Bird song heads toward its final chorus
Phillips said shifting the birds was the best option the council could come up with.
‘‘The issue is that we are probably just going to move them from one location to another.
‘‘But, hopefully, it will be to smaller trees and there won’t be as much of an issue with cars parking underneath them.’’
The budget for the bird scarers was originally envisaged to be used along the stretch of Broadway from The Square to Princess St, where an earlier trial of using fake owls to frighten the birds away had been only temporarily effective.
However, retailers and property owners in that block lost patience with the bird mess and smell problem and demanded the council cut down those trees, which was carried out in February 2015.
The council budget was carried forward into this year, while the Broadway Ave quadrant of The Square was identified as the area with the next worst problem.
Max Tarr Commercial put in the devices and speakers in the trees from the bus terminal entrance to The Square car park, and along to the ANZ corner this week.
The rest would be used between the car park and the Palmerston North City Library, and between the Broadway Ave corner and Main St.
Phillips said traffic management was an extra cost from working around The Square.
A proposal to put in sonic scarers outside the Conference and Function Centre in Main St, that would frighten birds but be inaudible to people, was on hold until all those costs were known.
Phillips said there would be different sound tracks programmed for the audible scarers around The Square, with the sounds varied so the birds did not become accustomed to them.
The system would work on timers, set to silent during the day, that would come on around dusk, continuing as long as necessary into the evenings.
He said there would be some degree of trial and error to find out how long the noises needed to persist before it could be assumed the birds had found somewhere else to settle for the night.