ALLSOPP HELIKITES LIMITED

Bird problems can be economic such as crows eating crops, medical as when starlings spread disease in cattle feed, or man-made like overlarge local populations of town-pigeons that cannot be culled for sentimental reasons. Sometimes it appears that bird problems may be exaggerated in order to mask bad crop or fishery management, or simply because a few people are oversensitive to what may be harmless bird activity e.g. mating pigeons outside classroom windows.
Crop-loss problems are relatively easy to assess.

Oilseed Rape plant nearly destroyed by pigeons. The growing point has been eaten which will lead to a late plant, and uneven crop, yielding far less than normal.

Pigeon damage to Oildseed rape has virtually destroyed the crop in this area. Even if it recovers a bit there will be too much weed competition in the spring for any useful yeild.

Firstly estimate the damage caused by birds on the crop, then add to this the extra cost of fertilisers, new seed, extra weed control, uneven crop losses, and extra time needed to deal with these subsequent problems. Then work out the capital cost of the birdscarers over their estimated lifetime, their running costs and the cost of your time to look after them. Then look at these costs again and work them out per acre and per tonne.. The per acre or tonne cost is the one that matters. It is no good a birdscarer being cheap if it only does a small area. This may seem obvious but it is surprising how often people appear to consider a $50 birdscarer that does two acres to be better value than a $200 birdscarer that does twenty acres, despite the former being two and a half times more expensive per acre than the latter. So work it out ruthlessly. You will probably be surprised to see how expensive your present bird control arrangements really are compared to sprays and fertilisers. Go to our article on birdscarer comparisons. Enter your own figures if you wish and juggle them about to suit your situation. After you have got your answer add in how important is the uncertainty of not controlling birds. For-instance, will you be liable to penalty clauses if you don't supply a certain tonnage of grain from a certified field. Or will your bean crop be too thick for pollinating bees if the expected birds don't appear as usual to thin out the extra beans you planted for them. You might like to add in the effect on your stress levels as well.

Medical and disease problems are more difficult to assess. Birds spread diseases such as salmonella in their droppings, and their nests contain mites that can affect humans as well. But how important is the birds contribution to disease in any one person is hard to trace as many other activities such as eating or playing in the mud also have a risk attached to them. If a farmers cattle suddenly start getting diseases just after a large flock of rooks learn to eat his maize silage and foul it in the process, then it is reasonable to assume the birds may have had something to do with it and it will be worth trying to scare them off. But at what stage is it worth scaring Canada geese from a park ? How many people have got ill that have not reported it ? This decision will be based on some science, some consultation and some common sense. To us at Allsopp Helikites it does not seem good sense to let children play in goose shit, but some people don`t mind.

This neatly brings us to the most intractable problem...
Man made bird problems. Eg Town pigeons, tame swans, sparrows, pheasants, tame grackles etc. This is not a bird control problem, it is a public perception problem and human behaviour problem. To one person a town pigeon is a beautiful creature, as indeed it is when studied. However it can be a great nuisance to someone else. So the pigeon could be killed easily or scared away but is left uncontrolled in order not to upset other people who like it for legitimate sentimental reasons. Such tame bird populations soon breed themselves into being very hard to scare but often it is possible for Helikites to move these birds to somewhere where they do no harm, like the huge noisy, rook colony that Allsopp Helikites successfully moved away from a village called Brummen in the Netherlands.