In Rome, Starling Stalkers Try to Scare the Birds Out of Town
Mr. Albarella Follows Flocks Home to Roost, Then Blasts a 'Heart-Rending Scream'
By STACY MEICHTRY and DAVIDE BERRETTA
ROME -- Giovanni Albarella won't back down from a street fight, even though he's always outnumbered.
As the sun goes down, Mr. Albarella often squares off against millions of birds that cloud the skies of this ancient city. European starlings -- birds individually small enough to fit in a hand -- are collectively a menace. They swoop and poop indiscriminately, clearing Rome's outdoor cafes, frightening children and, more recently, forcing an emergency landing of a Boeing 737.
![[Starling]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-CS339_P1_AN7_D_20081123222057.jpg)
L. Felcher-Lega Italiana Protezione UcelliMr. Albarella says he has a method to shoo the birds away. Backed by city hall, the 37-year-old conservationist and a team of assistants crisscross Rome with high-powered megaphones that they point at trees teeming with starlings. The goal: to drive the birds out of the city and back to the countryside.
The megaphones emit what Mr. Albarella calls a "heart-rending scream" -- a recording of starlings issuing a screeching distress call. The sound, he says, is the only way to drive the birds from their roosts without harm.
"This is a great responsibility," Mr. Albarella says, as the flocks began filtering into town one recent evening. "You delve into a conflict, a tension, a problem of cohabitation between man and animal."
Thousands of birds squawked overhead and showered the cobblestones with droppings. Pedestrians ran for cover. A few opened umbrellas.
Mr. Albarella, dressed in a suit and a crimson tie, shrugged off the downpour. "Badges of honor earned on the battlefield," he said, pointing to the droppings that dotted his shoulders.
In recent decades, Rome's starling population has begun to rival that of its residents, testing the patience of a people who take special pride in cohabiting with animals.
Legend has it that the city's founders, Romulus and Remus, were nursed by a she-wolf. Today the city maintains strict codes on the treatment of animals, such as fining residents who keep goldfish in bowls rather than more-spacious aquariums. Thousands of stray cats live and lounge in the city's ancient ruins, fed and pampered by locals.
Romans Suit Up to Battle Birds
119:00WSJ's Davide Berretta reports on how Romans are attempting to shoo away the city's annoying flocks of starlings with a battery of megaphones.
Starlings, however, are often seen as peskier creatures. They are unusually gregarious birds that flock together by the hundreds of thousands, issuing a cacophony of squawks and chirps from highly developed vocal chords.
The starlings weren't always city slickers. Though the birds have long flown from Northern Europe to Rome's warmer climate for the winter, they used to remain outside city limits, roosting in the countryside.
As Rome expanded after the end of World War II, starlings began to leave their natural habitats for the city, which offered warmer temperatures and fewer predators. By day, flocks continued to feed on insects and seeds in the countryside. By night, however, the birds began commuting to Rome to roost in its leafiest areas: the tree-lined avenues, parks and riverbanks of the city center.
Residents and shopkeepers complain the flocks have taken over their neighborhoods. Consumer-rights groups have called on the city to investigate potential health risks posed by the birds. Scarecrows are popping up in piazzas.
"Look at the sidewalk. It's empty!" said Luciano Piergentili, 41, surveying the foot traffic outside his café as the birds swarmed overhead. The birds, he says, have driven away customers, and their droppings have caused a number of slips and falls, including a recent scooter accident. "It's dangerous," he says.
![[Giovanni Albarella]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/HC-GN040_Albare_BV_20081120150849.gif)
Giovanni Albarella
Earlier this month, a Rome-bound Ryanair Boeing 737 collided with a flock of starlings in midair. The birds clogged the plane's engines just as the jet was approaching Rome's Ciampino airport. The impact forced the pilot to make an emergency landing, skidding down the runway and flattening landing gear on one side. A few people received medical attention, but no one was seriously injured. Ciampino airport was shut down for days as crews worked to clear the jet from the runway.
On the streets of Rome, the task of dealing with the starlings has fallen squarely on Mr. Albarella's shoulders.
His career as a conservationist began in high school when he stumbled across a fallen blackcap, a small bird, at a park in his hometown of Naples. He phoned the Lega Italiana Protezione Uccelli, the Italian League for the Protection of Birds, for advice, but the bird's fate was already sealed. "I took it in, but there was nothing I could do," he recalls.
Mr. Albarella kept in touch with the organization, volunteering while he studied animal husbandry in college. Two years ago, the bird-protection group hired Mr. Albarella and charged him with managing relations with government officials.
The starling quickly landed in Mr. Albarella's dossier as relations between the bird and its host city soured. For more than a decade, LIPU, the conservation group, had been trying to monitor the birds and chase them away. But the birds had proven surprisingly resilient.
LIPU initially installed stationary megaphones near the starling nests, belting one version of the starlings' distress call for days. But the birds grew accustomed to the sound, and ignored it.
LIPU then tweaked the soundtrack "to better simulate a sense of danger," Mr. Albarella says. The birds simply moved to nearby locations.
Some residents complained the methods weren't tough enough and would only drive the birds from one neighborhood to another, spreading the pain. A recent article in Rome daily Il Tempo mentioned the alternative of shearing the branches of trees that attract the birds.
"Those megaphones are scarier than the birds," the editorial read. "It's a funereal sound that seems to foretell of deadly events."
The bird-protection group's strategy is evolving. Today, Mr. Albarella leads a roaming strike force -- backed by an annual budget of €150,000 ($187,000). The idea is to follow the birds wherever they live, hoping to persuade them there's no safe haven in the city.
Residents phone or email his office with tips on the birds' latest movements, and Mr. Albarella's team arrives on the scene in a green Fiat loaded with megaphones.
Recently, Mr. Albarella staked out a row of trees lining the Tiber River. He had interviewed workers at a nearby hospital to gather clues on the starlings' favorite trees.
Mr. Albarella followed a trail of droppings, stopping at a stretch of granite where excrement was splattered several layers thick. "This will require a deeper investigation," he concluded.
The reconnaissance allowed Mr. Albarella to prepare his "operation." A couple of days later, he arrived with a dozen assistants, clad in hooded jump suits and face masks, who took positions beneath the trees.
As thousands of starlings began swooping into the area in giant flocks, the trees came alive. Pedestrians cleared the street. The conservationist, unruffled, gave the signal, and the squad unleashed a simultaneous blast from the megaphones.
The flocks dispersed. If the sound stalks the birds wherever they roost, says Mr. Albarella, many will return to the countryside.
Progress is hard to measure. Mr. Albarella estimates that the birds still number between three and four million. Whatever the result, Mr. Albarella believes the conflict between man and bird "must be resolved in the best way: by satisfying the former without harming the latter."
