WELLFLEET, Mass., March 18 (UPI) -- U.S. biologists plan to experiment this spring with placing poisoned chicken eggs near piping plover nests on Cape Cod to kill egg-eating crows.
About 90 pairs of plovers nest on the Cape Cod National Seashore in Massachusetts, which is required by federal environmental laws to protect them, the Cape Cod Times reports. Biologists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture plan to use the poisoned eggs around nests on two beaches in Wellfleet.
George Price, the superintendent of the Seashore, said the scientists are also looking at using dead crows around the nests to scare off live ones.
Polly Burnell, a Provincetown resident, argues the egg-poisoning is cruel to crows and potentially dangerous to other birds like owls that might eat the carcasses of the poisoned crows. She said the dead crows were used successfully in California to protect the eggs of nesting terns.
But Price said the tern nesting area was also protected by a fence that kept out scavengers that might have removed the crow carcasses.
