“As soon as I leave my house, I take an umbrella to protect myself from what falls from the sky!
» Cindy, a resident of Maxéville, near Nancy (Meurthe-et-Moselle), is not the only one to find subterfuges to avoid the thousands of starlings who have taken up residence in the trees in front of her building.
For more than a month, every late afternoon, these colonies of black birds have circled in the sky, attracted by the heat of the buildings.
Sheltered from the prevailing winds and predators, there they perform an incessant, noisy, and above all very smelly ballet, with droppings covering the ground.
“It’s horrible how it stinks.
We have to go wash our cars at least every two days, and I can no longer open my windows to ventilate my home,” continues Cindy.
“We are even afraid that they will attack us”
The small square with children's games, which is located in the middle of the buildings, even had to be closed.
“I can’t let my daughter play there anymore.
The smells are unbearable,” summarizes Sofia, another local resident.
“This is the first year that there are so many, we are even afraid that they will attack us,” adds the forty-year-old.
The town hall tries as best it can to erase the traces of the incessant passage of starlings with regular cleanings, but the pestilential smell remains.
A falconer must come this week, in order to find solutions for a return to serenity.
Even if, at the end of winter, the birds should soon leave, it will above all be a question of imagining an alternative to avoid a new invasion next year.