Little birds, big problems: City’s $150k roosting fix not cheap
Managing the thousands-strong flock of tiny birds bound for Adelaide’s CBD this roosting season could cost about $150,000. Ideas to deter them, without causing “bird tornadoes” are flying around town hall as they try to avoid a “repeat of last year’s horrors” when birds died in numbers.
An Adelaide City Council plan to manage the tiny tree martins expected to arrive in the city between December and April would cost about $150,000.
The birds roosted in Rundle Mall and died in numbers last April after being deterred from Leigh Street, where trees were netted to prevent bird faeces from affecting businesses on the popular dining strip.
Now new costs floated by the city council included security, extended staff hours, training, bird welfare and veterinary expenses.
The money would be allocated in its second quarter budget review, the council’s City Planning, Development and Business Affairs Committee heard on Tuesday night.
Tree martins have been causing the city council headaches for several years. In the past, the council tried to manage the bird problem in Leigh Street by rescheduling street cleaning to be more frequent in the area, which InDaily understands did not incur extra cost.
In August 2024, the council spent $15,000 on a pilot program to net nine Leigh Street trees, and then removed the nets from four of them on the part of the street furthest from traders after backlash from the Rundle Mall incidents where tree martins flew into the Apple Store’s glass frontage and plummeted to their deaths.
The council has not yet decided if it would net other city trees and has not proposed removing existing nets from Leigh Street, despite the Deputy Lord Mayor suggesting net removal earlier this month.
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Green Adelaide recommended using the current season to monitor bird habits and manage any issues in situ – rather than netting – to inform longer-term bird management strategies.
Group presiding member Chris Daniels told InDaily that relocating colonial roosting species, such as tree martins, could “shift the same challenges to a new location”.
“Netting also poses risks to tree martins, which have strong site fidelity and may attempt to return to netted trees, potentially becoming injured or trapped,” he said.
“We encourage mitigation measures to be fully explored and support solutions that allow people, businesses and wildlife to thrive together before netting trees in Rundle Mall is considered.”
A special council meeting would be held on December 2 for councillors to receive more information about the positives and negatives surrounding tree netting.
The council was working with Green Adelaide and the Environment and Water Department to consider solutions for the flock’s impact on the city and would develop a Tree Martin Management Plan going forward.
Early birds could be spotted in the city from December, scouting the trees they would roost in for the season, Daniels told the committee.
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Daniels said Green Adelaide assumed the birds would return to Rundle Mall, but they could go to any large trees in the city, like the Callery Pear trees they frequented in Leigh Street.
“(Their tree choice is) going to be big, lots of leaves, lots of protection inside, lots of branches,” he told the committee.
“They get together in quite large numbers, and there can be hundreds of them in one particular tree, sometimes thousands.”
At Tuesday’s meeting, Councillor Carmel Noon shared parts of an email from Adelaide Economic Development Agency Chair Steve Maras, who urged the council to avoid “a repeat of last year’s horrors”.
Maras said Rundle Mall was the “most undesirable location” for the birds to roost as it was heavily pedestrianised, bringing in about 54 million annual visitors.
Green Adelaide said it was “confident” the city would not see a repeat of the bird deaths from last season, and mentioned that options like adjusting lighting and putting decals on windows to prevent tree reflections were effective in the past.
Daniels said his group was “prepared” for the coming season.
“This coming season will be the first one where we can be fairly confident that the tree martins will come back to the mall and we can be prepared for it, which means that we can have a wide range of mitigating strategies that I think have a really good chance of success,” he said.
Councillor Alfredo Cabada asked if technology, like ultrasonic deterrents, could be explored, but Daniels said that could result in “tornadoes of birds”.
“We do need to think about what they do when they are scared, and that’s what created quite the issue last year,” Daniels said.
“If they are disturbed, they flee very quickly, and they fly very fast and what they are looking for is a reflection that shows trees.
“Attempting to deter them from landing can create a situation where you get tornadoes of birds and then you get a lot of injured birds.”
Councillor Henry Davis suggested building a habitat to attract the birds somewhere like the park lands, but Ecosure principal ecologist Dr John Martin, who was hired by the council as a consultant, said there are no examples where that strategy would be effective.
“Whilst the scientist in me says ‘this would be fun and interesting’, the scientist in me also says this is not going to work,” Martin said.
