The screaming bird sounds echo through the Briggs Building parking lot in downtown Hollister each afternoon.
But instead of a pair of birds nesting in the parking structure overlooking San Benito Street, the sounds are coming from a pair of speakers. The solar-powered electronic equipment emits raptor sounds during daylight hours as part of the city’s new plan to combat a serious pigeon problem.
“If you notice, actually, a lot of the pigeons are gone through downtown,” said City Manager Bill Avera with a laugh.
While the sounds have gone unnoticed by some, others expected to find a nest—not an eco-friendly pigeon abatement program.
“They’re just trying to keep the pigeons from living there, I think,” said Brenda Weatherly, the executive director of the Hollister Downtown Association. “People have asked what it was. I think there was curiosity. I think people went looking for the birds themselves.”
The city owns the new sound-making equipment and purchased it for about $2,200, Avera said. The automated bird calls were meant to chase pigeons out of the parking structure.
“There’s pigeon droppings everywhere. It’s not sanitary at all,” Avera said. “We talked with some different folks and this seemed to be the most humane way to get them out of there.”
The city installed the boxes earlier this month, but the hope is that the speakers can eventually be used less frequently or even turned off intermittently and still keep the pigeons out of the parking structure, Avera said.
Avera did not know the names of all the birds making the calls or whether they were native to Hollister.
“It just sounds like the Rainforest Cafe to me,” he said with a laugh.
Gavilan students and other community members have had various responses to the new city sounds, including joy and confusion.
“Initially, I just thought, what is happening?” said Kim Craig, 36, a Gavilan College student who parked her car in the structure and heard the strange sounds starting last week. “It doesn’t bother me.”
Her classmate, Jaclyn Quintana, 19, was sure the birds were real.
“I totally thought it was a bird. It sounds like a crazy bird,” Quintana said. “Now that I know it’s a recording … I’m kind of sad.”
But the Briggs Building librarian, Dolores Wiemers, had an especially interesting response to the bird calls because it reminded her of the time she spent living in Costa Rica. Wiemers works at the Hollister Briggs Building for a half day once a week so she was surprised when she arrived one morning and heard the new sounds.
“I thought spring has sprung and the birds are here,” she said. “It was definitely something new I heard. Honestly, I thought we had an aviary upstairs.”
To her, the birds sounded tropical. And the sound was “loud but musical,” she said. The librarian still remembers her student days, though, and wonders if people who are studying might be too tired to take in the new bird calls.
“To me, it was musical,” she said.
