Kites part of diverse effort against blueberry bird pests in county

Calvin Bratt
Tribune editor

Jim Tigan, right, and Martin Benatar, from California, hold trained falcons at a March 3 meeting at the Lynden
Library on ways to combat starlings in local blueberry fields.

WHATCOM -- A few summers ago, Jeff Littlejohn and his family north of Lynden were incensed by the constant boom of air cannons scaring off starlings from a nearby blueberry field.
  But Littlejohn turned his frustration into research and then into cooperation with Benson Road berry grower Orinder Singh, a half mile away. Littlejohn found out about two types of custom-made kites and Singh paid $800 to buy a dozen of them. Last year, the kites fluttered over Singh's 12 acres of blueberries.
  The happy result: The irritating cannons were fired on only four mornings. Littlejohn said he can live with that.
  The convergence of rural lifestyle with expanding blueberry production in Whatcom County is forcing more creative efforts like that of the two Lynden neighbors. An underlying goal is to stop the blasts of the air cannon. A variety of bird-control ideas have been put forth. (See accompanying story.)
  Blueberry growers claim that scavenging starlings can ruin up to 30 percent of a crop, by pecking at berries, eating them or shaking them to the ground.
  In this case, the combat effort is mostly about kites.
  Checking online and inquiring with berry growers elsewhere, Littlejohn came up with a hawk jackkite and a blue-and-silver helikite. The first, picked up by a light breeze, looks just like a live hawk wafting on the air currents. The second has a roundish shiny shape and is tethered at a greater height, as much as 150 feet, over a field.
  With either kite, the effect is to make starlings sense a possible predator -- and stay away.
  Singh bought about 10 of the jackkites and two of the larger helikites.
  "I saw that it works," he said. Singh has raised berries locally for 12 years.
  Littlejohn acknowledges that their data is meager for now, and it may take several more years of experimenting to "perfect" the use of kites in local blueberry fields.
  And even then, kites are just one piece of a whole range of techniques and methods that are needed.
  "There is no one silver bullet," he said. "You really do need the full array."
  For sure, the kites cannot be just set up and left, Littlejohn said. Their placement and location must be changed regularly, preferably daily but at least every other day,
  The ideal situation, he said, would be for a bunch of blueberry growers to work together to hire a teen to change the kites every day in all their fields.
  The Whatcom County blueberry harvest generally runs from mid-July into September. Officially, the county has about 1,500 acres in cultivation, but there have been many new plantings in recent years.
  The air cannon is used by some growers as the easiest way to do bird pest control, without consideration for the impact on neighbors, say critics.
  In various venues over the last few months, the issue has been raised, and farm groups and the public have been asked to get involved.
  Littlejohn, Singh and Lisa Neulicht, a rural county resident, came to the February meeting of the county Agricultural Advisory Committee and asked for support.
  Together, Neulicht and Mary Starz, a Custer resident, have formed a group called Creative Scarecrows, researched alternatives to air cannons, and arranged informational meetings at the Lynden Library.

Trapping
program has killed 450,000 starlings

  LYNDEN -- Starlings are extremely smart birds, so humans need a variety of methods to outsmart them, said speakers at a March 3 forum at the Lynden Library.
Trained Falcons
  Jim Tigan, head of San Rafael, Calif.-based Tactical Avian Predators, went so far as to label his approach "starling terrorism." He said he tries to think about his tactics through a bird's eyes and mind. "We're good at it because we're birdbrains," he quipped.
  Tigan and partner Martin Benatar had with them in the library's community meeting room a pair of trained saker falcons as part of their company's range of options.
  They have some customers in the Pacific Northwest, but most of their business is in northern California vineyards, where air cannons are not used as a bird deterent anymore, they said.
  In Whatcom County, it might be possible for several berry growing operations to form a bird control cooperative and develop a program of scare-off strategies together, Tigan said.
  By means of various tactics, growers can "raise the stress level" on starlings high enough that they would abandon an area, at least for awhile, he said.
  Still, the two were adamant that control of starlings -- the bird species that does the most crop damage in the United States -- must be very labor-intensive and multi-faceted and can be expensive.
  They came to Washington in part to determine if trained falcons can be cost-effective here, Tigan said. One raptor can cover from 20 to 60 acres, more if working in tandem on concentrated acreage.
Kites
  Jeff Littlejohn and Orinder Singh talked about and demonstrated the two types of kites that they have employed on a 12-acre blueberry field north of Lynden. (See accompanying story.)
Trapping
  Matt Cleland heads up the U.S. Department of Agriculture starling trapping program in western Washington, with Whatcom County his busiest area. John Quanz is the local person doing the work.
  In 2007, Quanz caught 26,500 birds in 30 traps. That was the highest number in nine years, after the program began in 1997 with 168,000 caught.
  The birds are euthanized using carbon dioxide.
  Ideas for scaring off starlings aren't much good if the birds are still around pestering other farmers, Cleland said at the library meeting.
  The USDA Wildlife Services agency is allowed to reduce all non-native bird species, Cleland said. (The starling is an import from England of a century ago that rapidly spread across north America.) Quanz works with about $30,000 each year split evenly between farmers and the county.
Pesticides
  Henry Bierlink, policy director of Whatcom Farm Friends, said that farmers currently have no effective general pesticide to use in starling control year-round.
  However, a new mist-like product has been tested successfully and needs to be registered by the government before it can give hope of being a new tool in the fight against starlings, he said.
  The 11-year trapping effort, eliminating over 450,000 starlings, has "made a dent" in a starling population estimated in the millions locally, Bierlink said. "But it's a constant battle."
  Farmers say that they do notice fewer starlings around than 7-10 years ago, he said. But a unique problem for Whatcom County is that starlings can easily cross the border from Canada and take their place.
  E-mail Calvin Bratt at editor@lyndentribune.com.