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Open warehouse doors issue an
open invitation to birds. Inside,
the high rafters offer warm shelter
and a natural nesting niche for birds of all
feathers.
Wendell Murphy, VP of an Avis rental
car franchise and an air-freight trucking
business in Lexington, Ky., knows the habits
of birds all too well. “For a dozen years,
we’ve tried to keep the birds out of our
4,000-square-foot warehouse at the airport,”
Murphy says.
Numerous varieties of small birds invaded,
attracted by the 15-foot ceiling and by the potential of uninterrupted roosting
space.
“This past spring,” Murphy reports, “the
problem got worse as insulation in the ceiling
was deteriorating.”
Driven indoors by spring rains, the birds
nested wherever the insulation pulled loose,
creating convenient pockets for nests — “up
and behind the insulation, where it was
warm and dry.”
Look Out Below
Murphy minces no words about the nuisance
created by the incoming birds: “Droppings hit the freight and the floor
and got on packages and equipment,” he
says. With birds nesting in the rafters and
in the sagging ceiling insulation, “It was a
mess.”
The warehouse/dock was a major hub of
activity, with trucks loading and unloading
on one side and airplanes on the other side.
The doors were open all summer for receiving
and dispatching. A cure for the scourge
of small birds was badly needed.
Murphy and his crew tried many remedies.
“We washed the building with high pressure
cleaners. It did not get rid of the
birds,” he says. They tried rubber snakes and
artificial owls in the rafters. “It didn’t faze
them.”
One employee tried rifle shot. “That didn’t
suit me,” Murphy is quick to point out. “I
like birds,” he says, “and rifles would put
holes in the ceiling,” he adds practically.
Murphy took his next lesson in bird deterrence
from the Lexington Airport. “The
passenger terminal has a big overhang,” he
explains. “The airport facilities’ manager,
who is also an engineer, told me they used
an ultrasonic device successfully to avoid
problems at the passenger check-in area.”
The facilities’ manager recommended a
product manufactured by Bird-X, Inc., a
Chicago-based company. The unit uses a
high-pitched, variable sound above the
threshold of normal human hearing that is
annoying to birds. Murphy ordered a
QuadBlaster QB-4 ultrasonic unit. “We
read the instructions and followed them to
the letter,” he says.
Because of the excessive insulation deterioration,
Murphy’s crew erected scaffolding
to get the birds out, cleaned up the mess,
and secured the insulation with wood strips;
then they washed the whole building with high-pressure hoses. “It’s very important to
prepare the site properly before installing
the unit,” he says.
“We placed the unit about 10 feet above
the floor and away from the dispatchers’ office,”
Murphy says. The unit is small —
about 8 inches square and 2 inches thick,
and easy to install. “It worked wonders for
us,” he declares. “We had no more trouble.
Birds fly in, land on the rafters, and fly right
out.”
Now the warehouse is clean. “No more mess,” said Murphy. “And our employees
feel better now because the dock is clean. It
perked up morale,” he says, “because employees
understand that management does
care.” Murphy cites the health factors that
were of concern. If bird droppings are allowed
to accumulate, he suggests, they can
release unhealthy gases. “We corrected the
problem, and employees appreciate it,” he
says.
Murphy, who has been in the warehousing
business for 44 years, also notes the savings in clean-up costs. “Anybody in the
warehouse business probably has a problem
with birds. We spent less than $600 to get
the job done. I’d have been willing to spend
10 times that,” he confides.
A Second Opinion
Ray Salvesen is Warehouse Supervisor
for Comdisco, Inc., a technology services
company that uses a warehouse near
Chicago to recondition and store high-tech
equipment. He explains Comdisco’s special
problem with birds.
“We were looking into installing motion
detectors as a security measure, and we didn’t
want birds setting off the alarm system,”
he says. And there was another problem:
“Prospective customers tour the facilities,”
Salvesen says.
A scene of dead birds and excrement
dripping on equipment would not be a pretty
sight.
Many varieties of birds — sparrows,
blackbirds, robins and starlings — were
coming in the dock doors and nesting in the
warehouse’s three enclosed docks. To deter
the birds, Salvesen first considered mounting
flashy tape and balloons, but then he heard
about the ultrasonic unit. “We bought one
and installed it about 35 feet up in the beams
of one of the docks,” he describes, after he
and his staff removed existing nests and applied
steel wool and mesh screening to deter
repeat visitors. “We noticed that birds came
in, perched in one spot a minute or two, tried
another spot, and then flew out. Soon they
stopped coming in at all.” “I was leery at first,” Salvesen confesses.
The QB-4 was installed during the month
of May. “Winter would be the true test.”
The test of the ultrasound unit during
wintertime was indeed successful. “They
didn’t come in at all.”
Since the QB-4 worked so well in one
dock, Salvesen installed another unit in the
second dock. “We didn’t need one for the
third dock,” he says; the two ultrasonic units
covered the territory adequately.
Warehouses and birds don’t mix well.
Birds create an unsightly and unhealthy environment
for employees, customers and
visitors. Bird droppings, besides creating
costly cleanup problems every day, can
damage stored products and warehouse
equipment.
Many facilities’ directors have found that
the high-frequency sounds of the ultrasonic
units effectively “bother the birds away”
without harming them, keeping the warehouse
building and dock areas shipshape
and safe. ❑ |
