scaring crows
SCARING CROWS*
HAYDEN LORIMER
abstract. A long-form essay, arranged in a sequence of eight segments, in which I travel the
countryside in search of a missing person: the scarecrow. Different aspects of the centuries-old
practice of scarecrow making and bird scaring are described. Traditionally constructed as a
likeness of the human form and erected in newly sown fields as a visual method for warding off
feeding birds, the existence of this striking farmland contraption is variously reported: as
having all but vanished and yet of making unexpected reappearances; as materially functional
and complexly meaningful; as a figure summoned up by cultural memory and personal recollection; and as a focus for mixed feelings of loss, nostalgia, estrangement, and community.
A version of “geographical portraiture” accumulates, in which a single, scenic landmark stands
as the essay’s central fascination and simultaneously operates as a cipher for stories old and
new, of agricultural society, country life, landscape politics, and rural values. Keywords: countryside, culture, landscape, memory, scarecrow.
How often when travelling, interest is aroused by some object seen from the
train about which our fellow travellers (even did we care to ask them) probably know nothing. Maybe a fine old house, a distant spire, a specially beautiful scene, awakes the justifiable curiosity of the traveller, and yet how seldom
can one obtain any information as to the places seen.
London & North Eastern Railway,
“That’s strange.” The thought first occurred in passing. “They’ve all gone. Nowhere
to be seen. Just vanished.” Cultural loss registered in the lay of the land, while shuttling cross-country. Fellow rail passengers dozed off the aftereffects of buffet trolley
ploughman’s sandwiches. The open laptop idled. I window gazed. By rights these
most basic contraptions should have been everywhere about, peopling the fields.
This was the season after all. Early wheat, not long since sown, was just starting to
show. Emerald tips hazed the fields, sprouting along deadeye drill lines. The barley
crop was a bit farther on, unbroken sea green waves rolling over the land; just as
verdant as Microsoft’s iconic desktop vista. Ragged black, birds bent their backs to
the task, pecking, boring, tugging, and pulling. It’s said by country types that freshsown seeds and sweet young shoots make for the richest pickings. And all this new
growth was so clearly in need of protection. The breadbasket awaited its standing
guard. So where exactly were the scarecrows? Their absence having registered as
conspicuous, I tried looking harder, absorbed by the search.
* My thanks to three anonymous referees for their helpful appraisals of an earlier draft of this work. For
bookshelf prompts, digital prods and regional pointers: William Hasty, Joe Gerlach, Maggie Bolton, Aire
Wishart, Helen Macdonald, Mark Cocker, David Featherstone, Paul Hodge and Drew Mulholland. This
essay benefitted from the contributions of unusually diverse audiences at Helpston Parish Church, the
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and the Excursions Symposium, University of Glasgow.
Dr. Lorimer is a reader in geography at the University of Glasgow, Glasgow , Scotland;
[hayden.lorimer@glasgow.ac.uk].
The Geographical Review (): –, April
Copyright © by the American Geographical Society of New York
His coat was black,
and his head was bent,
And as the wind shook him,
the crows took him to the end.
Mike & Lal Waterson,
By tradition, he’s the crudest kind of mannequin, styled somewhere between the
grotesque and the carnivalesque. He has a head, two arms, and a torso, though
often no legs to speak of. Instead, a single vertical stake, which serves as his spine, is
driven deep into the loose, tilled earth. The line of his shoulders and outstretched
arms is formed by a broom handle, this second spar of wood nailed at a right angle
high up on the length of the other. He is dressed in cast-offs, or simple sacking.
Depending on the fashion of the period (or the land that he calls home) he might
sport a smock, knee-length jacket, waistcoat, oilskins or dungarees, and checkered
shirt. Hemlines and cuffs can be snipped and frayed so to loosely flap when disturbed by the wind. Sometimes, a one-piece boilersuit does the job of masquerade
just fine. His torso and limbs are filled up with straw, the best packing material
available. A turnip or pumpkin makes do for a head. Few would spare a penny for
his thoughts, and yet we quickly afford him an inner life of his own. Rough cuts in
the flesh open up holes where, by human rights, a pair of eyes and mouth ought to
be. He has been known to wear a wide-brimmed hat. For practical purpose, to
hold a bottle-blond hairpiece of straw in place and to shade the fact that most
often he lacks finer facial features. Further accessories and props (scarf, gloves,
belt, and bag) are optional. Small arms can be carried: a wooden cudgel or, more
often, a plank whittled into the shape of a gun.
