Just curious. Seems to me a bit antiquated…
There are better methods. A scarecrow only works for a little while; then the birds get used to it (and it loses the scent of humans) and it needs to be replaced. Nowadays, they’re more likely to use an air cannon, which makes a loud noise at irregular intervals.
They certainly do use scarecrows – bobbing “Terror Eyes” balloons not only have plenty of anecdotal evidence behind them, there’s also a study published in a journal showing how effective they are.
http://www.biconet.com/birds/terrorEyes.html
In addition, those plastic and ceramic owls se;ll pretty briskly at garden stores. I’m not aware of similar studies on these (I’ve looked), but there’s plenty of “anecdotal” evidence (some of it published by the Air Force – they needed to keep birds out of landing regions). In any event, these continue to sell.
as far as Wizrd-of-Oz type scarecrows, I haven’t seen any in ages. I suspect they haven’t got the field record of the things I list above. Or of old CDs and DVDs strung on string, for that matter.
Some farmers use scarecrows as Halloween displays, but in the field, they’re more worried about bugs and weeds than crows.
We have two at the Community Garden that I volunteer at. I think they are there to amuse the kids of some of the other volunteers. But yes…we use them. 
-D/a
I want to point out that I see the Terror-Eyes ballooons at fruit orchards here in Massachusetts. There’s no doubt that professional farmers and fruit-growers are using them.
I live around lots of farmland and I can’t say I’ve ever seen a scarecrow. At least not within eyesight of the road. Of course I’m not usually paying particularly close attention to the land. Miles and miles of corn, cabbage or empty field is only entertaining for 10 or 15 feet.
Another popular item is hanging aluminum pie plates from strings. They rattle around and make noise plus the reflected flashes of sunlight supposedly frighten off animals.
That just proves…P.T. Barnum was right.
I see them quite often on farmland and allotments in the UK, both traditional scarecrows and more modern methods like the terror eyes mentioned previously.
Thanks, all, for the interesting and informative responses!
Jake
Heh, here’s some anecdotal evidence for you.
Local business near me has problems with pigeons (lots of them) nesting in and on it’s large sign (the kind with tall freestanding letters).
Business buys one of those large plastic owls and mounts it on the sign.
Now pigeons nest under that plastic owl as well as the rest of the sign.
I think the problem is that the owl statue has to move (rotate) in the wind to at least distract the pigeons, and the business simply mounted it to the sign so it doesn’t move and the pigeons just treat it as part of the sign. :smack:
I shouldn’t have put it as "anecdotal – the Air Force study wasn’t a controlled experiment, but they did keep numbers, and it convinced the Air Force that such oel figures worked. They were stationary figures, by the way. as a piece of anecdotal information, I’ve seen plenty of such stationary plastic or ceramic owl figures in use, and have heard that they did, in fact, work.
But it’s undoubtedly true that moving figures are more effective – we have reseach by prof. Michael G. Conover of Logan State University in J. Wildlife Control that such moving figures do an effective job of deterring harmful birds. And i note that the “Terror Eyes” and “Scare Eyes” balloons definitely move.
I researched this pretty thoroughly because it forms part of my argument in my book. Long before the present day, Japanese farmers used Daruma dolls as scarecrows in rice fields, and I maintain that the Greeks and Romans used Gorgon faces to keep birds away from roofs and the like. I’ve since come across evidence that they, too, used swinging figures to keep birds away from fruit trees, gardens, cemetaries, and the like.
Around here it’s popular to put a life-sized dog silhouette on a stick to keep the geese from crapping on your lawn. I don’t know how well this actually works, or how long the geese will take to get used to it and ignore it if it does work.
My dad hangs old software CD-ROMs that my brother gave him. He wasn’t convinced that they did anything.