MANSFIELD — Mark Abrams hopes a $20 green laser light will convince a huge murder of crows to stay out of the trees at night in Central Park.
The city’s parks and recreation superintendent recently ordered the laser and three “dead crow effigies” in the latest attempt to convince the crows to flee the downtown park.
The crows roosting in downtown during winter in Mansfield is nearly as predictable and common as the buzzards returning to Hinckley, Ohio, each March.
Unlike the turkey vultures, however, the crows are not welcomed guests in Central Park trees, where their nightly gatherings leave behind a gross, sticky coating of fecal matter that covers historical monuments, benches, artwork and sidewalks.
During colder winter months, when they’re not nesting, crows like to congregate in larger numbers for safety. The warmth radiating off city roads and trapped by tall buildings provide a cozy winter home. Street lights in cities help them better surveil for predators.
Abrams said the hand-held laser and the the dead crow effigies, which cost $30 each, are scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.
“Amazon said they will arrive on Wednesday … but they didn’t say which Wednesday,” Abrams said with a laugh.
The plan is to hang the effigies in the trees and have a parks employee spend an hour or so at dusk each night shining the green laser into the trees.
Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in New York, recently told the New York Times that crows will see the green light and may think animals are running over the branches.
Perhaps successfully bluffed, the hope is the crows will then fly somewhere else to sleep for the night. However, McGowan, who has studied crows for three decades, said dispersing the birds is a tricky game.
The fact is crows are intelligent birds and may not want to leave a place they have already settled, McGowan said.
McGowan was quoted in an article about the community of Sunnyvale, Calif., trying the same laser light effort, along with playing recorded sounds of crows in distress.
Abrams said the light and the effigies are worth the effort.
“We will try it for two or three weeks and see if it’s giving us any results,” Abrams said.
“From everything I have read, and short of cutting down trees or a mass murder of crows, it’s probably the most humane way to deal with it,” Abrams said.
“It’s probably the most non-invasive way for everyone involved to help mitigate the problem.”
Abrams said the city has tried things in the past, including rubber snakes in the trees and owl effigies.
“This has been an issue (downtown) for many years,” he said. “Different things we have read from different universities, talking to experts and game wardens … this (laser and crow effigies) seems to be a common theme.”
