On December 14, Vitebsk / Diana Kurilo - BELTA /. Ominous cries of birds of prey have begun to be heard periodically over the Vitebsk railway station in the evenings. The BELTA correspondent tried to find out their nature from ornithologists, but was redirected to railway workers, and, as it turned out, not in vain. Sergey Lyadenko, Head of the Passenger Department of the Vitebsk branch of Belarusian Railway, explained the reason for the appearance of sounds uncharacteristic for the city: engineers have found a simple and inexpensive way to combat crows and jackdaws, whose flocks occupy the station building in the evenings. Vitebsk railway station is a unique architectural structure with a large number of stucco moldings, which are so convenient for birds to sit on. Up to a thousand individuals arrive for these peculiar gatherings, and one can imagine what the recently renovated facade of the building looks like after their meetings end. And passengers, over whose heads black clouds of birds fly by with cries, derive little joy from such unity with nature. The need to deter birds became pressing, and specialists began to consider various options. The cost of bioacoustic devices for stationary bird deterrence is several tens of millions of rubles. Railway workers considered it uneconomical to spend money on their purchase and went their own way. Specialists found recordings of the voices of natural enemies of crows and jackdaws on the Internet, edited them, and began broadcasting them in the evenings through a speaker system installed on the roof. According to Sergey Lyadenko, the effect exceeded all expectations. Birds, driven mad by the sounds of their natural enemies, immediately take off. Passengers, it is true, were also bewildered at first, looking for flocks of hawks in the dark sky, but having understood what was happening, they calmly went about their business: the live birds caused much more inconvenience. A huge concentration of crows, jackdaws, and pigeons is a problem in large cities, and different approaches are taken to solve it everywhere. Somewhere traps are set, live hawks are used (in the Moscow Kremlin, for example), or bioacoustic deterrents are installed. -0-

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