Peafowl Control Effort to Begin : Wildlife: Residents north of the Foothill Freeway are pessimistic that the remedies, meant to deter but not harm the birds, will work.

The city will launch an educational program next month aimed at teaching residents how to keep peafowl from visiting their yards, but already residents who called for trapping the loud and messy birds say they have little hope it will succeed.

The campaign will kick off with an insert in the city’s November newsletter advising residents on the types of flowers that peafowl find distasteful and suggesting deterrents, such as keeping gardens well-pruned and spraying the birds with garden hoses.

Later, a color brochure about the birds will be published, describing their history and reiterating methods for warding them off.

Several homeowners who have complained that the exotic birds are disrupting their well-to-do neighborhoods north of the Foothill Freeway say they have already tried such homespun remedies and found that they don’t work.

“These things are about as common today as a second car in a driveway,” said Scott Downie, who has already tried unsuccessfully to deter the 150 birds that are living in his neighborhood, which is known as the Oaks. “They are not going away. They’re here to stay.”

Downie and other residents north of the Foothill Freeway asked the council this summer to trap and relocate the birds as a way to reduce the growing flock, now estimated at from 500 to 700.

The birds, whose ancestors were brought to the area by pioneer developer Lucky Baldwin about 100 years ago, have historically flocked near the Los Angeles State and County Arboretum south of the freeway.

Recently, though, they have been spreading north, where they feast on well-manicured flower beds and roost noisily on rooftops.

After a Sept. 22 public hearing at which residents south of the freeway presented a petition against trapping, the City Council voted 4 to 0 for the education effort, rejecting a more aggressive proposal to collect eggs and provide traps to relocate peafowl from parts of the city north of the freeway. Councilman Robert C. Harbicht, the only member to favor trapping, was absent.

Mayor George Fasching said: “If a person has a problem with peafowl, there are means he can use to keep peafowl off his property. But it takes a little individual effort.”

However, residents to the south, who have long lived with the birds, say the majority of residents like the exotic birds as a symbol of the city, and there is no need to trap with the use of deterrents.

“Arcadia is embracing the birds as opposed to taking some kind of trapping program like other cities,” said Melody Wall, who has collected 340 signatures supporting the birds.

“Quite frankly,” said Fasching, “we made quite a few surveys of the north part of town and we didn’t find any large congregations of peafowl, so we didn’t think it warranted any program on the city’s part other than education.”

He said residents could provide their own traps to capture peafowl on their property and Los Angeles County animal control would pick them up.

“I don’t see this as a solution,” Harbicht said.