The scarecrow seldom seems to have cross-dressed, perhaps because commonly he is the product of male labor. For the sake of accuracy, he had a farmhand’s thin physique, or alternatively, was made to a likeness of the better-fed
figure of the squire. His posture and body language (forever shooing things away)
is intended to be indicative of a protective, even proprietary, attitude. The story
goes that in the past his outfit comprised articles removed from a dead man’s
wardrobe; one source, it would seem, for the scarecrow’s long-standing association with things sinister and presences supernatural. But it is also his sentinel
positionstationed apart from, and yet so clearly a part of, the rhythm of country lifethat gives shape to uncanny stories of possession and concealment, shifty
movements and slow transformations. When spotted he is always alone, keeping
no company, set up to stand out, over yonder, right in the heart of the field or on
the brow of a long ridge. Gaunt and solitary, he is a watcher and a keeper. Fixed,
in a permanent state of wakefulness. Flapping, but entirely unflinching. No clockwatcher. He goes unpaid, but is uncomplaining. Nameless, his vigil sees out all
weathers. A knot of mysteries. An old soul. Honest to himself. Foursquare. Or so
it seemed.
scaring crows
By the scarecrow’s downfall and disappearance might the fate or fortune of the
pastoral myth of rural life be read? Quite possibly, though not just yet. When
defined solely by purpose, he is, plain and simple, a deterrent. His job rolls together action and consequence. Scaring! The dispersal of rooks and crows, it need
hardly be pointed out. But many other sorts of seed-stealing farmland birds too:
great massings of starlings, the skylarks that settle to feed on oilseed rape (canola),
or marauding flocks of wood pigeons and sparrows that might otherwise descend
to plunder newly sown corn, picking a field clean of the farmer’s precious future.
For how hard it is
to understand the landscape
as you pass in a train
from here to there
and mutely it
watches you vanish.
W. G. Sebald,
The search-and-rescue job should have been easy. Railway carriages have picture
windows perfectly shaped for field studies. To either side, the rectangular panes fix
a frame around the rural scene, finding a rhyme in the squared-off geometry of
farmland. Table-seats, forward facing, offer the best vantage point. High-speed
trains should be avoided. The speed of cross-country services feels about right,
passing through landscapes at a pace suited to the quick scan but without any
nauseating side effects. For long stretches, embankments lift sight lines clear of any
obstacle, opening a full field of view. Your eyes are never quite so elevated as to
command the higher reaches, sometimes dropping down to flicker with the fence
lines. But for the most part, midrange features and background are thrown wide,
awaiting inspection. It doesn’t rank as proper survey work, of coursenot in the
traditional sense, anyway. Rapid eye movements are always hurrying onward,
quickening to meet the approaching scene, before a second glance, far less a lingering look, can be taken. “Locomotion should be slow,” argued Carl Sauer, “the
slower the better, and often interrupted by leisurely halts to sit on vantage points
and stop at question marks” (, ). Forefathers from an older disciplinary
generation might have been generous enough to call my method an “unsystematic
transect.” And me? It’s the caffeinated commuter-geographer’s opportunist way of
taking a sample of farmland and spotting signs of change in the ways it’s being
worked.
Skimming along the cut of line, you approach working landscapes as if always
appearing from around a long corner. By this deception, glimpses can be taken, of
country life happening without, it seems, any great expectation of your arrival.
Deer chew at the margins. Buzzards quarter the rough grazing. Lone tractors turn
tight at field ends. Herds stand stock-still or are all of a sudden sent frisky. Minor
roads rise and fall from view. Crows lift a little, then drop to earth just as soon.
And everywhere about, there is a contented sense of things that are mostly in
keeping with custom and expectation. Evidence mounts up of the careful work of
unseen stewards. Landmark features confirm a just-so geography. Enough to invite a child’s-eye view of the country, where there’s a place for everything and
everything is in its place. All but for the absence of scarecrows, that is, and the
vexing question of what has become of them.
