Hello everyone! Bird solution?

Just want to say hi to everyone in here. I have been trying out a couple different handhelds as a remedy for birds. I work for a non-kill company and our goal is to get rid of pest birds that are doing damage and creating a hazardous work environment for our clients. We have contracts with home improvement stores and your everyday retail stores as well. Right now we are using low powered 532nm lasers with mixed results. We're trying to move up to higher powered ones now. Green seems to be the best color to use. I would love to learn how to build these. We hold a couple patents on other bird solutions so I have experience with wiring/soldering of components. I know nothing about building lasers though. I know I am new and don't understand the forums but any info would be excellent. Thank you.

Hello CelticLaser1, this is a global forum with members from many countries, if people don't even know what country your in they may not bother to answer your posts or questions. Please add your location to your profile so it shows under your name, then I suggest posting a thread in the "Welcome" section telling us a little about yourself so people can get to know you. You say you posted yesterday about anyone willing to sell/build you a laser yet your post count is only one. If you tried to post in the B/S/T section you're not yet able to post there yet, those threads are approved by a moderator and require you to have 20+ laser related posts and positive rep, however you can still post in an existing thread in the B/S/T section without meeting those requirements. Read the stickies in each forum and you will know how to fit in here and learn what you need to know. To answer your question about the rep, rep comes slowly as you contribute to the forums with useful posts. Until you have 50 posts and rep power of at least 1 it is meaningless because if you rep someone it does nothing. I hope this info helps some and that you will stick around and be a long time member.

Birds are afraid of any laser they can see. Forget the 532nm, they are DPSS so are temprature sensitive and break easily and unstable etc. Go with 520nm green or 445nm or 450nm or 462nm blue. If you are in the USA you will have to be very careful how you use these for pest control.

Alan

Thank you Alex for the quick response. I will change my profile info now. I did not even know. I am from the USA. Thank you for all the info it is greatly appreciated. And yes I will be around for a while.

There is plenty of info here already.
Read through the stickies.

I also find it inhumane to point DPSS lasers at animals for pest control. 520 is much better for their eye health, but always spread the beam to as large a diameter as effective to avoid blinding the birds such that they are unable to react to get away. Could cause your clients to call with complaints of stunned or starved dead birds showing up on their property. The IR light from those 532nm pointers may have caused partial blindness resulting in confusion and inefficacy as you said you had mixed results.

No we don't direct beam at them. We start from approx 20' away and slowly move toward them with the beam. We are a non kill company so everything we do is as humane as possible. The goal is to catch and release the nuisance birds. Most of the jobs we get the area is overrun with birds and it becomes a health hazard to humans. Theres a lot of diseases that birds carry and can make people very sick. We cage and feed the birds that are caught and release them. I respect any living creature and treat them with the utmost care. We've had clients that were skeptical but once they watch and see how we work they are always satisfied.

CelticLaser1 said:

No we don't direct beam at them. We start from approx 20' away and slowly move toward them with the beam. We are a non kill company so everything we do is as humane as possible. The goal is to catch and release the nuisance birds. Most of the jobs we get the area is overrun with birds and it becomes a health hazard to humans. Theres a lot of diseases that birds carry and can make people very sick. We cage and feed the birds that are caught and release them. I respect any living creature and treat them with the utmost care. We've had clients that were skeptical but once they watch and see how we work they are always satisfied.

Click to expand...

So you use motion detection to identify their location, and then want the "dots" to come towards the birds in a threatening manner so as to flush them...?

From what I see, around here at least, is that the birds eventually notice that the "dots" don't seem to be harmful, and they start to ignore them.

The use as "a dazzler", akin to military use, where the GLARE is strong enough to cause their pupils to stop down rapidly, etc...but not cause damage, is more effective, in that not being able to see is scarier to them than seeing something. (More like you driving at night, and some oncoming bozo has his brights on and you can't see...until he passes, etc)

A town I know of for example purchased a very strong hand held spot light (~ 1,000,000 cd) and would aim it at birds coming in for a landing...and even in broad daylight, they'd re-route to avoid that lake. (A manual approach of course)

If you are going for an automated solution, I could see that as more difficult, but, there are some pretty sophisticated devices out there for tracking flying things...so its not impossible.

Essentially, if a strong flashlight would work, a defocused laser could work.

Not so much the dot. If the beam is visible, because it is night work most of the time, it's almost as if the birds think it's a big stick moving their way so they scare and move in the opposite direction. We utilize a mist net and drive the birds into them. Then we can remove the birds from the nets immediately and place them in cages where they are fed until we release them in a different location. The dot doesn't seem to have much effect. I can't say I know what will happen if I put the beam directly in their eye because I have not tried that.

OK, I didn't realize your scenario, I thought you were just scaring them away.

Putting beam expanders on the beams, so that they are fatter/more visible, AND less dangerous, would probably be the way to go then.

Are you then manually aiming the beams to herd them into the nets?


To make a visible beam in dry air is going to take some power...so, at that point, its about efficiency/cost to chose what might work best.

Green's the most visible per watt, etc, but, the watts are expensive. Blue is a bit less visible per watt, but each watt is cheaper, and so forth.

Yes I meant to inquire about that. Idk if the expanded are custom for each laser or how to use the expanders. If there is a link can you please post it here? And yes we manually use them to move the flock toward the nets. Normally we have a few days to do this so we can catch most, if not all, of the birds.

Bird eyes are different from people eyes,
but 100µW/mm² should give them a good scare
without doing any permanent damage. Plug
some parameters into my NOHD calculator to
figure out what size spot you need.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s9N4lCFtKRoGu-Uykc5NiwKWerbMUXG0AKsrOd8bpQc

I have tried many ways both here at at beach houses- the seagulls are a health hazard - I got the best results with owl decoys- many birds get less afraid pretty quick- I tried to keep one from crapiing on me in a food court- a 100mW Ti-B only frightened it away briefly then it came back and had lost much of the fear- it was a gackle -

I read that dogs and hawks have been used at airports.

CelticLaser1 said:

Not so much the dot. If the beam is visible, because it is night work most of the time.

Click to expand...

I don't know of any birds that fly at night. Can you tell us the names of these birds?

All birds will fly at night. Especially when they are provoked.

To answer your question it's mostly house sparrows, starlings, pigeons.

^^ Well that's a bit different that your posts implied. I assumed you were clearing a field, not chasing the poor things out of their beds.

But besides all that, I know you're a business and evidently have permits and such, but.....isn't it illegal to remove a pest from one area and transport it to another area? If you are trapping a rodent for example, you cannot move it to another neighborhood as it may establish a colony there since there may be no predators, and create a nuisance for someone else. I'm sure it's done many times, but as a business, your actions are a bit more visible than a private trapper. I guess, the assumption is 'the birds will just fly back' and settle in a different field (where people with lasers aren't chasing them out of their beds) so no harm done?