The city of Sunnyvale, California, has managed to get rid of swarms of crows that were occupying the trees of its downtown squares, causing great inconvenience to residents as a result of the noise they make while flying around the tops of the trees where they will roost all night.

“Crows are very noisy birds, and their droppings and feathers cause a big mess,” said Jennifer Garnett, Sunnyvale’s communications officer, noting that city council members had received many complaints from residents, businesses, and business owners because of them, according to Al Arabiya website.

Garnett added that the increasing number of residents going out to eat outdoors during the Corona pandemic led to the number of crow flocks reaching record numbers, noting that the first attempts to deter crows had failed, as the municipality tried to use trained falcons, and then achieved the use of reflective panels for lights, which Aimed to confuse flocks of crows, with limited success.

In the end, officials decided to use an inexpensive tool, a laser pointer, and the campaign of chasing crows using laser pointers lasted three weeks, as a trained city council employee used a hand-held green laser device, for a period of 30 minutes at dusk, and the employee was lighting the laser pointer in The downtown plaza The aim of this experiment was to frighten the crows every night until they eventually dispersed forever.

“The laser pointer appears to be working,” Garnett said, expressing some concerns that “the crows are very intelligent and will likely return when the deterrent is gone.”

A 2002 study by the US Department of Agriculture’s National Wildlife Research Center found that low-to-medium wavelength lasers can deflect birds in low-light conditions with “no threat to the animal, bird, or environment”.

Experts stressed that timing is important to the success of the crows expelling task, and the laser is most effective at the beginning of winter, that is, within a few days of the formation of crow flocks, for his part, said John Griffin, senior director of urban wildlife programs at the Humane Society of the United States, that Crows are intelligent creatures, explaining that “removing them becomes more difficult the longer they stay in an area.”

He continued, “By the spring, the birds migrate to another place, but many of them will return to the same city in the winter, and the number increases annually, so adaptation to the sight of crows flocks may be the most realistic.”