A shopping mall wanted to evict its pigeons. So it hired a hawk.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. — With his auburn feathers, white tail and three-foot wingspan, Remmy, a Harris’s hawk, makes for an impressive — and incongruous — sight at an upscale outdoor shopping mall anchored by Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.

But he’s supposed to be there. He has a job to do.

Remmy was hired two years ago by Broadway Plaza after an extensive renovation that added 20 new stores, restaurants, revamped walkways and a two-story parking garage. Unfortunately, the transformed mall attracted not only new customers but also dozens of pigeons, which nested in garage rafters, scavenged for food and splattered the walkways with corrosive and bacteria-infused droppings.

“We had a major pigeon problem and were unsure of the best way to get it under control,” says Shelly Dress, senior manager of property management at the mall.

That’s where Remmy came in. After rejecting other options, such as fabric netting that would prevent pigeon nesting in certain spots, Dress turned to the Hawk Pros, a company based in Southern California that uses falconry to eradicate pest birds. At any given time, the firm has five to 10 birds of prey on assignment at sites such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the U.S. Bank Tower, also in L.A.

Remmy and his colleagues are part of a growing trend of using raptors to intimidate nuisance birds such as pigeons and seagulls, a practice that avoids the use of chemicals and — unlike in the ancient hunting sport of falconry — scares targets but lets them live. Some U.S. farmers deploy them to protect crops. Harris’s hawks patrol the grass courts at Wimbledon and Trafalgar Square in London. Falcons haze pigeons and crows at resorts in Dubai.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/animalia/wp/2018/06/22/a-shopping-mall-wanted-to-evict-its-pigeons-so-it-hired-a-hawk/?utm_term=.b1c359ee8624