That was my first thought too when I read this article - why throw the baby out with the bath water by banning the machines which are seemingly pretty efficient

That was my first thought too when I read this article - why throw the baby out with the bath water by banning the machines which are seemingly pretty efficient at what they do? Some naïve thoughts here on more clever approaches that you haven’t mentioned are some sort of noise machines that deter the birds from roosting in the fields. At risk of driving the birds away, could provide a dedicated roosting place for them instead and use some sort of incentive (maybe sound again?) to get them to roost there instead of the olive fields. There’s a lot of innovation to be had here and as you said a financial incentive would be more than enough to get the farmers to cook up these kind of schemes.