Heavenly tranquility in the Isenau meadows in Dorfen: In the spring, residents reported about harassment by crows.
Now the birds are gone.
A state that one can only dream of in the Erdinger Stadtpark.
Dorfen
- tell me where the crows are, where have they gone? In spring around 80 breeding pairs were still nesting on Isenstrasse in Dorfen. Local residents complained to the city because they feared that the crow population would increase significantly. In the meantime, however, the number of birds has decimated significantly. The question remains: will the crows be back in October?
"The ever-growing population leads to ever-greater problems," Robert Gauster warned in mid-March in the Environment Committee of the Dorfen City Council. The master gardener is one of the affected residents in the Isenauen. The rooks had built more and more nests on a neighboring property for about ten years. "That is a considerable burden," he reported, "because of the constant noise, the constant filth". Gauster and a dozen local residents asked the city to remedy the situation "to get the problem under control before it becomes unsolvable".
The city had already submitted an application to the government of Upper Bavaria for deterring measures last autumn.
The problem with this: As with all wild birds, the rook has an extremely extensive protection status.
According to the Nature Conservation Act, it is forbidden to chase, catch, injure or kill these animals.
The experts also advised against deterring the birds with the aim of driving them away, as the crows would then probably build up new colonies nearby, for example in the nearby city park.
Government experts advised that the colonies should be abandoned.
The only possibility: remove the eggs and replace them with plaster eggs, which is extremely difficult in Dorfen because the tall nesting trees on the Isen are difficult to access.
Now it has become quiet in the Isenau, most of the rooks have disappeared. Unlike in Erding, where the number of breeding pairs is constantly growing and has now risen to 1186, the situation was at the beginning of August. Master gardener Gauster is happy about the natural selection in Dorfen and speculates: "I think that was due to the cold snap in April, which only a few newly hatched crows survived." The animals had noticed that there was no good nesting here and that is why moved on.
When Franz Leutner, chairman of the Dorfen local group of the State Association for Bird Protection (LBV), heard about it, the bird conservationists fanned out.
According to her observations, there are still crows there, but not nearly as many as in spring.
Leutner asked the government of Upper Bavaria whether there had been any deterrent measures.
The authorities said that no eggs were removed.
This should also have been approved.
Leutner also does not believe that the rooks were hunted privately: “The treetops are actually much too high.” He, too, can only speculate: “There is a natural possibility why colonies split up.
The population has become too large, there were too few breeding opportunities and too little food in the area - it is possible that many animals have moved on. "
It is also conceivable that the rooks have now become calmer in the moulting season.
Because when corvids let their feathers out, they can fly, but are not very active: “You can think they are no longer there,” says ornithologist Leutner.
We'll see in October whether the crows will reappear.
Leutner can understand that the residents are annoyed by the noise, but he still makes a plea for the birds: “Rooks play a major role in the natural cycle, they are scavengers.
They dispose of 80 percent of the dead animals. ”It is also more like foxes and martens that plunder lapwing nests, not the rooks, he says.
"In addition, the animals are very smart, which is why deterrent measures are so difficult."
MICHAELE HESKE