When visiting my friend in Australia, he had purchased a bird scarer online. The birds had devastated his fruit crop. He had tried sirens, gas bang guns, hanging unwanted shiny CDs and curly silver foil from the branches, everything, but still the birds came. Daily, relentless.
A bird scarer gadget he found online seemed ideal. It promised to scare them away by playing sounds of eagles and other birds of prey through a series of loudspeakers scattered throughout the orchard.
Quite expensive, but with many good reviews, he put down his money (grumbling about the poor exchange rate), paid for expedited air freight from the US (which cost him more than the item), and waited.
The big box finally arrived.
Duly unpacked, set up and configured, and I arrived at the orchard in time for first switch on.
There were sounds of shrieks and whooshing filled the air, in multichannel sound, giving the impression there were many birds flying across the orchard.
The milling birds, in their hundreds, looked up from wreaking devastation, and carried on after a few seconds as if nothing had happened .
We were shocked. It wasn’t working. We checked the connections, replaced the batteries, changed the sound track to another supplied, everything. The birds just kept chewing through the fruit. I’m sure I could see a few laughing at us humans, furiously running around.
We even got the manual out to check if we had missed something.
Oh how we laughed. On the front cover, proudly in full color, was a picture of an American bald eagle swooping at prey.
A magnificent picture. In full flight. Something that should scare the living Bejeezuz out of any bird.
Except these birds were Australian. Fair dinkum noisy and hungry, and had never seen, and more importantly, heard an American eagle or bird of prey. They just looked up and ignored us, and the funny sounds filling the orchard. Not afraid at all.
My mate was furious. Waving the manual at the birds. We were falling about in laughter. He contacted the supplier who offered his money back, and asked if he could participate in a test program for sounds of Australian birds of prey in attack mode.
Moral of the story? Always adapt to local conditions.