Residents in the 900 block of Illinois Street say every night around 8 is like a scene straight out of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds.”

“It’s like clockwork,” said Sue Kapfer, who has lived in the Oread neighborhood the past 31 years. “The past five years have been bad, but this year has been horrendous.”

Deb Rake lives next door to Kapfer. She estimated that tens of thousands of starlings are roosting in their neighborhood.

“You just watch them,” Rake said. “They come in in droves. There are thousands of them.”

The birds spend each night in the mature trees that line the 900 block of Illinois. Residents say the starlings leave their perches as regular as Kansas City commuters about 6 a.m. every morning, but they also leave their marks on the sidewalks and cars below.

“They stink,” Kapfer said. “It’s the bird droppings. Before it rained, the sidewalks were totally white. It looked like a nuclear holocaust here.”

Residents and the one business owner on the block say the first thing they do each morning is hose down their sidewalks and entryways.

“I don’t want to say it’s aggravating,” Artframes owner Corey West said. “It’s annoying, but it’s just part of nature.”

Casey McLenon, manager of Critter Control, chases away starlings from their roost trees in the 900 block of Illinois Street. The neighborhood has endured thousands of the birds and a tick infestation. McLenon used a special laser device Wednesday to chase away the nuisance birds.

Rake said the starlings used to roost in downtown Lawrence but that the city set up a sound system to frighten the birds away.

“The birds got fed up and they moved on,” Rake said. “Well, I think they moved on to our neighborhood.”

Ticks, too

As if the flocks of starlings weren’t enough, residents believe the birds are bringing with them another nuisance: ticks.

“I’ve put up with these birds for five years,” Charles Snyder said, “but this is the year they brought the ticks in.”

Snyder has lived in the 900 block of Illinois for 16 years. He said the problem has gotten so bad he just stays inside.

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Neighbors who do venture outside have encountered problems.

“In June, I probably had 20 tick bites on me, and I was sick,” Rake said. She’s now taking medication to prevent Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Rake contacted the Douglas County Health Department. Tuesday, an environmental health specialist was out in the neighborhood collecting samples of the ticks.

“Basically the bird problem and the tick problem are unrelated,” said Richard Ziesenis, the Health Department’s environmental health director, though he acknowledged the particular type of tick collected in the 900 block of Illinois, the Lone Star tick, does feed on birds.

Sue Kapfer, who lives in the 900 block of Illinois, says her property has been plagued with by flocks of starlings for five years.

“When you’ve got tens of thousands of birds and millions of ticks, there is a correlation there,” Kapfer said. “I don’t care what anyone says.”

Ziesenis said the ticks were a problem the residents must deal with themselves. The city has no responsibility to help.

“It’s strange, I will admit,” he said, “but it’s a private issue . The city wouldn’t do any spraying.”

He said the Health Department gave homeowners in the area some literature on what type of sprays they could use to kill the ticks.

“If we all spray at the same time, you won’t be able to breathe,” Kapfer said.

Bag of tricks

Residents are now about to pull their hair out. They say they’ve tried everything to scare the starlings away for good. From fake owls to loud noises, nothing seems to do the trick.

Charles Snyder talks about the birds which have plagued his neighborhood for five years.

“We’ve tried several tactics,” Rake said. “We’ll be out here with our pots and pans and wooden spoons, and the people walking by think you’re nuts. The birds, you just hear them cackle and you know they’re just laughing at us.”

Snyder, who’s elderly and disabled, decided to take drastic measures to keep what he estimates to be 1,000 or more starlings from roosting in his yard.

“I’d like to get rid of the darn things,” he said.

Snyder already paid a tree trimming service $1,200 to thin out the trees in his yard. He has also spent nearly $200 having a pest removal company spray his yard to kill the ticks. Now he’s resorting to more hi-tech measures.

“Laser treatment is $89 a pop and they want to do it five times,” he said.

Snyder finally gave in and called Critter Control, a Lawrence pest removal company that uses lasers in an attempt to scare the birds out of the trees.

“Our bird management plan is at least three or four nights of straight harassment,” said Critter Control owner Todd Olson.

Olson said ideally his workers would use pyrotechnics to scare the birds away, but that’s not legal in town. They recently used what he refers to as the “laser harassment” technique in Kansas City to scare 15,000 crows away from a golf course.

Whatever the cost, Snyder said, it’s worth it if it works.

“For five years I’ve had to battle them,” he said taking cover under his front porch. “I’d like to get outside once in a while.”