FULL-TIME pigeon exterminators are still circling the skies over Vauxhall car plant a decade after one man’s ‘bird-brained’ idea
The plant had employed a pest control firm to pick the birds out of the sky with air rifles until 1999, when employee John Peake put up a bird box on the site of the Ince B power station at Ince.
John modified the redundant peregrine nest box before placing it in a secret location.
John, now retired and living in Anglesey, said: “That was back in 1999, everybody thought I was a complete fruit cake.
“I had doubts myself, but had seen a peregrine using that corner to catch feral pigeons and we were paying a pest control firm to come into the factory on a Sunday night to use high powered air rifles to deal with the problem of feral pigeons – not a good solution seeing we had been the first car plant to be awarded British Standard for Environmental Management.”
John received a letter from Vauxhall in 2008 to say a pair of peregrines had set up home in the box and had two chicks, who have been back every year.
He added: “This year, like last, they have three chicks, and Vauxhall no longer has to employ a pest control firm as Vauxhall have now got a pair of environmental full-time pigeon exterminators flying around the plant!”
John added: “Nine years to get established, the fruit cake vindicated.”
Kept top secret until the site was monitored, the nest is now subject to round-the-clock surveillance to deter would-be poachers from stealing the valuable birds and their eggs.