Of course, if you watch the world fiercely enough, persistence can eventually
pay off. Midway between one side of the country and the other, I finally caught
sight of my first working scarecrow. A modern variation on the theme: rust-red,
the Ford Fiesta was parked up permanently, mid-acres. Several stops along the
line, a spindly band of minimalist contraptions (formed by spearing a plastic
chemical container onto pole tops) peopled another field. Success of sorts, but it
still felt like a meager return for miles of close attention.
“How old are you?” asked Susan.
“All manner of ages,” replied the scarecrow.
“My face is one age, and my feet are another, and my arms are the oldest of all.”
“How very, very queer,” said Susan.
Barbara Euphan Todd,
“Scare-Crow.” Two syllables, designed for a winged reaction: fright and flight.
A defining feature and a repeat figure, in fields worldwide. Instantly recognizable,
he is a premodern form of deception devised, it is thought, by the earliest pastoral
peoples (Sax ). One of the first life-size effigies of the human form, the scarecrow is a universal and primary representation of our selves. And so, he sinks a
taproot deep into the human history of the ancient world. Rich in symbolism, he
demands our emotional response, coded as phantasmagorical, allegorical, or
plainly substantial. Onto his figure much has been projected. He speaks of hunger pains and harvest hopes. He is a physical manifestation of claims to property, of a faith that the seasons will turn, of material want and family need. In
medieval times, he is thought to have played a mystical part in pagan ritual, as a
surrogate for human sacrifice. In the landscapes of the pastoral poets, he is benign and avuncular, posing no actual menace to farmland birds. Along the western frontier of the New World, he offered standout proof of richest bounty found
or the bleakest, hardscrabble existence. In the fast-enclosing shires of England, he
is a durable figure still required amid the unpretty business of agricultural improvement.
The scarecrow mannequin can be figured as a labor-saving device, apparently
doing his landlord’s bidding, replacing real men who were less compliant or reliable in character. By this reading of agricultural history, and the changing structures of the countryside, personhood falls away, he becomes it, just another
contraption, marshaled into sharp politics and brutish economies, ranking along-
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side the threshing machine, stone wall, and parliamentary act as examples of agricultural technologies necessary for successful capital accumulation and resulting
in peasant dispossession and rural depopulation (Jefferies ; Williams ). In
the scarecrow’s case, this seems too forcefully put. He served as right-hand man to
the great improver, progressive farmer and the struggling smallholder, spanning
entire eras of crop husbandry. Whomever his master, a permanent field posting
was far from certain. When birds were no longer kept in check, or where crops
were badly pillaged, food security for family or market had to be achieved by other
means. Until the early twentieth century, real human scarers were paid to pace
field perimeters, equipped with a wooden rattle or clapperboard, to sound a likeness of the shotgun’s sharp retort, causing enough of a stir to startle opportunist
feeders and harass repeat offenders. For the youngest lads or oldest men in the
village it was one way to eke out a living. In his early boyhood years William
Cobbettrenowned radical, journalist on horseback, and author of Rural Rides in
the Counties ([] )earned his corn by scaring small birds.
If farmers were fickle in their choice of weaponry for waging a never-ending
war with the birds, avian attitudes could quickly turn against the scarecrow too.
Growing familiarity with a dumb, long-standing foe manifested itself in behavior
that communicated a mixture of comfort and contempt. A gallery of country art
mocks (or mourns) the scarecrow reduced to a shadow of a man, keeling sideways,
no more than a convenient perch for the birds. In this imagery, he operates as a
threshold figure, betwixt and between warring species (rather than as the enemy of
a peasant class), defining the limits and overlaps between human and nonhuman
lives. Other images depict his end times, as a fallen figure, face down in the dirt, a
husk of humanity, lying prone, innards disgorged, torn at by the very creatures
that once kept a respectful distance. A chastening reminder of the human condition. His demise the stuff of a darker arcadia. Final comeuppance delivered by
most vengeful beaks.
It is not uncommon for passers-by to attack a Scarecrow; stabbing and mutilations being the most common. . . . It is well known that some of the most
carefully made Scarecrows, complete with a face, are stolen, literally vanishing
in the night.
