A Japanese village has ten scarecrows for every living resident
Nagoro, on the Japanese island of Shikoku, is home to 35 people and more than 350 scarecrows. The humble field decoy, meant to keep crows and sparrows off fresh seed, has turned into a village art form, a charity fundraiser and a British record holder, even as farmers swap it for shinier deterrents.
The classic scarecrow is a human-shaped figure in cast-off clothes, planted in an open field to put birds off seed and young crops. Its weakness is familiarity: birds get used to any fixed object, and the same fading effect applies to machinery such as windmills. Modern farms have moved on. In California, growers tie reflective aluminised film ribbons to plants so they flash in the sun, others use propane-powered noise guns, and one New York winery tried inflatable dancing tube men.
Regional names hint at a long folk history. In Scotland the figure is a tattie bogle, and in Gaelic bodach-rocais, the old man of the rooks. Popular culture adopted it too: L. Frank Baum's Scarecrow of Oz, played by Ray Bolger in the 1939 film, the British character Worzel Gummidge, who first appeared on radio in 1935, and villains of that name in both the DC and Marvel comic universes.
Since the 1990s, scarecrow festivals have spread through British villages. The one at Urchfont in Wiltshire, the first in southern England, can draw up to 10,000 visitors over the May Day holiday. Kettlewell in North Yorkshire has held one since 1994, and Scotland's first came to West Kilbride in 2004. Some displays carry pointed messages: in Orton, Cumbria, villagers once built a Dalek exterminating a wind turbine to voice opposition to a local wind farm. Many raise money for charities.
The idea travels. Nova Scotia's autumn pumpkin people sport pumpkin heads while fiddling or riding wooden horses, and in 2015 the Philippine province of Isabela launched the week-long Bambanti Festival, named in the local language. The record for the biggest gathering belongs to a farm park in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, which assembled 3,812 scarecrows on 7 August 2014.
Source: Scarecrow
