I am thinking specifically of the vicinity of Flock and traffic cameras. If I dropped a pile of birdseed near the base of the camera, would I be breaking any laws?
This will, of course, vary from place to place. There are not national or state laws I am aware of that cover this.
That said, yes, laws do exist to stop people from doing what you suggest. It is not about Flock cameras but there to stop a public nuisance. Not least of which is dropping such food can attract things like rats or mice or other animals. Also, things like pigeons are also deemed a pest some places. I know Chicago has (or had) a program to capture and kill pigeons which are everywhere. I doubt the city would thank you for feeding them.
Short answer is you need to check local laws if you want to try something like this.
Exactly right. I know it is illegal to feed animals in public areas (as opposed to your own yard) in San Francisco:
SEC. 486. FEEDING BIRDS AND WILD ANIMALS PROHIBITED.
It shall be unlawful for any person to feed or offer food to any bird or wild animal in or on any sidewalk, street or highway of the City and County of San Francisco. It shall be unlawful to feed or offer food to any Red Masked Parakeet in any park of the City and County of San Francisco.
Generally the main reason usually comes down to rodent infestations. Though is some cases it is also to prevent habituation, as with the famous parakeets of Telegraph Hill.
If your goal is to disrupt cameras, there’s probably a law against that in any jurisdiction that deploys cameras extensively. Obviously your hope is that the birdseed is sufficiently innocuous that your camera vandalism isn’t prosecutable.
I’m reminded about the various discussions of people setting traps for drive-by mailbox smashers and folks cutting across their corner lots. Why no, Officer, that large boulder within the shrubbery was just decorative.
Crime is all about intent.
AFAIK, in most German cities, feeding pigeons is prohibited, because they are considered a pest. And if you get caught spreading a big amount of birdseed like in the OP, you surely will get additionally fined for littering and/or vandalism.
Next question. Are there any laws against mixing in small metal BBs into the birdfeed?
If the idea is to block the cameras by birds shitting on the lenses, it sounds spectacularly impractical. More likely that the birdseed spreader will be assaulted by motorists angry about droppings on their vehicles.
Plus, at least for every flock installation I’ve seen, the camera lens is oriented slightly downward. Super hard target even for a determined bird.
Can someone elaborate what a flock camera is? Is it a surveillance cam at busy street corners? Never heard the term.
ETA: nevermind, I again forgot that there’s a thing like Google, so I looked it up, and yes, I was mostly right.
This would mean that the act told in the OP wouldn’t only be littering and vandalism in Germany, but also a “gefährlicher Eingriff in den Straßenverkehr”, “a dangerous intervention into street traffic”, which is also a crime in Germany. It’s sabotage.
Toronto is even more specific. The only feeding allowed is having a bird feeder on private property.
Under Toronto’s Animals Bylaw, you are not allowed to feed wildlife or leave food out to attract animals on both public and private property. Feeding songbirds on your property is permitted providing your bird feeder is kept in a sanitary condition and does not act as an attractant to other wildlife.
Every camera I’ve ever seen is either on a pole or gantry. I’ve also never seen a platform in front of & below one of them.
- How are you getting up there to place said seed, a bucket truck? A large ladder (probably needing multiple people) in the middle of the lane? How are you shutting down the lane while the ladder is up or the bucket truck is parked?
- How are you getting the birdseed in front of the camera if you want the birds/critters to sit there & eat it while blocking said camera if there’s nowhere for it to sit?
- If you intend to place it on top of said camera, aren’t many of them rounded or angled down, which means seeds would slide off, or blow off in the wind?
- Are you thinking seed on the roadway 10 or 15’ below said camera will cause birds to fly in view of the camera
But it’s only tuppence a bag!
Don’t those cameras run on a solar panel?
If you’re doing it to attempt to fuck up a camera, it’s illegal as others have said. You aren’t being clever. The authorities aren’t going to have patience with you if you try to get cute because putting birdseed somewhere isn’t technically illegal.
If a coyote flies overhead in a hot air balloon, equipped with a giant magnet, it could be problematic for the birds.
Some may be but I think most of the ones that I’ve seen are either mounted to a traffic or street light pole, which means they have a power source in the pole or on an overhead gantry, like for EZ-Pass or some other automated toll system. In addition to the cameras, they have transponders & lights (to read plates at night) or some type of night vision camera &, again, are usually powered via electric wire connected to the grid.
It may initially seem problematic for the birds, but it’ll probably turn out to be problematic for the coyote.
For those who’re not immediately familiar with “Flock” in this context: Flock Safety - Wikipedia.
The OP is probably right that all this stuff should be torn down and all the records it ever created be destroyed. But the way to do that is legislation, not hoped-for bird shit.
The ones in my area are just on street sign-height poles with a small solar panel on top. A gantry like on a toll road seems like massive overkill for these things.
Edit: Okay, based on Street View, maybe a little taller than a street sign. But still just a little tubular pole with a small camera and solar panel on top.
Not saying it’ll go anywhere but KY Rep Thomas Massie (who’s retiring after this term, which makes it more unlikely it’ll pass) will be introducing a bill to ban them
Wherever I’ve seen a solar panel mounted on a pole to power a light/camera on that pole the panel is angled to receive maximum sun; bird seed wouldn’t sit on the panel unless you carefully laid it out, piece by piece, along the upper edge on a non-windy day. Further, as I stated above, the panels are not necessarily at the ideal height to have birds blocking the camera. You might get an extra bird or two in frame to allow some scofflaw to pass unnoticed but it’s not like you’re going to have birds sitting (or shitting) there to block the camera for any length of time.
Whether you use a ladder or a bucket truck, it’s gonna take more than a couple of seconds to put the bird seed up there. Unless you look the professional part, which includes an appropriate vehicle, not your own car/SUV, road signs (construction ahead), cones, reflective vest, helmet, harness (if in a bucket truck) you risk the random cop on patrol stopping because you look so sketchy doing it. Further, even if you can pull this off a couple of times you’d need to replenish the bird seed somewhat regularly which runs up your risk of getting caught; especially if you can do it enough times that someone official takes notice of it & the cops are now looking for it.
Agreed that the toll gantries are overkill but they are used at toll points & they do have cameras in them & they can & have been used in a serious enough crime (murder, kidnapping, etc.) for the PD to pull that footage to help build a timeline of the evildoer passing that point in the commission of committing whatever crime they’re suspected of.