This is why the World Bank broadcasts the sounds of shrieking birds

There are speakers hard-wired around the top of the building in Washington DC

A resident of Washington DC was recently distressed when, on his way past the World Bank Group headquarters, he heard bird calls being broadcast from the roof.

What’s more, the bird calls that were broadcast were the sounds of predators, such as hawks and owls, rather than anything that resembled the small birds he had seen in the area. Why, he thought, would that be so?

When his curiosity got the better of him, he wrote to John Kelly, columnist at the Washington Post, who spoke to the World Bank. An employee there told him that there are speakers hard-wired around the top of the building. These are connected to the Super BirdXPeller Pro, a recorded product sold by Bird-X to put birds off pooping and nesting around buildings.

Bird-X also sell window spikes and a plastic coyote with a faux fur tail – but Kelly Nelson, a content marketing director at the company, said that bird recordings are the most effective repellent. And the most effective recordings are the calls of distressed birds, punctuated by the shrieking of predators like hawks or peregrine falcons.

“Birds come into that area, they hear that and they say, ‘Oh my gosh, birds are in trouble over there,’” Nelson said. “It’s not about hurting the birds or irritating them with sounds. It’s to make them feel like the area’s unsafe so they simply go somewhere else.”

What recordings does the World Bank use? It told WaPo that they use the distress calls of pigeons, starlings, sparrows, gulls, crows, ravens, cormorants and blackbirds. Another version targets woodpeckers.

“Believe me, we have a lot of demand for that one,” Nelson said. “If they have a woodpecker waking them at 4 a.m. every morning, they really want that guy gone.”