Downtown raven problems lead to 'desperate' action
Birds flock to buildings in huge numbers and no one seems to know why; deterrent devices installed
John McFadden
Northern News Services
Friday, March 18, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In a scene straight out of the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds, ravens have been flocking to several downtown office buildings like never before and it seems to be a mystery as to why.
Darin Benoit stands in front of a raven-feces covered awning on the Gallery Building on Franklin Avenue in downtown Yellowknife. Benoit, property manager for Dream Management NWT, said raven deterrent devices have been placed on the roofs of four downtown office buildings which the company owns. He said it has been done to try to cut down on the amount of raven feces being left behind on the buildings. - John McFadden/NNSL photo |
The problem of ravens leaving their feces has become so prominent, raven deterrent devices have been placed on the roofs of four downtown buildings.
The devices emit the sound of a raptor - a hawk-like bird of prey - over a loudspeaker. It is hoped the noises will scare off the ravens and force them to do their business elsewhere, according to Darin Benoit, property manager for Dream Management NWT. He said his company placed the loud-speaker devices on the Northwest Tower building, The Precambrian Building, the Scotia Centre and the Gallery Building about a month ago.
"It's evident with the Gallery Building because it is covered in bird feces - that seemed to be ... a freak of nature because it only happened over a one-week period and then they disappeared again," Benoit said. "We've always had them on our buildings but it's never been to the excess where it's covering the building with bird feces. We were desperate. We were afraid that it was going to happen again."
Benoit said that the speakers emit an ultrasonic sound at a frequency better detected by birds than humans, but some members of the public have expressed they had heard the noise, saying it sounded more like a bird in pain.
Benoit said up until a couple of weeks ago, passers-by would have heard even stranger sounds coming from the buildings where the devices are.
"Earlier it was kind of like a jungle downtown," he said, adding the initial recording had a number of sounds - some which acted as a pigeon deterrent - but many have since been eliminated.
"It's down to just a couple of sounds," he said.
They changed the noises after a conversation with an official from the territorial government, Benoit said.
"We did get someone from Environment and Natural Resources explaining to us that what we were doing wasn't very effective and that we needed to change it up because ravens are fairly smart. That's when we changed everything," Benoit said. "We did get a couple of calls from people who thought there were some escaped budgies or something like that."
Benoit said window washers have been able to remove the raven feces from the office towers other than the Gallery Building. He suggested it might take a pressure washer to clean the facing of it. It is not clear whether the building, constructed in 2012, has ever had a thorough outdoor cleaning.
Benoit said the raven deterrent devices cost about $1,500 each.
Benoit has no idea why the ravens flocked to the buildings in such numbers.
"Some have suggested that it coincided with the destruction of the headframe at Giant Mine," Benoit said. But he is not sure that is where the birds came from.
"One morning there were 50 to 60 birds all over the building."
That's when Benoit made his reference to the Hitchcock movie where birds essentially take over a town and attack its residents.
Vicky Johnston, a bird biologist with Environment Canada in Yellowknife, said it is difficult analyze ravens' behaviour.
"I remember a few years back when seagulls flocked to the old grocery store on Old Airport Road by the hundreds. They will go where there is a food source but beyond that it's difficult to say why birds flock to a given location," she said.
Johnston said she knows airports use deterrent devices to keep geese and other birds away from the runways but this is the first time she had heard of them being used on buildings.