Colin Garratt,
A single cultural history of the scarecrow has appeared in recent times. Peter Haining’s The Scarecrow: Fact and Fable focused on a history of cultural representation, charting the place of the scarecrow in cinematic and literary landscapes.
For adult and child audiences, he featured variously as a queer fellow, an amiable
shape-shifter, and an inscrutable but demonic presence. Collecting together textual reference points, trading between currencies of fact and fable, Haining also
sketched a dialect map of scarecrow names once in use across different regions of
Britain. In the shires of southern England he was most commonly the “mawkin,”
and sometimes the “Jackalent” or “hodmadod.” In Yorkshire he is said to have gone
by “mammet,” or its variants “murmet,” “mummer,” and “mommet.” To the west he
was known as the “tattie-dooly.” Over the border in Scotland he was the “tattiebogle” or “craw bogie.”
To begin to chart the scarecrow’s life and times according to local lore is, by
implication, to wonder at how he ought rightfully be regarded. One way to see
him is as a visual expression of local identity, and thus as vernacular art form. This
is to look beyond the scarecrow’s existence as a functional reflection of basic human need, or as a minor figure appearing in novels, plays, and films, and instead to
consider him as a form expressive of cultural tradition that can be read for signs of
social style and taste. To do so is to recall a longer tradition of research dedicated
to documenting vernacular life and its calendar of folk crafts and customs. In the
middle years of the twentieth century, admirers and collectors created catchall
titles, such as “popular art,” for the traditional, cultural forms to be unearthed in
out-of-the-way communities. Popular art was the stuff of the rural everyday, a
naturalistic kind of expression, open-faced and awkward, crafted out of gritty
circumstance. It was unearthed by self-styled experts, declaring themselves newly
literate, willing to travel the byways, forging paths into the backwoods and borderlands, to places where rustic artistry emerged from plainest industry. To go
farther afield was to demonstrate a particular sort of cultural discernment,
signposting new directions for aesthetic appreciation, far distant from elitist subjects of study in the fine and decorative arts. Margaret Lambert and Enid Marx,
pioneers for the idea of popular art as a cultural category in Britain, considered it
an entirely new aesthetic category for collection and exhibition (). Today the
spectrum of their fascinations reads as if from a remembrance-service program for
a bygone geography of agricultural society: corn dollies, clay pipes, door knockers, weather vanes, gingerbread stamps, horse brasses, wood carvings, ships’ figureheads, shop signs, and snuff boxes.
Fearing that cultural memories was already only half-remembered, Lambert
and Marx campaigned for “native survivalism,” a technical idea about the public
value of craft that (perhaps unsurprisingly) failed to marshal widespread support.
Later connoisseurs like James Ayres took a lead from the established mode of inquiry already operating in North America, opting for the descriptive label of “folk
art” (). Other alternatives, such as “outsider art” and “found art,” implied a
naive aesthetic magically conjured up between the practitioner’s eye and hand.
The label “unsophisticated art” pointed up a stark geography of cultural “haves
and have-nots,” separating the rude or rustic origins of an artifact from its positive
reception in metropolitan or scholarly art circles. Social anthropologists, preferring the label “primitive art,” found a domestic world of creativity paralleling their
interest in creative expression and material culture among indigenous peoples
overseas. Each variation on the theme generated its own tension, out of the very
effort of claiming expert knowledge.
scaring crows
This same tradition is recalled in Folk Archive, a project by the contemporary
artists Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane (), who used the cataloguing and display
of popular art from across the regions of Britain as a way to invite wider appreciation of working-class tastes and cultural habits. Willfully chaotic and eclectic,
their celebration had one common aspect: “that all contributions have been
authored by individuals who would perhaps not primarily consider themselves
artists” (p. ). Among photographs of wrestling costumes, mantelpiece ornaments,
tea cozies, quilts, graffiti tags, and customized cars, appear a handful of scarecrow
portraits. Colin Garratt is a kindred spirit and author of the only photographic
book dedicated entirely to the scarecrow, documenting differences according to
design rather than geographical distribution (). Fifty striking portraits depict
working scarecrows, as discovered in the landscape. The collection is something of
an agricultural freak show. Scarecrows appear backlit by sunset, moonrise, and
flashlight, under towering summer cumulonimbi and wreathed in winter mist,
ghoulish in the silent watches of the night, gaily waving arms over cabbage and
kale crops, with firearms trained to blow away intruders at point-blank range.
