Hawks Put to Work to Evict Pigeons

A falconer who helped chase sea gulls away from planes at John F. Kennedy International Airport is using hawks to quell a deluge of pigeon droppings in a park near bustling Times Square in the heart of the city.

Master falconer Tom Cullen, a leather glove running up his left arm, whistled commands in Bryant Park on Thursday to Mocha, a Harris hawk whose patrols encourage the pigeons to move elsewhere.

The park, which stretches a block long on busy 42nd Street, is a popular spot for lunching and lounging, but it has been plagued by pigeons and their droppings, park administrators said.

Daniel Biederman, chief of Bryant Park Restoration Corp., said the group learned that falcons had been used to keep pigeons away from the Tower of London.

“Besides droppings on people’s heads, they eat flowers and they are not a native species. They don’t really belong here,” Biederman said of the troublesome birds.

Cullen said that although his hawks do not normally feed on pigeons, the birds of prey would put a scare into them.

The hawk patrol has been in place since Monday, and park officials will decide at the end of the week whether to extend the program for a month.

“We’re trying to reduce the number of pigeons without going through anything like trapping or poisoning,” Cullen said. “This is an environmentally safe way of doing it.”

Cullen, who devised a massive “bird abatement” program to deal with sea gulls at Kennedy International Airport, sees progress.

“There’s been a fairly dramatic difference,” he said. One little group of pigeons could be seen huddled together on a large branch overhead as Cullen pursed his lips and whistled to summon Mocha from her perch atop a kiosk.

“It’s kind of a shuttle game,” Cullen said. “They are not going to die just because they leave here. They’re going to be someone else’s problem. That’s life.”