Primetake’s Bird Scaring Bangers: supporting global aviation communities.
For over 30 years, Primetake have remained the expert in making products to support effective wildlife management, with our bird scaring technology employed by airports around the globe. The simplicity of Primetake’s bird scaring cartridges ensures runway operators, across both small and large facilities, can quickly learn the key performance characteristics and transpose this knowledge to their specific working area. We recognise that whilst every airport is slightly different, not all operators will be an expert in bird control, and as such, keeping things simple has been a crucial factor for many airports onboarding our bird scaring banger technology.
Reducing Environmental Impact: Bird Scaring Bangers
Our bird scaring bangers ensure a lessened impact on the environment. All of Primetake’s bird scaring cartridges are now equipped with fully biodegradable caps, that when ejected out onto the airfield will naturally break down, whilst the cartridge cases are fully recyclable. Whilst most of our bird scaring cartridges are now designed to explode in mid-air, to reduce FOD on the airfield, we’re also working towards introducing fully biodegradable cartridge cases in the near future.
Bird Scaring Banger Cartridge Capabilities
Primetake’s bird scaring cartridge ranges are renowned for their reliability and effectiveness, encompassing both a shotgun and pistol range (Note: Due to the build up of pressure, the cartridges should only be used for their intended weapons platform). Primetake’s bird scaring cartridges trigger birds’ instinctive biological survival response, generating perceived threats that create natural fear, leading to a behavioural response to disperse. The 12-gauge bird scaring cartridges can be fired at different angles, different distances, and different locations, to confuse birds, ensuring quick and simple dispersal: vital, to prevent birds becoming habituated to bird deterrent systems.
New Technology
Further, expensive technologies are frequently ineffective, as the birds are conditioned to the repeated, highly predictable, pre-programmed behaviour of artificial solutions. In a similar vein, this is why bird scaring gas guns can quickly become ineffective after a short period of use, as the birds become unresponsive to the consistent noise as a ‘threat’, with the device output remaining unchanged. For example, before turning to Primetake’s specialist bird scaring cartridges, many of our clients in aviation relied upon stationary gas bangers, which, even when firing, would regularly have birds perched on top of the barrels.
Performance & Flexibility
Primetake’s bird scaring bangers cartridge range offers a vast amount of variability in performance and flexibility, with seven 12-gauge pistol cartridge varieties and seven 12-gauge shotgun varieties, preventing birds becoming accustomed and unresponsive to the threat. All cartridges can trace using a green pigment, which is particularly amplified at night, before then exploding (reporting) in mid-air, as well the initial bang you get once the cartridge leaves the barrel. The existing range offers a degree of flexibility, with long- and short-range cartridges available to enable closer contact, and various reporting timings possible. Longer range cartridges contain a higher concentration of flash powder and are particularly applicable to reaching bird flocks that tend to maintain higher altitudes, such as Geese, with the option to modify the report (bang) decibel level for optimising to a specific species of bird.
Technical Effectiveness of Primetake’s Bird Scaring Bangers
Primetake’s technical research and development team have previously conducted research into noise frequency parameters for birds. Consequently, Primetake’s bird scaring bangers are specifically designed to peak at between one and four kilohertz, around 150 decibels, a frequency directly within a bird’s hearing range. Whilst the technical team have the capability to make the bang even louder, our wildlife sacring cartridges are specifically fine-tuned to a target decibel range. The technical team have previously presented their findings to the World Birdstrike Association, helping to extend existing knowledge for airfield operators and affiliated researchers. The Primetake technical team continue to offer technical advice and consultancy services.
Traditional Bird Scaring Bangers vs Emerging Technologies
Primetake’s research team continue to find that artificial bird scaring technology and traditional methods of bird scaring are most effective when used in tandem, as part of an airport’s key arsenal against Birdstrikes. Whilst bird scaring technology is moving in the right direction, airports still require the use of more traditional bird scaring cartridges, as the method is still most effective in dispersing resistant bird flocks, by triggering a flight response. Whilst it’s possible to replicate a bang or smoke digitally with technology, as with humans, these solutions do not appeal to a birds’ senses naturally, in the same way that Primetake’s bird scaring banger cartridges can. Other bird deterrents, like lasers, radars, and sirens still have their place in an operator’s arsenal of airfield bird strike deterrents, but they are not a replacement for bird scaring cartridges.
Upcoming Bird Scaring Banger Developments for late 2024:
Primetake remains committed to constant innovation, and as the UK leader in munitions and pyrotechnics, the brand continues to expand its product portfolio. The latest additions to our bird scaring bangers cartridge range encompass integrating the option of a screech to bang solution, with various sounds available. Please feel free to get in touch with the team for more information.