Imperiled survivors have been Garratt’s career specialism. His staple subject is the
steam locomotive, photo-documentary journeys taking him to six continents and
resulting in thirty-five other book titles. Garratt and I have at least one thing in
common. Rail travel gave us reason to pull the alarm chord for the passing of a
familiar landmark. His and mine is a simple trackside calculation: daydreams
divided by acreage.
When it comes to landscape nostalgia, I’ll concede to being as susceptible as
the next cultural geographer. Arguably a little more so; finding comfort in the
old rather than the new, and prizing landscape’s historical associations. I can tell
when the pangs are coming on, to a point where parody often seems like the best
antidote, or the easiest way out. So, perhaps the scarecrow should be lined up
with old maids bicycling, lapwings, and lost cricket grounds, in a paradise lost of
twentieth-century Britain; just another small thing going the same way as many
other signs of rural life, dating from the last days of the analogue age. James
Meek, critic, essayist, and novelist, recently noted how it’s no coincidence “that
since the internet became ubiquitous toilet graffiti has almost disappeared” (,
). You get your cultural kicks where you find them. Whether in public conveniences or agricultural implements, there seems a new sensibility of critical sentimentality abroad, a vein of romantic antiromanticism if you will. Here the
promise held in the idea of a return is something very different from shamelessly
going back to the future. Rather, it is a stylistic turn, raising possibilities for
writing subjectively and affectively about what is to be cherished in vanishing
landmarks. Where the divination of “geographical personality” was once suggested as the most rewarding outcome of regional fieldwork (Sauer ), in its
stead might emerge “geographical portraiture” as a template for experimental
landscape writing in the contemporary discipline. The list of scenic features as
future subjects is near limitless.
One for the sparrow, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow.
Anonymous, n.d.
The month of May began on a Sunday. The spring sky was set fair, in robin’s-egg
blue. Time to set things in motion again. Before the house was properly up and
about, I recruited a fieldwork assistant with the promise of schoolboy adventure.
A missing-person hunt, mixed up with a game of “I-Spy the Unusual” (). It
wasn’t a tough sell, and required no parental hustle. We chatted about those whose
job it was to guard the cereal and what might happen if they disappeared for good.
He was all signed up before the Cheerios (Nestle’s patented combination of wheat,
oats, and corn) filled the breakfast bowl. We’d go outward bound, to see what we
could see. The search effort would be redoubled. Bags were packed: father-and-son
binoculars, notebooks, pencils, camera, and Ordnance Survey local area maps.
Scanning these words back, I realize how happy-families the story must read (akin
to when the Hanna-Barbera studio animators meddled with the storyboard, lumbering Scooby-Doo with Scrappy, his junior charge and coinvestigator.) But you’ll
have to take my word for it because that’s just the way it happened.
Out from the city, we headed west into the shire, making for what I reckoned on as the likeliest country. We stuck close to the best of the arable system,
traveling haphazardly by minor roads, cornering at right angles, directions determined by field boundaries. We passed road ends, leading to what once were familyrun farms but now are properties with signs studiously avoiding topographical
reference points, instead spelling out a new rural economy of logistical operations
(“support,” “service,” “strategy”) in the flat language, abstract insignia, and clean
font nowadays preferred by agro-industrial contracting outfits, sometimes establishing that these acres are a small protectorate of a new master, the multinational
supermarket retailer. Gearing down to a crawl, we sighted collapsed roofs and
rotting hay bales; the telltale tatty architecture of farmstead abandonment. An
hour passed. Then two. We kept scouring. There was nothing to see by way of
human figures or their scarecrow surrogates. We did sight a few bamboo canes,
with torn strips of fertilizer bag and iridescent steamers tacked on top. Only the
lightest breeze disturbed the strands. But they hung limp, looking desultory. Our
efforts at photography failed them. Not worth the trouble, we reckoned. Meanwhile, our checklist of farmland birds grew steadily: skylarks, pheasants, and wood
pigeons. Even a few lapwings, whose future I still fear for. Gulls waddled about
among the field furrows. At the car’s passing, finches were flushed from roadside
bushes, and riots of rooks rose from treetops.
