Alex Trelinski
VALENCIA city council will spend €450,000 on a war against pigeons and starlings.
A contract has been advertised for a company to use air cannons to scare away flocks of starlings, while net-launching cannons will capture pigeons in up to eight areas of the city.
Pigeons carry up to 40 diseases and 60 parasites like lice and ticks, according to the tender document, and the winning bidder is not allowed to kill them, but merely capture them and give them sterilised food, before taking them elsewhere.
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This initiative has been used in the past and is said to have produced good results.
The winning contractor will have to take into account pigeon density, the number of complaints, or whether they cause damage to heritage.
Priority for action will be given to pigeons close to nursing homes, food shops, and nursery schools.
In addition to cannon-launched nets, cage traps will also be used.
An industrial-sized machine with a compressed air system will capture the pigeons, with birds reeled in by feeding points.
There’ll be two annual capture campaigns utilising between five and eight sites.
Valencia City Council has emphasised that the pigeons ‘must not be harmed’.
The birds will be transferred either to sparsely populated municipal urban dovecotes or to rural pigeon lofts in different parts of the Valencian region.
Air cannons will be deployed to scare away starlings, and a study will be carried out between August and March to find out how many of them are around and where they cause the most complaints.
“The cannons will be used during the afternoon, before nightfall, to scare away the flock so that they have to find an alternative place to spend the night,” the tender specification says.
