The War on the Blackbirds

The scene is enough to give even bird lovers a case of aviphobia. Every day at dusk for the past four months, five million blackbirds have screeched and wheeled over Christian County, Ky., ever narrowing their circle until, with a final frenzied flapping, they settle into their roosting spot--30 acres of pine trees in the midst of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division base at Fort Campbell. At dawn the birds (mostly starlings and a scattering of grackles, cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds) take off to feast at local farms and feed lots. Again the sky darkens; again the air is filled with raucous cries.

"This is a pestilence and a scourge," says George L. Atkins, mayor of the neighboring town of Hopkinsville. "Farmers are in the fields with shotguns, cattle and hogs are driven from the feed lots, children's slides are covered with bird droppings." The damage to the area is already estimated at $2.6 million. That figure does not include the damage done by a similar flock of 7 million birds around the Army arsenal at nearby Milan, Tenn. Nor do the costs take into account two bird-borne diseases: gastroenteritis, which is often fatal to baby pigs, and histoplasmosis--caused by a fungal spore in the bird droppings--which produces lung damage in humans.

Distress Calls. All this argues for action, and the Army has indeed tried. When the birds first arrived in October, choosing a roost near Fort Campbell's barracks, soldiers played recorded starling distress calls and set off firecrackers. The blackbirds moved to the 30 acres of pines, where their comings and goings have since daily halted plane take-offs and landings. Hoping to move the birds again, the Army thinned the stand of trees, thus reducing the habitat. The birds merely perched closer together.

In desperation, the military declared outright war and drew up an extermination program. Crop-dusting airplanes and helicopters would douse the roosting birds with Tergitol S-9, a strong, biodegradable detergent that washes the oil from the birds' feathers. Without the oil, which helps to insulate them, the blackbirds would begin to die from the cold --if the temperature remained below about 45DEG F.

What the Army did not count on was the opposition of environmentalists and animal lovers. First the federal Council on Environmental Quality advised the Army to write an impact statement describing the environmental effects of the spraying program. Completed early this month at a cost of $20,000, the statement met the objections of even the Humane Society of the U.S. But then two New York-based groups--the Society for Animal Rights and Citizens for Animals--sued in federal court to stay the attack, claiming that the project was "a form of mass euthanasia."

With a blackbird population of 350 million, the U.S. can afford some meruline slaughter; even the Audubon Society agrees that the pests must be controlled. Besides, notes Mayor Atkins, furious at the New Yorkers who have thwarted the extermination plan, starlings spread through the U.S. from New York City.* To vent his frustration, he wryly asked Hopkinsville attorneys to draft a request for an injunction staying New York City from killing its rats.

But the draft will never have to be written. On Feb. 8 a U.S. district court in Washington, B.C., ruled that the Army could proceed with its "blackbird control program," and last week the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld that decision. Now all the Army has to do is hope for a prolonged cold spell.

* They were imported from Europe in the 1890s by a wealthy New York drug manufacturer who wanted to establish in the U.S. all the birds mentioned anywhere in Shakespeare's works. Unfortunately, the starling was mentioned once in Henry IV, Part I: "Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak nothing but 'Mortimer.' "

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