Scarecrows and Victorian values

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Scarecrows are a common sight in Lincolnshire, particularly on the Fens where vegetables are grown. Predation by wood pigeons is quite significant, and farmers have turned to methods old and new to keep the birds off the crops. Researchers tell us that the most common method, propane-powered bird scaring "gunshots" - a single report shortly followed by two more - is actually the most effective. However, a wide variety of other devices are used.

Hawk kites flying from a cord at the top of a tall pole are frequently seen and seem to be ineffective. Cut up plastic bags fixed to the top of softwood stakes to make flags that fill a field and crackle in the wind are also popular and equally useless. Spinning, shiny propellers or balls with faces appear to be less common that a few years ago, perhaps an indication that they don't work either. The most annoying bird scarer, and mercifully only infrequently seen, is a day-glo scarecrow that periodically inflates and stands up to the accompaniment of flashing lights and a siren. As far as I can see that device is about as ineffective as the traditional scarecrow of the type seen in today's photograph.

Given our government's fixation with market economics and its desire to push youth and the unemployed into a job, any job, no matter how low paid or worthwhile the work is, it can only be a matter of time before we see the return of the Victorian method of bird scaring. So look out for boys walking the fields, throwing stones at the crows and pigeons, in exchange for their daily pittance.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 90mm (180mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:500
Exposure Compensation: 0
Image Stabilisation: On

Scary or distracting?

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Wood pigeons are a problem for farmers in the area where I live. In the absence of natural predators in the numbers that there once were they have multiplied tremendously. Accurate figures are difficult to come by. The RSPB estimates 2,570,000-3,160,000 territories (i.e. breeding pairs). These figures don't count the additional birds that come to Britain from continental Europe during the winter. I sometimes see flocks of a thousand or so birds on fields of sprouts. When these are mature plants they do little damage, eating only the new, leafy tops. However, on newly or recently planted fields they can be extremely destructive. Consequently the farmers fight back with a battery of bird scarers. Spinning metal windmills, scarecrows of varying levels of inventiveness, rotating globes with eyes, flags with one side black and the other white, kites in the shape of birds of prey, inflatable people that rise from the ground accompanied by flashing lights and a siren, and gas-powered "guns" that sound like shotguns are just some of the devices used to keep the wood pigeons off the crops.

A piece of research that I read last year concluded that most of these have an effect for a short period until the birds get used to them, then they might as well not be there. The gas guns are the most effective but the least liked by the people who live nearby. A while ago someone bought us a bird scaring device for our vegetable garden. It is a roll of what is described as "repeller ribbon": 30 metres of 5cm wide silver, metallic, iridescent, holographic ribbon designed to flash and flicker in the breeze when hung from trees, sticks or string. It looks like the sort of thing that might have been manufactured for another purpose - party decoration, for example - that some enterprising person thought could be used in a different way. We've just put some over an area that we have sown with grass seed. Does it work? I suspect not, but it isn't doing any harm.

Looking at it the other day as it thrashed about in the wind, glittering in its rainbow-like way, it occurred to me that there might be a macro photograph in it. So I cut a few short lengths, laid them together irregularly in a patch of sunlight and moved my camera until I found a composition and colours that I liked. As I was taking my shots I reflected that perhaps the way it is designed to work is by distracting the birds, encouraging them to gaze on the beauty of the multi-coloured triangles, flickers and flashes, thus causing them to forget all about eating the seeds and plants. Distraction rather than scaring -  a different way of coming at the problem! Or perhaps not.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 100mm macro
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  +0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Photographing the commonplace

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One of the achievements of photography is to draw our attention to the commonplace - to the everyday, the banal, the humdrum, the mundane, call it what you will - that is part of everyone's experience. Some photographers devote their time to nothing else and produce work that the man in the street often characterises as dull, boring, prosaic, vapid - again, choose your own word. However, framing a selection of our everyday surroundings is a worthwhile undertaking because it allows us to see it afresh, "elevated" through the attention given to it by the act of photography. It's a process that helps us to better appreciate what we've previously taken for granted and can enlarge our understanding and appreciation of our surroundings. Of course one man's commonplace is another man's exotic: what an inhabitant of, say, the Gulf states sees as banal will be viewed as alien, almost otherworldly, by a North European, and vice versa.

I was reflecting on this as I took today's photograph. It shows a view of the edge of a smallholding seen from a narrow Fenland drove road. A couple of small oak trees, the last of their leaves still clinging on, frames part of the smallholder's plot that is ploughed and carries a small crop of brassicas. A couple of home-made bird scarers fashioned out of orange plastic sacks flutter over the vegetables. Beyond is a large field of brussel sprouts and on the horizon a village that is marked by a few houses, a low church tower and a cluster of trees. It's a scene of not a great deal enlivened by its contre jour character. But, I think it is as deserving of a photograph as anything else at which I point my camera.

Today's theme is one I've touched on before, as in the accompanying text to this photograph of a Lancashire seawall and this wet Fenland track.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 24mm
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On