While some Central West councils have been complaining of flying fox colonies recently, pest birds are dominating current reduction measures for the simple reason that the bats are native and the birds are not.

Charles Sturt University lecturer in ornithology Dr Maggie Watson has been working across the region researching the birds and helping organisations address the problem.

She said the birds were being found increasingly inland as urbanisation continued and native wildlife retreated to the remaining native habitat.

"People lose touch with native birds and they don't know these birds aren't native," she said.

She said pigeons, currently under fire in Bathurst and Orange, were more of an inconvenience, but starlings in the numbers currently in Dubbo presented a greater challenge.

"They nest in hollows and throw out native birds - they're very aggressive," she said.

In addition to the impact on other birds, Dr Watson said crops were at risk because pastures and green lawns were starlings' natural food sources.

"Dubbo has so many sports fields and they love sports fields," she said.

"They'll descend on grape vines, apple orchards - you name it, they'll go for it."

Dr Watson said with many communities unwilling to sacrifice their trees to remove the nesting areas and falconry a difficult service to access in Australia, mass trapping programs were the main way to cut feral bird populations, although the cost of sending them back to their native Europe was "astronomical" and it made more sense to destroy them.

"There's a technique where you get one bird of the same species and put it in a cage inside a larger cage and that bird calls everybody in," she said.

"It would take a huge effort to make a dent in the population, or we can drop our hands and do nothing."

The main disease risks presented by feral birds are hypersensitivity pneumonitis, an inflammation of the lungs caused inhaling dust from faeces, and psittacosis, which comes from inhaling chlamydia bacteria from infected birds, which can also be carried by parrots and poultry.

Western Local Health District acting communicable diseases and immunisation manager Susan Turcato said the district only encountered one to three cases of psittacosis a year.

The illness carries flu-like symptoms including headaches, chills, a cough and sometimes chest pain and can be treated with antibiotics.

"If you're working with birds of any description, wash your hands thoroughly and avoid kissing birds," she said.

Dr Watson said actions to move bats were not advisable because they caused stress within the colony, which meant they were more likely to abandon their young and shed greater amounts of lyssavirus in the event they bit or scratched a human.

"All you can do is put up a pretty fence and look at these animals, they're really pretty," she said.

Ms Turcato said the district treated up to eight cases of lyssavirus a year, although half were contracted overseas, and only three people had died nationwide since 1996.

She said vaccinating against rabies helped protect people from lyssavirus, but early treatment was also essential,

"The first symptoms are fever and fatigue and people put it down to a flu-like illness, but it progresses to paralysis, delirium and convulsions," she said.

"When it gets to that stage, there's no treatment and they usually die within a week or two."

She said bats should not be touched, even if they needed help.

"Call WIRES - they're trained, they have protective gear and they are vaccinated," she said.