UTICA (AP) -- A central New York city is going high tech trying to harass thousands of roosting crows.
The Utica Observer-Dispatch reports the city is spending $3,000 to buy a portable device called a Bird Blazer that uses a constantly changing pattern of multi-colored lasers to scare off the birds without hurting them.
It's said to be effective over a 10,000-square-foot area.
Roosting crows have been a noisy, messy nuisance in upstate cities, where officials have resorted to small explosives and other measures to roust them.
A spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation says crows like cities in winter because a "heat bubble" makes them 5 to 10 degrees warmer than the surrounding countryside and it's easier to avoid predators.
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