The American Desert Buzzard Burkhard returns to falconer Herbert Boger after a flight to scare the crows. Photos: dpa
Burkhard, a US desert buzzard, is far from home on this spring day in Germany but not a lot is going on.
The Harris’s hawk glances around at the dozens of rooks’ nests up in the trees nearby. A professional bird of prey, truth be told, he is a little bored.
He was brought in by the town of Kellingshusen to help control the local rook population. This German town, like many others, is struggling with large colonies of the corvids who bring about problems such as noise pollution and droppings below their nests.
Burkhard belongs to falconer Herbert Boger, who has been bringing his birds to this quiet town on the Eider River three times a week since the start of the year, aiming to scare away the local crows.
Corvids are intelligent birds. Boger has to make sure he comes at different times of the day so the crows don’t get too used to him.
“It’s like when someone disturbs you in your bedroom, you don’t like that,” Boger says.
The town is currently home to a colony of about 200 nests, say the authorities.
The droppings they leave and the noise they make are bothering the nearby retirement home and school.
Boger also helps other areas, bringing his feathered helpers to the town of Wilster and to Hamburg Airport.
Around 28,000 rook breeding pairs lived in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 2021, according to the Environmental State Office.
They are drawn by the grassland areas in the floodplains and the marshes that guarantee them a steady food supply.
After a rapid increase in the 1980s and 90s, however, the growth in the crow population in Schleswig-Holstein has slowed down slightly, according to the 2021 report.
But habitats are changing and, these days, 75% of the crow population breed in cities, compared to only a quarter in 1954, says the state’s Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (Nabu).
Local hawks struggle to keep them at bay. A colony like the one in Kellinghusen has few open spaces so it is a difficult area, Boger says. It’s different for Harris’s hawks like Burkhard, who just took off for another flight into the trees.
From an early age, the bird is trained to chase crows without killing them. That training involves playing a feather game with black wings, to get the bird of prey conditioned to crows, Boger says.
Thanks to his training, Burkhard is uninterested in other birds, such as the songbird chirping away on a branch nearby. He does not waste a glance at the two wood pigeons not far off either.
Rooks are a protected species in Germany, and the law forbids people from killing or injuring them. You can only scare them away under special conditions, and you need permission to do so.
“Especially during the breeding season, there are always requests from municipalities and private residents,” spokesman for the state office, Martin Schmidt says. There are usually about 10 to 20 complaints a year, he adds.
Alongside Bogner’s actual birds of prey, Kellinghusen also deploys a special system which plays sounds that mimic a bird of prey.
“These measures have been in place for three years and have at least resulted in no increase in the number of nests in recent years,” says Katja Nielsen of the city of Kellinghusen.
But the authorities also plan to install an additional eagle owl nesting box in the surrounding Lieth area this year, in the hopes that the owl could settle, as a natural enemy of the crows.
The town turned to birds of prey after finding that scare guns and other tools failed to have the desired success, instead only creating a further noise problem for the local residents.
“The crows are very intelligent and quickly became accustomed to the scare guns and no longer perceived them as a threat,” Nielsen says.
The only way to make deterrents work in the long term is if they are conducted in a limited area and in a concentrated manner, says Schmidt.
“Scaring away rooks at their breeding sites does not mean the crows will disappear into thin air.” Instead, they will just settle down nearby.
Towns need to figure out where the birds may or may not roost, so they go and settle in the right areas, otherwise the colony may disperse over the entire city area, potentially disturbing even more people.
Burkhard’s day is over for now. With no more crows in sight, Boger lures the Harris’s hawk back with a chunk of meat, puts the leather hood over his head and takes him back to the car.
But they will be back several times until breeding season begins. It’s a busy job for a professional bird of prey. – dpa/Birgitta von Gyldenfeldt
