As of: March 26, 2024, 10:37 a.m
By: Dirk Walter
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Rooks are on the hit list.
© AGAMI/R.
Martin
Krah, krah – this call triggers allergies in some people.
Early in the morning, at half past three, the cries of the rooks begin at Erdinger Stadtpark.
The complaints are now almost as loud as the chorus of crows every morning.
Shoot them, scare them away - just get rid of the beasts.
This is what the residents want.
But this is easier to ask for than to put into practice.
Munich - CSU and FW are now making another attempt to decimate the rooks.
Last week, they used freed-up budget funds, which the parliamentary groups were allowed to distribute as they saw fit, to put 400,000 euros into a “lethal deterrence” project.
The Freising FW MP Benno Zierer, one of the initiators of the application, cannot say exactly what this means: “Catch, shoot, I have no idea, something...” In any case, gentle methods such as the use of falconers and drones are failed.
The Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment must now consider more details.
Rooks are not problem birds everywhere, but only in some cities, currently for example at Erdinger Stadtpark, where - as of 2023 - 1,495 breeding pairs have been counted.
The park is “practically unusable,” says Zierer.
In Emmering (Fürstenfeldbruck district), a farmer complained that the rook was decimating his seeds in the field.
Rooks colonies also live in Puchheim (Fürstenfeldbruck district) and Dachau.
Cars and house facades contaminated with feces are a problem there.
“Whenever a problem arises somewhere, the supposed pest is shot,” says Christine Margraf from the Federal Nature Conservation Association, annoyed.
People there are seriously concerned about this mentality - recently there was massive anger because Bavaria obtained an exemption for killing goosanders.
In 2020/21, over 60,000 carrion crows were shot
So now the crow.
The weapon is already quite loose here today: in Bavaria, several thousand carrion crows, a species related to the rook, are shot every year; in the 2020/21 season, according to the latest Bavarian agricultural report, there were 68,915 birds.
While the carrion crow can be shot from July 16th to March 14th, the related rook is closed all year round.
The animals look very similar, only the part of the beak is different: carrion crows have a feathered beak base, while rooks have a naked, gray-yellowish beak base.
However, they do not live together in colonies.
Margraf points out that options for deterring rooks have just been investigated in a three-year research project by the State Office for the Environment (LfU).
“With the new proposal, which aims exclusively and undifferentiatedly at removing the rooks, the Free Voters are apparently ignoring the results of this project,” Margraf says angrily.
Attempts by the LfU
In three reports, for example, the LfU recorded whether dressing seeds helps against crows.
Nine different remedies were tried out in the Asbach-Bäumenheim region (Donau-Ries district).
Result: Three had a relatively good effect, including chili eucalyptus.
One thing - seeds were mixed with bovine bile - actually attracted the birds.
Visual deterrence with flying kites also had a good effect, but was very time-consuming.
In urban colonies, it has been found that piercing or removing eggs can be helpful - although this requires climbing up to the nests.
According to the LfU report, Erdinger's mayor Max Gotz (CSU) rejected this as early as 2022.
He explained that the effort and income were disproportionate.
Regarding the Erdinger colony, Elisabeth Wölfl from the State Association for Bird Protection points to a composting facility in Eitting, which the Erdinger birds have discovered as a source of food.
The LfU report also called this a “plausible explanation”.
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It's quite astonishing, says Wölfl: rooks normally look for food within a radius of two to three kilometers.
The facility is almost nine kilometers away from Erdinger Stadtpark as the crow flies - the food supply is so good that the crows take this route.
“The key to decimating the colony would be to cover this facility,” says Elisabeth Wölfl from LBV.
The killing of individual birds, on the other hand, involves the “very great risk” that splinter colonies will form elsewhere.
“You would have to shoot down the entire colony, but that is unthinkable.”