This article tells the story of one of BirdGard Iberia’s customers who used the bioacoustic BirdGard Pro repeller to get rid of starlings that were causing many problems at the customer’s resort on Mahón Island.

The resort has a building where guest rooms, a terrace, cafeteria, dining room, and parking are located. The gardens are approximately 80 meters long and 40 meters wide. They have very tall pine trees, about 15 meters high. The cafeteria terrace is within the gardens themselves.

For internal reasons, the customer prefers not to publish their name, but they wanted to share their experience with the starling infestation that invaded their facility’s gardens in November of this year. And how they managed to get rid of the starlings with the bioacoustic BirdGard Pro repeller.

Problems Caused by the Starling Infestation in the Garden

Every year, around January or February, flocks of starlings use the tall pine trees in the garden for resting. However, this year we experienced a real starling infestation.

Thousands of starlings arrived in our gardens in November and started using the pine trees as a roost to spend the night. They arrived every day at dusk, around five in the evening, and stayed in the pines all night until about seven in the morning.

The starling infestation caused us many problems. Not only because of the noise they made all night, which you could eventually bear by closing windows, but mostly because of the amount of droppings and the bad smell they generated.

The pine trees are above the cafeteria terrace, and the starling infestation made it impossible to use the terrace. The cafeteria’s awnings were filled with droppings and became practically unusable. From five in the evening, when the starlings started to arrive, until 7 in the morning when they left, you couldn’t stand being there.

People staying at our facilities had to use umbrellas to protect themselves from the droppings falling from the starling-infested trees.

We had to hire extraordinary cleaning services. But it wasn’t enough. At night, the cleaning services left the area clean, and the next morning it was filled with droppings from thousands of starlings perched throughout the night in the garden’s pine trees.

Initial control methods used to try to combat the starlings

Initially, we tried to combat the starling infestation with visual bird repellents. But they didn’t yield any results.

We installed on the roof of the residence, which is in front of the garden and almost at the height of the pine trees, a moving-winged owl, and a little later, a falcon kite. But it didn’t help at all. The starling infestation didn’t even flinch at the sight of the owl. The falcon did intimidate them a bit more, but eventually, they ended up returning to the trees. None of these methods was enough to get rid of the starlings.

Our veterinarian conducted an inspection of the area and indicated that the starling infestation was causing an environmental hygiene issue. It was necessary to address the problem with a serious method of starling pest control.

The Mahón Airport falconry service recommended the BirdGard bioacoustic starling repeller

We asked for advice from the falconry services at Mahón Airport. They told us that the only method they knew of that really worked to get rid of a starling infestation was the BirdGard Pro bioacoustic repeller.

They sent us a photo of the device, and within a few days, we received the bioacoustic repeller from BirdGard Iberia.

Installation of the BirdGard starling repeller

We received the device on a Friday morning. That same morning, we installed it on one of the balconies of the first floor of the residence, facing the garden. The starling repeller was placed about 5 meters high, pointing towards the garden, and about 10 meters away from the nearest pine trees.

We installed the BirdGard Pro bioacoustic repeller as it came from the factory, without making any changes to the configuration. The repeller began to emit sounds, but at that moment, the starling infestation was not in the garden.

That day, when we returned to the residence in the evening, we thought the starling repeller wasn’t working because the starlings were in the trees, as they were every day.

We realized that the repeller wasn’t emitting any sounds, so we approached to check it. When we pointed the flashlight of the mobile phone at the repeller, it started to emit sounds again. As soon as the starlings heard the distress calls of others of their species and the cries of their predators, they began to leave the trees.

The bioacoustic starling repeller has a photoelectric cell and can be configured to emit sounds only during the day, only at night, or both day and night. As it comes from the factory, the repeller is set to operate only during the day. So, we modified the settings to make it operational 24 hours a day.

Complete success. I recommend this solution to anyone who has problems with starling infestations

That night was quite a spectacle. The starling infestation spent the entire night fluttering around the area. There were thousands of starlings.

The next morning, the starlings were gone and never returned to our garden again.

We kept the starling repeller running continuously for several weeks for fear that they would return. But they didn’t come back.

The sounds of the bioacoustic repeller were not bothersome inside the building. They are all natural bird sounds, and with the windows closed, they could not be heard inside the rooms.

The success of the BirdGard repeller in getting rid of the starling infestation was so great that we thought it had coincided with the time when the starlings had migrated from the island. But within a few days, we found that this was not the case. The starlings had relocated to another area: a park about 1 km away from our facilities, where they did not cause any problems.

The results of the repeller in combating the starling infestation in our garden were immediate. As soon as we activated the BirdGard repeller, the starlings spent the entire night fluttering around. But by morning, they were gone and never returned.

Occasionally in the mornings, we see the flock of starlings fly over our garden, but they have never perched on our pines again.

I recommend the BirdGard Pro bioacoustic repeller to anyone who has problems with starling infestations. In our case, it has been a complete success.

Other References for BirdGard Bioacoustic Repellers to Deter Starlings

The following articles are references from BirdGard Iberia customers who use the bioacoustic repellers BirdGard to deter flocks of starlings and blackbirds:

• Dr. Martínez, Director of the Viticulture Group CSIC (Spanish National Research Council), shares her experience with different methods for scaring birds away from vineyards.
• Read about the experience of José Luis López Budia, a farmer in Cifuentes (Guadalajara), who shares in this article how he managed to protect his almond and cherry farm from woodpeckers and blackbirds attacks.
• Government of La Rioja: installation of BirdGard repellers in three experimental farms of blueberry and forest fruit plantations.
• Bird Repellers used to minimize electrical micro-outages caused by flocks of starlings on power lines. Reference: Iberdrola
• Check out other Customer References from BirdGard Iberia