Chicago Tribune

DECATUR, Ill. – Every fall, the starlings descended on Decatur like a plague. Screeching and flapping, thousands of birds seized control of the park and dive-bombed residents, who fought back by lobbing firecrackers and blasting them with a propane cannon.

Nothing worked until town officials called in James L. Soules. As owner of the Decatur-based Bird Repellent Co., the quiet little man said he could beat the birds, but there was a catch: He refused to tell anyone how he would do it. He demanded complete secrecy, warning officials not to spy on him.

Soules might have seemed like a swindler, but over the next few weeks something astounding happened. The starlings began to fly away. “I was amazed,” said Dan Mendenall, a city official in Decatur. “It was almost like he wished them away.”

The last of those birds flew out of Decatur in the 1990s, and in the years since, the 83-year-old Soules has driven off others using tactics that are a closely guarded secret. A modern-day pied piper, he has become a legend around Decatur, where people call him the “birdman,” “shaman” or even the “crow whisperer.”

In bifocals and a cardigan, the grandfatherly-looking Soules has chased birds from Bloomington, Ill., Springfield, Ill., Joliet, Ill., and dozens of other cities over a 50-year career.

“He doesn’t get rid of half or a third. They’re all gone,” said Paul Osborne, the mayor of Decatur. “I don’t know what he does. He doesn’t poison them. He doesn’t use spray. You never see bird carcasses. They just fly away and they don’t come back.”

Over the years, Soules has made a steady living battling blackbirds, starlings, crows, pigeons and sparrows. These birds can be a big problem for cities and towns across the Midwest. Starlings and crows in particular can descend en masse in the autumn, mucking up parks and leaving sticky messes on sidewalks. A typical roost can draw a few hundred to 15,000 birds, and on rare occasions hundreds of thousands, so many the sky nearly turns black.

In recent years, crows in particular have been moving to urban areas. And moving them out can be difficult. The U.S. Department of Agriculture sometimes attacks urban roosts by shooting pyrotechnics into trees. Other tactics range from banging on garbage cans, spraying smelly chemicals or blaring taped raptor calls to zapping birds with lasers. But such approaches bring mixed results.

“As with most wildlife,” said Brad Robbins, a wildlife biologist at the USDA, “there is no one magic wand.” When told of Soules’ secret, Robbins was stumped. “I really don’t know what he is doing,” Robbins said.

Soules isn’t talking, saying only that he does not shoot, poison or trap the birds. Likewise, he says he does not use lights, sounds or smells.

“We often thought he just talked to them,” said Gary Goddard, 62, city manager of Galesburg, Ill., only half-joking. “Like Doctor Doolittle.”

Indeed, Soules’ story seems made for Hollywood, a tale of a regular guy who stumbles upon a secret that gives him a seemingly superhuman power.

“We had someone who tried to watch him,” said Phillip R. Wilhelm, Decatur’s municipal services manager. “Never was able to catch him doing anything.”

In Galesburg, where Soules had a contract two years ago, people occasionally saw him in the park, working long after midnight. As he moved from tree to tree, the birds seemed to lift up. “I’m not exactly sure what he does,” said Goddard, the city manager. “But whatever it is, it is very effective.”

The story begins with Soules’ father, Jimmie, who founded the family business in the 1930s. The elder Soules had become a local hero in the 1940s, when he used owl decoys to scare the starlings from Decatur. Life magazine featured him and his fake owls in a three-page spread in 1947. In one news account, Soules and his then-business partner were described as “America’s foremost two-member team of bird shoo-ers.”

But the starlings eventually realized the owls were fakes, and soon Soules Sr. was back at the drawing board. By the 1950s, his son had joined him. The younger Soules tried to attack the problem by “thinking like a bird.” He studied their habits, and often rappelled down the side of buildings to look for nests.

Today, Soules is deliberately vague about his breakthrough, saying only that he used “trial-and-error’ before he hit upon a foolproof method in the early 1950s.

Soules and his father soon were selling their secret process, carrying mysterious black boxes to towns in Illinois and across the Midwest. They refused to reveal their technique, but guaranteed their work and accepted payment only after the job was done. Their company stationery announced: “We have never failed.”

They crisscrossed the region, chasing crows from courthouses and pushing pigeons out of parks. Everywhere they worked, they collected written recommendations:

An “unprecedented success,” wrote leaders from St. Louis.

“Every promise made has been fulfilled,” wrote a company executive from a factory in Buffalo, N.Y.

“Tax money well spent,” wrote an official from Sangamon County, Ill.

In Decatur, Soules and his father kept the birds out of the downtown for a few thousand dollars a year. But in the 1980s, the city let the contract lapse. Decatur hadn’t had any bird problems, and public officials figured they could save money doing the work themselves.

But by the early 1990s, the starlings were back. Birds were roosting in the downtown. Birds were pecking people on their heads. Worst of all, birds were leaving a sloppy, smelly mess.

City officials organized volunteers to bang pots and pans along the streets. Maintenance workers set off a propane cannon so loud it shattered windows and triggered the alarm at the downtown bank.

Still, the birds refused to budge.

In desperation, local forester Randy Callison called Soules. But perhaps feeling jilted, Soules refused to take the job. He told them he didn’t have the time, and it didn’t pay enough. Two more city officials had to call before Soules finally agreed to a contract that paid $36,000 over four years.

Within a week, city officials say, the birds had flown away.

Having learned its lesson, Decatur has renewed Soules’ services ever since, signing the most recent contract in October. Soules will be paid $43,000 over three years.