Life Is Pure Hitchcock On Block of Capitol Hill

He hit the Department of Transportation, where staff misunderstood the whole situation and believed it to involve only one tree. A possible solution, suggested spokesman Erik Linden, would be "procuring a sizable net to throw over the tree." The net would keep out the birds, the birds would go elsewhere and voila! The guano would be gone.

Then Linden actually visited the 1600 block of Potomac Avenue.

"It is more than one tree," he said, sounding almost defeated. Suddenly, the netting solution had become a whole lot more expensive -- and extensive. "This is going to take a deeper investigation than we first thought," Linden said. The only solution he could outright discuss was: "We don't want to cut down the trees."

Meanwhile, the residents of Potomac Avenue are getting antsier and angrier.

The bird droppings, said James Rychner, 45, who works at the University of Maryland as director of development for the Division of Student Affairs, are "very unhealthy and quite a disgusting situation." He has lived on the block for more than five years and calls this year's starling infestation "by far the worst I have lived through." For more than three years, he added, "I have tried . . . to get D.C. government to take some action, and it has always turned into 'pass the buck' between the Department of Health, Public Works, transportation services -- each pointing to the other agencies with no action."

Shank, who four years ago bought her first house on Potomac Avenue and has unfulfilled visions of gardening in the front yard, expects that city agencies will dither long enough for the birds to fly elsewhere, as they've done every year in the past, for the fall and winter.

Late summer is prime time for great flocks of blackbirds and starlings. "The population is huge right now," says Scott Sillett, a research wildlife biologist at the National Zoo, "because you have all the adults, plus all the young who were produced who are now independent."

So even before this season ends, residents such as Shank have given up on this year and are worrying about next year. "The city needs to do something before they nest and have their babies," said the 44-year-old Department of State employee. "Because once that happens, they won't be going anywhere."

And once that happens, the residents will, again, be enduring a similar summer to this one. A summer in which the problem gets so bad -- so acrid that the stench clings to their clothes, their skin and the small hairs lining their noses -- that it will, once again, resist any short-term solutions.

Take the Public Works "flusher" truck that sluiced down Potomac Avenue midmorning on Thursday.

"Now, see?" asked retiree Betty Perkins, glaring at the orange water truck. She has lived on the street for 43 years and has watched the bird situation get worse and worse in the past few years. "What's he washing? The curb." She sounded disgusted, as if all that clumped-up, caked-on mess of fecal matter was way too copious for some quick, drive-by spray to accomplish anything.

"He washes that, and tonight, it'll be messed up again," intoned her brother, James Perkins, rocking on the front porch and looking unimpressed at the splash that did almost nothing about the feathers, feces and swarms of flies coating the sidewalk.

"Have you ever seen 'The Birds'?" asked Betty Perkins, envisioning the dark thunderclouds that hover in the sky when the starlings return to roost each evening. "That's what it's like."

Except that "The Birds," the 1963 film, is Hitchcock horror that ends with the final credits. The birds of Potomac Avenue? That's a recurring horror.

About the only silver lining is this: Bird poop, they say, brings good luck.