A mid-morning break was pushing at the edges of lunch. We pulled in. Neat,
gravel car parks in the country seem somehow out of keeping. But then so too is the
accompanying world of The Farm Store: trim wooden fencing, rimmed around
the kids’ play park, all that high-end produce, and the waft of fresh-brewing organic coffee overpowering other potent smells of the farmyard. The place was
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packed. New parents mostly, ushering (sometimes marshaling) excitable little ones
between the clean-swept sheds, display pens for pet lambs, and parked machinery.
“Combine Harvester! Climb aboard! But be careful on the steps!” An Open Day,
where the tension between extending a warm welcome and committing to standards of public safety is measured out in exclamation marks. We rounded a building and found the farmer mid-spiel. His audience, a crescent of kids and urban
dads, in flip-flops, sunglasses, and knee-length shorts. The accepted Sabbath getup.
This son of the soil stood out proud, a ruddy picture of health. Scuffed Blundstones.
Denims whitened at the kneecaps. Checkered shirt, sleeves rolled up tight above
the elbows. We listened attentively to his minilecture on the patient operations
and practical science of crop husbandry, leavened with the odd wry remark thrown
in for the adults present, about market fluctuations, financial anxieties, and fathers bound always to think they know better.
The older man was there, set off a little in the wings, hands leathery, face well
seasoned, ready to play up to the gentle jibes. Seeing my chance, I sidled up. Who
better than an agricultural elder to answer hushed questions about the modern
condition of the scarecrow? He had a few ideas, pausing in search of fuller explanations. Habitat change. Hedgerow removal, mostly. “And fewer copses now too, so
no easy roosts for the bloody wood pigeons.” Modern twists to the old calendar
conventions of cultivation were having impacts too; most especially the trend for
sowing fields in the autumn months, not in spring. One by-product of this latest
turn in the wheel of the year, initially designed to bring in higher yields, was the
lesser threat posed by bird populations, generally at their hungriest in the breeding season. The most recently available statistics support his hunch. The numbers
of birds that forage and nest on British farmland have fallen percent in the past
forty years, marking a record low. I stopped short of asking about “environmental
degradation” and the renewed threat of a silent spring. So we chatted about preferences nowadays for scaring methods, other than the traditional scarecrow. They
vary wildly. Compact discs hung from sticks are known to spook birds by the
bright glints of light they throw to some considerable distance. He mentioned
certain farmers, the stewardship kind, who now mount kestrel boxes on trees at
the fields’ edge, to offer a ready-made home for birds of prey. They “had their
merits.” Alternatively there are “hawk kites,” designed to fly from poles in the wind
and hover as if ever hungry above the field: “Bloody daft looking if you ask me.”
Not to be overlooked was the enduring pleasure in “a wee bit of sport” to be had
with an air rifle aimed out the side of a van. Some, swearing by the intelligence of
birds (and in particular the mischievous habits of corvids), stick with a macabre
method that makes examples of those caught thieving. Strung up by the neck on a
rickety gibbet, a murder of crows is left to twist and turn, warding off the more
wise or wary among their kind. To close, he mused on great claims of effectiveness
attributed to auditory devices for bird scaring.
Presentation over, the group dispersed slowly in the sunshine, father and son
giving us fathers and sons a final, friendly reminder to buy up the best the store had
to offer. Admitting defeat, and with arms laden with fresh salad leaves, speciality
sausages, unwashed carrots, beetroots, and packets of honey crunch bakes, we
headed to the car and turned for home.
