Do scarecrows scare crows?

Question

I often see the scarecrows in private fields and gardens, with crows sitting on them.

Are they just a tribute to tradition or they really work in some way?

The answer is time dependent; I have seen something scare-off birds for a day , and a couple days later they perch on it. — blacksmith37, Oct 19 '19 at 15:29
I don't see a notable claim, voting to close . Hehehe just joking. In all seriousness the proper way of using scare crows is once in a while replacing the scarecrow with a human that waits completely still until a crow is sitting on his shoulder, then he jumps up yelling "boo!" — daniel, Oct 20 '19 at 12:55

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 19 '19 at 02:04

26

The UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has a 2003 report titled Review of international research literature regarding the effectiveness of auditory bird scaring techniques and potential alternatives by J. Bishop, H. McKay, D. Parrott and J. Allan.

It reviews the evidence from a number of reports about bird-scaring and concludes:

Visual techniques (lasers, dogs, human disturbance, scarecrows, raptor models, corpses, balloons, kites, falconry, radio-controlled aircraft, lights, mirrors/reflectors, tapes, flags/rags and streamers and dyes/colourants) are thought to be of varied effectiveness ranging from extremely effective (human disturbance) to ineffective (most scarecrows).

[Emphasis mine]

Wikipedia suggests, without a relevant reference, that the scaring effect is species-dependent.

edited Oct 19 '19 at 02:04

Laurel

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answered Oct 12 '11 at 16:57

Oddthinking

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Anecdotally, I've seen many a murder sitting satisfied on a scarecrow. – Brian M. Hunt Oct 12 '11 at 18:36
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@BrianM.Hunt - always loved that collective noun – Rory Alsop Oct 12 '11 at 19:27
Spending as much time in the American midwest as I have, I must agree with Brian Hunt. – Monkey Tuesday Oct 13 '11 at 00:31
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For non-english, like me, confused by "a murder": "A group of crows is called a flock or a murder" – Suma Oct 13 '11 at 20:28
I thought a murder is a murdered person. Thank you for the clarification. – Cary Bondoc Apr 11 '16 at 00:27
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If I read this correctly, it leaves it open whether scarecrows could have been at least somewhat effective in the past. It's not too far-fetched to think that back when people manually farmed the fields (and thus driving off birds when they saw them), that a scarecrow would be more effective as birds would be used to getting driven off by a human. Nowadays, people barely if ever farm their fields manually, so the dummy (scarecrow) no longer resembles the actual obstacle (a human driving them off), leading birds to not associate one with the other anymore. – Flater Oct 21 '19 at 13:50
@Suma I discovered that English has plenty of specific expressions to describe groups of animals. The names are weird - the example with "murder" was also the one that perplexed me years ago (I could not find the logic in the sentence - especially since it was a poetic one). – WoJ Sep 15 '23 at 13:46
@Suma (cont'd) In French we have just a few of these words, but we specialize in demonyms (names of inhabitants of a city, region, ...) that are impossible to guess if you do not know them. You would always say "inhabitants of Paris" if you did not know that the demonym is "parisiens". It is one of the tricky questions in "Who wants to be a millionaire?", use it as the last question and it is virtually guaranteed that the player will give up. – WoJ Sep 15 '23 at 13:47

Do scarecrows scare crows?

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