Air Force Recruits Falcons to Drive Away Airplane-Threatening Birds

Birds and planes don’t mix.

But the Air Force is finding that the right kind of bird can keep the wrong kind of bird clear of the runway.

“Sugar,” a peregrine falcon, is flying for the Air Force at far less expense to taxpayers than other Pentagon warbirds.

She has no radar-evading Stealth technology or firepower in the conventional sense. Her weapon is attitude, a “Top Gun” swagger that makes clear to other birds who rules the skies.

Sugar showed off her skills recently at this eastern Washington air base, one of six U.S. bases that have started falcon programs in the last three years.

On the tarmac, her human trainer waved a lure--a quail leg tied to a rope swung from a 6-foot pole--to entice the falcon to dive as if pursuing prey.

The mottled brown-black bird folded her wings back to gain speed as she dove, then furiously flapped as she neared the ground and homed in on the lure.

She whizzed by within inches of the target and rocketed skyward again, ready to make another run. Peregrine falcons can exceed 200 mph in a dive--faster than any other living creature.

“She knows this is a game,” and that there is no point in attacking the lure, said licensed falconer David Knutson. “My job is the art of becoming a partner with birds of prey and letting them do what they do, which is pursue prey.”

As Sugar was put through her paces, a pair of gulls circling a few hundred yards away suddenly shrieked and flew away, apparently recognizing her distinctive pointed wings and flight style.

“It’s in their biology that this is their natural predator, so they’ll stay wide if they see the falcon,” Knutson said.

Knutson, aided by Sugar and two other falcons, patrols the runway several times a day during lulls between takeoffs and landings. He’s at the base eight to 12 hours a day, five days a week, when bird activity is heaviest, from February through October.

Knutson, who has hunted with falcons for 30 years, has been under contract to safeguard Fairchild’s runways since 1997. Base commanders took the initiative after a Fairchild-based KC-135 aerial-refueling plane sustained $43,000 in damage from a collision with a bird. Fairchild has spent as much as $75,000 in a single year on such repairs.

The base previously used shotguns to try to get rid of the gulls, geese and ducks drawn to the base with its surrounding brush, wheat fields and wetlands.

“When I first came out here, it was a frolicking zoo,” Knutson recalled. “But now we’ve changed the biology of the runway area.”

Fairchild has had no bird-aircraft strikes that required any repairs since Knutson and his birds signed on, according to Maj. Monte Young of the base safety office.

“He’s been very effective in deterring the problems,” Young said.

Another falconer employed by Knutson began working last fall at McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma.

“It’s a natural method,” said Capt. Rob Frink of the McChord safety office. “We’re not putting pesticides out there or shooting the birds.”

This year, the base is paying $40,000 for five months of falcon protection. McChord spent $548,000 repairing bird-airplane damage last year, much of it to repair a jet engine on a C-141 transport that sucked in a bird.

Other Air Force bases that have begun falcon programs in the last three years include McConnell in Kansas, McGuire in New Jersey, Scott in Illinois and Travis in California.

A few U.S. bases in England are following suit, said Lt. Curt Burney, a wildlife ecologist with the Air Force’s Bird-Aircraft Strike Hazard program at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Interest in bird-dispersal programs grew after the 1995 crash of an AWACS surveillance jet at Alaska’s Elmendorf Air Force Base. All 24 crew members were killed when several Canada geese were sucked into the two left-side engines shortly after takeoff.

From 1985 through 1997--the most recent year for which figures are available--the Air Force received 34,830 reports of its planes striking birds, resulting in $470 million in repairs. Air Force records show the majority of the strikes cause no significant aircraft damage and occur at altitudes below 500 feet.

Almost since aviation began, airfield managers have searched for ways to keep birds away from runways. Common methods include noisemakers, plastic falcon decoys and killing birds with guns or poison. Ponds near runways can be filled in to discourage birds from nesting and feeding there.

When birds can’t be dispersed, runway use is often curbed at times of day when birds are most active.

Falcons are ideal for bases with species that are fearful of the 2-pound predators, Burney said. But other means are necessary to deal with some larger birds.

“We try to stress that falcons can be a great tool to use, but they’re just one tool in the box,” he said.

Falconry has advantages over other methods because it uses birds’ natural fears, said Richard Dolbeer, a bird-aircraft strike expert who heads a U.S. Department of Agriculture wildlife research center in Sandusky, Ohio.

Noisemakers are often ineffective over time because birds learn that the racket--while alarming--poses no danger, he said. Falconry doesn’t involve moving of earth or making other habitat changes and is a better public-relations move than killing birds.

“I don’t think you can make a universal statement that falconry will work at every airfield, just like you can’t say that about any of the other methods,” he said. “But there definitely is a role falconry can play in making runways safer.”