Falcons drafted in to scare off defecating starlings from Rome

Plan to clean up Italian capital condemned as barbaric by animal rights campaigners

Angela Giuffrida in Rome

Fri 23 Nov 2018 12.09 GMTLast modified on Fri 23 Nov 2018 12.32 GMT

Authorities in Rome have enlisted falcons to scare off defecating starlings, as the Italian capital plays host to a growing menagerie of animals, including gulls, wild boars and sheep.

Starlings pass through the city in late autumn as they migrate to warmer climes for winter, soiling its cobblestones and riverbanks with sticky guano and bothering residents and tourists, who often use umbrellas to avoid the droppings.

Part of the road that runs along the Tiber River was closed earlier this week because the birds had left so much excrement, prompting authorities to call on a team of falconers. It is unclear when the birds of prey will take to the skies, but their job will be to frighten the starlings away from their nesting spots, such as the trees along the streets.

The Rome department in charge of environmental sustainability said the measure constituted a “cruelty-free, ecological and natural solution” to the starling problem.

Animal rights activists condemned the initiative as “barbaric”. “The environmental sustainability council says that using hawks to fight starlings is ‘cruelty-free, ecological and natural’ – these are shameful words that justify what is a cruel and anachronistic method,” said Rinaldo Sidoli, a communication manager for Animalisti Italiani.

He added that the deterrent violated a municipal rule which prohibits the “release into the environment of birds, except those treated by authorised wild animal recovery centres”.

An initiative involving falcons in 2015 also drew criticism. Previous city authorities experimented with playing recordings of starling distress calls in an attempt to get the birds, who tend to descend on the city at dusk, to flee.

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Rome enlists Texan falcons to tackle problem of starling droppings

Cars, streets and the odd pedestrian have been showered with faeces

Rome is hoping five Texan falcons will be able scare away the thousands of starlings that are showering cars, streets, and the odd pedestrian with their droppings.

Along the banks of the River Tiber, in particular, where the huge flocks congregate in the trees, stationary cars and bikes are often covered in their faeces. Roads are left slippery and treacherous.

So serious is the problem that the city’s authorities are resorting to the falcons to deter the starlings from massing in the city, to which they are attracted as a safe place to roost. 

Sabrina Alfonsi, president of Rome’s central municipality, said a three-day trial of the birds of prey proved successful, so she is now looking to continue with the deterrent.

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The birds that plague the Eternal City

3 August 2014 Last updated at 00:17

By Alan JohnstonBBC News, Rome

Rome has been invaded by thousands of gulls - the birds boldly steal food, make a mess on statues and have even attacked the Pope's doves of peace.

I was on the bus the other morning, drowsily heading for work, but through the window I spotted something that woke me up - a rather gruesome scene.

On the pavement a big, powerful gull was standing over a pigeon it had killed. Then the gull grabbed the carcass in its beak, launched himself over the top of my bus, dropped into a piazza and starting to tear the pigeon apart.

I suppose I still expect gulls to do the sort of things they're supposed to, like ride the wind on lonely shorelines, follow trawlers, live off scraps of fish - not devour pigeons on city streets.

But in many places these birds are giving up on the sea, and moving to town. Rome is no exception.

For thousands of years it had no nesting gulls. They only began coming in the 1980s, lured by bins and dumps groaning with food chucked away by modern Romans. Now there are tens of thousands of gulls here and this latest invasion of the Eternal City can be a bit barbaric.

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Light and sound used against Rome's birds

TIRED of bird droppings on the city's most famous monuments, local authorities in Rome are resorting to unusual measures to try and scare off a million starlings that migrate to the Eternal City every year.

Armed with loudspeakers and light projectors, workers dressed in white overalls and masks have been seen walking around at sunset along the tree-lined embankments of the Tiber River where starlings tend to congregate.

The loudspeakers blast out shrieks of alarm used by the starlings and the projectors are shone into the trees to scare off the birds.

"Their reaction is immediate," city hall said in a statement on Friday.

"The starlings abandon the area and get as far away as possible from the area, which they consider dangerous," it said, adding that the method "respects the environment and the birds and does not create a nuisance for residents".

The sound-and-light attacks last around an hour and are always carried out at dusk for three days in a row to ensure the desired effect.

Rome has the highest number of starlings in Italy - around a million are estimated to migrate there every autumn and winter.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/light-and-sound-used-against-romes-birds/story-fn3dxix6-1226518643665