The Ancient Art of Keeping Birds at Bay

If you go into the water and you see a great white shark, what's your reaction? You're not gonna think twice. You're hauling ass to get out of there. Falcons are the great white shark of the sky and birds are terrified of them. My name is Mark Adam. I am the president of Falcon Environmental Services. Our company uses the world's oldest sport, falconry, to protect planes in flight. Birds can be really dangerous to airplanes. If a gull strikes an engine, it can potentially stop it, in which case the aircraft can come out of the sky. There are multiple methods that airports can use to control birds. Sirens, another very common one is pyrotechnics. Birds are not dumb. They get used to that stuff. But one thing that they can never get used to is the instinctive fear of a falcon. Here we raise falcons and when they hatch out, we rear them for three or four days and put them back with the parents. The skills that we use to train our raptors date back to 3000 BC when falconry was first introduced. Utilizing hoods, jesses, and conditioning methods. The birds are trained for about 30 to 60 days where then they go out to our airport operations. On a given day, they are requested numerous times by the control tower to intervene at specific spots on the airfield. At which time, the falcon is deployed and it is allowed to fly around the airport until the birds have been dispersed. When the falconer wants the falcon to come back, all he has to do is take out the lure which has a piece of food on it, swing it around his head, and the falcon will come in in order to be fed. I enjoy bird watching, but I find falconry almost like a chance to see something that happens every day in the wild, but I get a chance to see it up close every day.