Meet Charlie, Our Electronic Scarecrow

If you visit our farm, you’ll notice an audible screeching noise coming from behind our barn at regular intervals. This noise originates from a dark green speaker box situated in our cornfields, which we affectionately call “Charlie.” Charlie is our state-of-the-art electronic scarecrow.

How Does Charlie Work?

Birds have always been attracted to Big Dave’s sweet corn, causing significant damage with just a few pecks, rendering the ears of corn unsellable. Big Dave tried various methods to deter them, but nothing worked until he discovered this electronic scarecrow.

Charlie’s speaker emits a shrill recording of a hawk, the natural predator of the birds that threaten our corn. It also occasionally plays a distress call of a blackbird, convincing the birds that a hawk is nearby. This clever audio trick effectively scares the birds away from our corn.

You can listen to the sound here:

To maintain its effectiveness, we move the electronic scarecrow around periodically. This prevents the birds from getting wise to our tactic. However, during particularly dry periods, the birds become more desperate and might ignore Charlie’s warnings.

Why “Charlie”?

We named our electronic scarecrow Charlie after Kurt’s grandfather, Charles Bench. In the old days, Charles would scare the birds away with a shotgun, standing guard for long periods to protect his corn. When we adopted this modern speaker technology, it seemed fitting to honor the original scarecrow by naming it “Charlie.”