Type “auditory scaring devices,” and then strike the return key. Alternatively, begin
your search with the term commonly in use among activists in the know: “gas
guns.” Sonic bird scaring is a hot topic online, at its liveliest on bulletin boards
debating the resulting realities of contemporary rural life. Levels of complaint
registered about the misuse of this modern machinery for scaring have been sufficient in number and in volume for the National Farmers Union (nfu) to undertake a nationwide consultation exercise. The century-old organizationfunctioning
as the “voice of British Farming” with a mandate to “champion British farming and
provide professional representation and services to its Farmer and Grower members”has circulated a leaflet outlining a code of best practice for auditory scaring
devices and guidelines for general compliance. These moves seem wise ones, although they are not legally binding (nfu ).
For those without first-hand experience, propane-powered gas guns issue a
periodic explosion. The “BANG!” can reach a volume in excess of decibels,
issued direct from the gun’s tubular cannon, although this loud report can be
channeled and baffled by the arrangement of hay-bale battlements. At a considerably greater distance the noise issued is loud enough to be a very real irritant in the
lives of residents in nearby properties: disturbing sleep patterns, leaving pets in an
anxious state, fraying nerve ends, and being regarded generally as a noise nuisance, potentially injurious to mental health. The specifications supplied by one
online retailer are revealing. The “Broadside Bangalore” is a market leader, offering
overprotective farmers a variety of specialist features, beyond the standard allpurpose cannon and block. Listed are, variously: “the most realistic gun-shot sounds
ever!”; a solar panel to keep the battery charged indefinitely, even in the weakest
winter sunshine, “meaning you never need to trudge up the field to recharge”; for
extra control, an add-on “Screamer Kit” that imitates the cries of a bird in distress;
and a seven-day timer such that the Bangalore Broadside can “know what day of
the week it is” and thus remain in compliance with nfu guidelines on use
(www.birdscaring.co.uk/). The makers do not advise the use of less systematic
scare tactics. But reports persist of farmers, far from model in conduct, who set off
bangers and rockets in early-morning salvos to clear their crops of birds. It’s a
curious kind of pest control, and a noisy way to wage a war with nature.
Some of the angrier residents of English country parishes who claim that their
standard of life has been seriously infringed have come out fighting. “B-ooom”
(“Bang Out of Order Mate!”) is an archetypal single-issue lobby group, spreading
its campaign message via a dedicated Web site (www.b-ooom.co.uk/) and Facebook
page. Its informal membership is dedicated to “fighting the use of gas gun bird
scarers.” B-ooom’s objectives seem reasonable enough: to “restore peace and tran-
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quillity to the countryside,” “to improve quality of life,” “to protect our heritage
from this unnecessary noise pollution,” and “to encourage the use of traditional
methods of ‘bird control’ to protect crops.” Members of the public who find their
household plagued with antisocial noise are encouraged to collect documentary
evidence of overuse, inconsiderate use, pointless use, and disproportionate use.
But there is also a whiff of the rural vigilante about the windblown, handheld field
reports documented on video, and uploaded to YouTube, with accompanying
commentary that names-and-shames the culprit farmer. A case is being built about
adaptive bird behavior. Pigeons can grow so accustomed to the sound of gas guns
that they actually associate the noise with an available food source; supported by
footage of the birds feeding contentedly directly beneath a working contraption.
Hostile testimonials, archived as online feedback, leave the nfu in little doubt
about the public’s depth of feeling: “an utter nightmare,” “a year-round nuisance,”
“the bane of my family’s life,” “like a war zone some mornings,” “a scandalous Noise
Nuisance in our English Countryside” (www.nfuonline.com/news/Download-ourbird-scarer-guide/). On bulletin boards, insults and taunts are traded, often in capital letters. Tales of rude awakenings, even on Sundays and bank holidays, are endless.
And there are threats of violence and vandalism; further evidence, were it needed,
that sleep deprivation is one of the most effective forms of torture. For the neutral
reader, this does not seem like the late-night online handiwork of Have-a-Go hotheads, or “whinging townies.” Some poor souls seem driven near enough to their wits
end. Scroll for long enough and you’ll encounter the odd gentle reminder that complainants should to do more than sound off; instead utilizing the formal bureaucratic mechanisms put in place by local authorities’ Environmental Health Teams.
