Bird-brain plan fails to deter feathered friends

CHEEKY crows are causing an environmental mess at the headquarters of Limerick County Council in Dooradoyle.

Officials at County Hall have been forced to call in a team of cleaners.

Bird dropping smeared the massive glass facade of the €33 million building, opened five years ago.

The council thought they had drawn up a plan to combat the droppings by relaying the recorded sounds of hawks and other birds of prey through a network of loud speakers fixed to the front of the building. But the bird-brain idea only worked for a while.

In recent weeks, crows have renewed their direct hits on the building, whose architects, Bucholz McEvoy, have won numerous awards for their design.

“During the summer, with so much rain hitting the glass, we had no obvious problem, a council spokesman said.

“However, during the recent dry spell, the entire glass front ... has been destroyed with droppings. For some reason crows are the main culprits. They don’t roost but just come to lodge their droppings,” the spokesman said.

Abseiling cleaners yesterday began the big clean-up and it took most of the day to remove the droppings. “The sound of hawks is operated on a timer. But the crows must have cotton wool in their ears as they don’t seem to be frightened off as they used to be when the sound of the hawk came over the loud speaker,” the spokesman said.