It's a Bird, It's a Plane

In Southern California, they have practically begged the swallows to return to Capistrano, where the birds are a big tourist attraction. But the central California city of Fairfield (pop. 58,000) has for three months suffered an almost Hitchcockian invasion of birds. Starlings, perhaps 200,000 at one time, have chosen to winter in a local eucalyptus grove. Major Hal Biestek, a pilot stationed at nearby Travis Air Force Base, lives close to the grove, directly under the starlings' flight path. "It was so loud," said Biestek of the birds' chirps and screeches, "it kept us awake at night."

Noise was not the half of it. Starlings eat one-eighth their weight in food each day, and they have an extremely high metabolic rate. In short, Fairfield has been whitewashed with droppings, leading some townspeople to walk with opened umbrellas on cloudless days.

Fairfield's citizens blew whistles, banged pots and rang cowbells to shoo the flocks. The starlings stayed. Aerial explosives failed to scare them off. A captured starling, rumor has it, was strangled, his death squeals recorded, and the tape played over loudspeakers. The birds were only briefly gulled.

Then Major Biestek took command in the way he knows best: airpower. With recruits from a local model airplane club, he sent up a squadron of a dozen remote-controlled planes to engage the starlings in dogfights. Said Biestek: "When you saw a flock coming in, you just aimed an airplane at it. The airplanes have a very high fright index. We got rid of well over 95% of the birds." The starlings were only scared to death, not actually dead; no bird casualties have been confirmed. But five of Biestek's planes were downed, two permanently. And air superiority lasted only a few days. Last week a flock of some 50,000 starlings returned. Admits one model-plane pilot: "They've got a lot more flying experience than we do."

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