MANSFIELD — Mark Abrams may need to add another title to his business card: The Pied Piper of Crows, leading them them out of downtown Mansfield’s Central Park.
Abrams, the city’s parks and recreation superintendent, and his staff have spent an hour or so each evening since Thursday, blasting the sounds of distressed crows into the chilly night air.
The result? There were no crows in Central Park’s trees on Monday morning.
The distressed crow sounds is the latest chapter in an effort to prevent the noisy birds from roosting in the trees — and spattering poop on sidewalks and everything below.
It started Jan. 25 when Abrams used a small Bluetooth speaker to play recorded sounds of a great horned owl, with limited success. He returned on Jan. 26 with a green laser light, which quickly sent the crows fleeing from the trees.
It was during a lunch meeting with his staff Thursday that a new idea was born.
“A lot of my guys are hunters and they have these (bird) call boxes with a lot of different calls. One of the calls is a distressed crow, so we decided to try it Thursday night,” Abrams said.
The crows begin to circle Central Park each night, just after 6 p.m.
“You can set your watch by them,” Abrams said.
As the calls of crow distress filled the air, the nightly visitors decided to pursue other evening roosting options.
“The sound was 10 times louder than the Bluetooth,” Abrams said. “It’s supposed to be a crow under attack or dying or something. It seems to be pretty effective.
“They wouldn’t even land in the trees.”
Abrams went to the square on Friday morning around 6:15 and found only about one-quarter of the crows that normally call the park home during the winter.
His staff used the same sounds Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings.
“(Monday) morning at 6:15, there was not a single crow in Central Park,” Abrams said.
He isn’t ready to claim victory just yet.
“We’re gonna keep it up for at least another week or two. I am worried they might get used to the call and come back. If we can keep them moving along and not roosting, I think we may be OK.
“I don’t think you can ever declare victory over nature,” he said. “You know how that goes.”
