Can Birds Affect Your Beam?

Birds roosting in warehouses can occasionally cause problems with Beams that are installed there. Due to most Warehouses or Distribution Centres having large roller doors which can be open for a significant amount of time during the site’s working day, it can be easy for birds to get inside.

I have noticed that during Tech Support calls many engineers have raised their concerns as to whether birds can cause false activations and asked whether there is a solution.

My answer to this is, unless you have a flock of pigeons flying around the warehouse area, a few birds flying about are very unlikely to cause an activation. This is because they would need to fly straight along the Beam’s path for around 10 seconds to cause an activation, something which is not likely to happen.

What is more likely is that the birds could perch on a Detector and if its tail gets in the beam’s path, then an activation of some kind is likely.

A warehouse in East Anglia combatted this issue by bringing in an eagle to scare off a flock of pigeons that kept being reported in the warehouse. This was a really inventive way of removing the pigeons without harming the birds or any workers.

If you’ve used any ingenious methods of getting rid of pigeons from your application then please let us know.

Nigel Ward

Technician