It’s annoying when a bird poops on your car, but large flocks of them can be a genuine problem in some areas. But when a straw-stuffed scarecrow just isn’t keeping them at bay, a company called Bird-X wants you to consider upgrading to a scarecrow in the sky.


For the most part Bird-X’s ProHawk UAV is a standard high-end quadcopter with a GPS-guided autopilot mode so that users can configure waypoints that allow the drone to autonomously patrol a large property. But what makes it an effective bird-deterrent—besides the loud whir of its four spinning propellers—is a built in megaphone that blasts predator calls and bird distress cries.

Blasting sounds designed to scare birds away is by no means a new strategy, but a speaker permanently mounted in the middle of a field has a limited range. By putting it on a flying drone, there’s almost no place for birds to hide, even on a massive piece of property.


The carbon-fiber ProHawk UAV can also be manually piloted using an included long-range remote control for those times when a large flock of birds drops by unexpectedly. And while Bird-X won’t outright sell you the drone, it will lease it to you through a maintenance contract which hopefully means the company will be happy to service it as needed, and occasionally upgrade those sounds so it remains an effective deterrent as the local bird population gets accustomed to it.

[Bird-X via Gizmag]