enough to string up a few kites and forget them. The birds are smart enough to get used to the devices and go back to gulping berries. The kites must be regularly moved around to keep the birds guessing.
But thanks to the kites, Littlejohn said Singh used his cannon for just three hours a day over a four-day period during the height of the season, a level of noise that he found tolerable.
“There was great rejoicing in my house,” Littlejohn said.
Jim Tigan, owner of a California firm called Tactical Avian Predators, warned the group that starlings are too smart to be deterred by any one tactic. Tigan said his company does starling control work in California vineyards using live falcons as well as dogs, traps and balloons.
Propane cannons have been mostly phased out in the vineyards, Tigan said, partly because of noise complaints and partly because birds soon learn they are harmless. In fact, he said, some birds seemed to have learned to follow the cannon blasts to the ripe fruit.
But he also expressed skepticism about reliance on kites and balloons. If all local growers followed Singh’s example and installed those devices in their berry fields, Tigan suggested they would likely lose their effectiveness.
“These birds can habituate to anything,” Tigan said. “That’s why these birds have done so well.”
Tigan said one of his falcon handlers with three birds can keep starlings away from about 120 acres. That service doesn’t come cheap, he said, although he did not mention a price. He said it might be a good option for the largest growers, or a number of smaller growers concentrated in one area.
Katherine Hartline, a researcher with Trinity Western University in British Columbia, said she is working with local researchers on a project to increase the population of wild American kestrels in Whatcom County berry growing areas. Orphaned birds from Eastern Washington are being raised to adulthood for eventual release in this area, and nest boxes will be installed to encourage them to start families. Increasing the kestrel population in this way has proved to pay off for farmers in other areas of the country.
Hartline said Whatcom County’s kestrel population has been diminished by development that destroys natural nesting areas.
Matt Cleland, regional director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife service, supervises a trapping and poisoning program that has killed starlings by the hundreds of thousands in Whatcom County since it began more than 10 years ago.
Cleland observed that scare tactics don’t get at the root of things.
“You’re just moving the problem,” Cleland said. “You’re not reducing the problem.”
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