General News
28 April, 2024
Corellas cause commotion at bowling club
It's enough to make a grown man cry.
It's enough to make a grown man cry.
Flocks of corellas are causing havoc at Dimboola Bowling Club and greenkeeper Daryl Argall is at the end of his tether.
The birds are making such a mess of his beloved greens that Mr Argall says it's enough to reduce him to tears.
A depleted Mr Argall said there was a major problem with the birds destroying the bowling greens, which are backed with rubber and synthetic and whose pile is filled with sand.
"Perhaps they go away a bit in September, October - I think they are away breeding - but then when the little ones grow up, like they are now, they're an absolute pest like over the last couple of months," Mr Argall said.
"One green at the moment is good because it's only few years old and they haven't got into it yet, but the old one that is 14 years old.
"It goes in about three metre strips and they are joined, and in those joins there are some fine threads and they have gotten hold of that and pulled it up.
"It has a layer of rubber under to make it easier to walk on and they pull the thread to get a crack going up the seam, about a quarter of an inch wide, and they play with it, pulling it and pulling it, then they get their beak in and drag out the rubber."
Mr Argall said the corellas ended up leaving a hole about a centimetre wide.
Some of the strips are four to five metres long, at least eight abreast across the green width.
"We've tried to back-fill them with sand but if you leave any of the threads, they return and get stuck into it again," Mr Argall said.
"To replace it would cost probably a $250,000."
Mr Argall said a lot of things had been done over the years to deter the birds, which not only destroyed the greens but had also chewed electrical wiring in the past.
But choices are limited as corellas are a protected native species.
"We've put fishing line all the way across the green, about every three feet," he said.
"We would have at least 50 lines from one end to the other.
"We have a couple of (imitation) hawks on an extendable pole, up about four metres high, and they flap around in the breeze.
"We've got a bird caller that plays bird sounds they don't supposedly like."
All these solutions have been merely temporary, deterring the corellas for only a period of time.
"I think a lot of it is just because they are playing and it's just a bloody nuisance," Mr Argall said.
"I know they're native and a protected bird but they're in plague proportions."It breaks your heart.
"You want to make a facility good for the members and the public and these bloody things keep coming when they feel like it.
"It makes you cry."