SubscribeAnthony Walker, Chief Executive of SCARECROW, provides an overview of the development of their bio-acoustic technology.
In a high tech world, we can sometimes benefit from getting ‘back to basics’; new products are launched on the market in a constant stream to meet ever new requirements, regulations or threats – all with the aim of making our lives easier or more efficient.
Meanwhile computer technology has been an enormous benefit to industry, not just as desktop systems with which we are all so familiar, but also within the technology we utilise in the form of microchips and processing electronics.
Through this exposure to high-tech products, we appear to have been lead to automatically assume that the most technologically advanced solution is always the best, which is not necessarily the case.
Yes, it allows us to meet and deal with a wide range of needs in this modern world, but it is also vulnerable to an unhealthy dependence on solutions which, for safety, should always incorporate a human control element; would anybody fly in an A380 without a Pilot?
In my particular field of critical area bird control, primarily at airports, there have been many weird and wonderful solutions put forward, from the simplest – make a loud bang and the birds will fly away – where and for how long is not necessarily addressed! - to ultrasonic solutions that transmit space age sounds that cannot be heard by the human ear, let alone birds! In most cases, the airport operators have to take the ‘salesman’s’ word for it, that the product will work; it might, short term.
It is almost 25 years since I first consulted an ornithologist and learnt that the best way to disperse birds was to make their area of occupancy appear ‘hostile’ to them. Birds utilise their own messaging systems in these conditions, in a somewhat low-tech way best known as ‘distress calls’.
Perhaps the solution to this hi-tech dispersal problem would be as simple as harnessing the bird’s own inbuilt messaging to perform psychological warfare against them, letting them know they would be safer somewhere else.
A Scarecrow Premier unit, linked with a laptop running ISIS v3 software
My experience in sound recording, amplification and electronics now seemed to offer a perfect marriage of technology with the birds instinctive behaviour and, under the expert guidance of ornithological specialists, Scarecrow was born to take these basic, but very precise, distress calls and use computer technology to control and distribute the correct species calls in the correct manner, at the correct times.
Bio-acoustic bird dispersal activities and schedules can even be controlled, implemented and logged by computer software installed in a linked laptop to show that dispersal procedures are maintained and thus prove the due diligence of the Operator.
So we have a very low tech solution, distributed via a rather more hi-tech system, to bring bird control to areas where birds are a nuisance or danger. And it works; assuming that the Operatives are trained in its use, the results are very impressive, which is why virtually every major airfield in the UK, both civil and military, now use Scarecrow bio-acoustic technology as part of their bird dispersal procedures.
The roll out across Europe is equally impressive, with systems operated extensively at many airports in the European Community, with growth spreading to the Far East, China and Australia.
Sometimes in this modern world we become dazzled by technology and it can take a bit of time for us to realise that a traditional, back to basics, solution, delivered by modern means, can be the most effective. Thanks to Scarecrow Bio-acoustic Systems in the world of airport management, this message seems to be spreading around the world.
If you are concerned about resolving past Risk Management problems, I invite you to take a step forward to a new technology that will help resolve them.
There is no magic, or black art, in the process of bird control by bio-acoustic means, only the application of the science, of long term ornithological experience and a good understanding of what is deemed the achievement of “natural” sound. SCARECROW bio-acoustic bird dispersal systems are humane and inoffensive in their function, exploiting natural bird behaviour for their success.
Web: www.scarecrowbio-acoustic.co.uk
E-mail: sales@scarecrowbio-acoustic.co.uk