Occasionally, a placatory statement surfaces from the farmers’ side: “Just pick up the
phone, we don’t bite!” An Environmental Health Officer, reflecting on his experiences as a peacemaker, reported on difficulties encountered actually tracking down
the owners of problem guns. No longer is the job as simple as knocking on the nearest
farmhouse door. Instead, he struggled to navigate the complex structures of agribusiness where “everything seems to be contracted out to consortiums based miles
away. . . . [T]hat partly explains why the guns are out far too earlyit saves them
time . . . managing the fields and getting around to them all.” He stressed to protestposters the ease with which we overlook close interdependencies with those whose
work it is to put food on the table: “I also appreciate that farmers have to raise and
protect their cropsdon’t forget, we use their final products be it oilseed rape,
peas, linseed, or fruit. That is the balancing act I have to follow in these situations.”
In this shifting political landscape, a case is made repeatedly for the virtues and
effectiveness of the old-fashioned, silent, standing scarecrow. There are no signs
here of rural nostalgia, just desperation and embittered relations.
Having eventually called off the search, it was entirely predictable that the very
next day we would find exactly the person we were looking for, only in entirely the
wrong kind of place and when all sense of urgency had faded. As it happened, we
were walking home after school, swinging along the street, by the terraced houses
opposite the Spar convenience store. “Look! Down there!” A miniature man, much
smaller than might have been hoped for, but a scarecrow nonetheless. Just fifteen
house numbers from our place, sharing the same postal code. He was occupying a
strange wayside retreat, propped up in a neighborhood front garden, smiling
enigmatically in the midst of shrubs and bedding plants. Presumably he’d been
there all the previous times that we’d passed by.
Of course, in the months since that neighborhood sighting I’ve done my homework, got my eye in, and followed my nose to find new patches for the scarecrow’s
redeployment. He’s rather like the foxes that once knew their way around country
boltholes but have long since found the alt-ecologies of an urban lifestyle more
comfortable. Adaptive and prolific opportunists, scientific theory refers to these
species as “r-strategists.” There’s decent work to be found in the city, and a new
niche. Or kitsch. The urban scarecrow is to be spotted on allotments, in primaryschool vegetable patches, shelved alongside the glossily painted gnomes and other
decorative tat in the local garden center, and on city guerrilla growing spaces
tended by art students. And a scattering of country and county hotspots do remain. Scarecrows crop up annually as a popular form of rural craft, made not for
the fields but as a means to enter into lighthearted village competitions and civicweek festivities.
This regional map of new beginnings runs the length and breadth of Britain; in
Minginish on the Isle of Skye, Auchenblae in Aberdeenshire, Kettlewell in Yorkshire, Bentworth in the South Downs. Put up in front gardens and on roadside
verges, some of these scarecrow mannequins impersonate local worthies and civic
officeholders, but just as often their creators tap the cultural zeitgeist and roll with
the news cycle, taking chances with telling social commentary and as a mute expression of public anger. Straw men are a requirement in troubled times. In recent
summers, scarecrows have appeared in the guise of city bankers, global media
barons, London mayoral candidates, embattled cabinet ministers, X-factor contestants and judges, and a host of other unquiet spirits or peoplelike creatures of
the modern age. However, the art form is no longer intended for dissimulation,
but for exposure. In a couple of instances, the edgy addition of a comic noose
ought not go unmentioned. Meanwhile, the calendar occasions of a royal wedding
and a queen’s diamond jubilee have offered loyal British subjects the creative space
for scarecrow making that reflects more respectful invention and the renewal of
the social contract between citizenry and monarchy. Downsized, reborn as a carnival accessory and public scapegoat, migrating to the heart of the village as temporary public art, all these developments extend the social standing of the scarecrow.
These varieties of guise speak of a cosmopolitan national life, one in which the
scarecrow is not necessarily diminished by postagricultural status. He always was
a raw and playful art form, a person to whom the anxieties of one social class or
another have attached themselves. That he should become a chosen medium for
scaring crows
contemptuous feeling and choleric protest about authority figures or the unaccountable accumulation of power and wealth in societyand, at the very same
time, a medium for the confirmation of conservative community valuesseems
entirely apt. The scarecrow has been all these things, and in years to come, doubtless will be yet more besides.
But way back then, up there on Clifton Road, we were happy to tick off our first
find. So we snapped a photo and hurried on home, setting plans for dinner.
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