The landfill operators tried everything – bird wires, reflective tape, inflated (fake) owls, noisemakers and what amounted to a rotating disco ball.
But none of it drove off the thousands of seagulls that hunt, scavenge, feed, defecate and generally raise the potential for disease at the dumps of Orange County.
At one point, the hills and garbage seemed a blur of white feathers and orange beaks. Trash truck drivers couldn’t safely see where to dump their loads. Screeching gulls rained garbage on nearby homes.
And the people running the landfills, in what they thought was their last effort, resorted to noise – issuing blasts from propane cannons and shotguns. Sadly, the booms disturbed area residents and their dogs more than they bummed out the gulls.
Enter Adam Chavez.
Chavez, 52, owns and operates Adam’s Falconry Service, which uses 20 highly trained and highly expensive birds of prey – from Harris’s hawks to peregrine and saker falcons and even a rare Eurasian eagle-owl – to drive away birds of pestilence from human spaces.
Chavez effectively applies an ancient technique, falconry, to solve a modern problem, bird pollution.
His birds are trained and, depending on their mood, eager to fly into a flock of supposed nuisance birds, kill off one or more members, and return to their handler for a healthier meal.
The smaller birds are not stupid; they’re biologically wired to dodge hunter birds. Soon after seeing a couple of comrades fall to predators, they tend to avoid all encounters. In this fashion, predator birds can clear everything from airports to vineyards of birds (and other creatures, such as rabbits) that, in some cases, can pose a lethal threat to humans.
All for a price that can rival technological answers to the same problem.
Chavez’s is one of a handful of bird-vs.-bird abatement services that operate throughout Southern California.
“These are man-made problems we’re taking care of,” he says. “We’ve created a lot of these artificial environments where the birds aren’t supposed to be.”
One of Chavez’s falconers, Jen Stephenson, learned to train predator birds from a neighbor in her home town, Menifee.
On a recent morning, she worked with Shira, a chatty 5-year-old Harris’s hawk, to rid an Irvine housing project of its crows.
The pair rode in Stephenson’s Toyota like cops on patrol, Stephenson at the wheel and Shira perched on a stand in the back seat. Their reputation preceded them. When the white Prius turned down a street, crows would scatter, not needing (or wanting) to see Shira emerge from the back seat.
“I love doing this; I like being oustide,” Stephenson says.
Of Shira – a predator whose talons can eviscerate a crow in a few seconds – Stephenson adds:
“She’s a sweet, good bird.”
Big bird numbers
The bird-to-bird pest- control business is small but growing, at least locally.
Over the past five years, falconers across the country have received 144 licenses for commercial bird abatement through falconry, according to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. California operators got about a third of those, with 51 such licenses given to master falconers, including 23 that were issued in 2016. Comparatively, since 2011, the state with the second-most commercial falconer operations was Washington, where 15 permits were issued over five years.
Potential customers are everywhere. Golf courses, community associations, berry farms – any business or public property with a lot of land, a lot of potential bird food, and a need to not have bird poop or bird disease – can be a candidate to hire a falconer.
The problem that drives the business is health, not comfort. Seagulls have been known to carry salmonella and even drug-resistant E. coli. Pigeons and starlings can spread fungi. Bird roosts can harbor parasites that make their way to people.
At airports, bird strikes caused 279 human injuries between 1990 and 2013, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“There are many, many tiers of the financial hardships and human health hazards (birds) can cause,” says Vahe Alaverdian, who works with wineries and theme parks through his Los Angeles-area business, Falcon Force.
During peak seasons, Alaverdian can employ up to 24 contract falconers to service blueberry and cherry farms in Washington state and Central Coast wineries, where they chase away pestilent starlings.
The results can be powerful.
In May, Heal the Bay rated Dana Point’s Monarch Beach the fourth-most polluted stretch of ocean in California. Three months later, the organization upgraded the beach to an A/A+ grade. City officials attributed the quick turnaround to contracting with Chavez and his bird, Shira.
“The city is thrilled that the results of this demonstration study were so overwhelmingly positive,” said Lisa Zawaski, Dana Point’s senior water quality engineer.
“No birds were hurt or injured by this natural deterrent.”
Not everyone views falconry in such a positive light.
The animal rights group PETA has historically opposed falconry, encouraging businesses to use decoy predators and anti-roosting devices instead.
“People need to live and let live, and PETA disagrees with a strategy of shock and awe (and kill) for birds who often were imported into this country and are only a small ‘nuisance,’ not a life-threatening risk,” said Stephanie Bell, senior director of cruelty casework for the organization.
“Pigeons are doves, birds of peace, unlike the inconvenienced humans who want to live in a sterile world of concrete and steel, devoid of other life forms.”
Modern world
To run his company, Chavez, who still works in the pharmaceutical industry, applies the lessons he learned in getting an MBA and his wife’s knowledge as a certified public accountant.
Though he’s been a falconer since the age of 12, Chavez launched his business five years ago, using savings to get started.
Little about it has been cheap.
One bird can cost up to $3,500; GPS transmitters can cost $1,000. Other expenses include tablet devices to track the birds in the event they get hurt or tangled in something, vaccines, vet bills, $100 hoods that keep the birds calm, restaurant-quality food, and even helium for a giant red balloon used for training.
In return for his attentiveness (or perhaps because of the abundance of skinned, coturnix quail), Chavez has created a squadron of loyal workers who always return to his glove.
He’s reluctant to discuss how much he charges, saying he doesn’t want competitors to underbid him, but public records indicate the service isn’t cheap. Orange County, which started using falconry to clear its three landfills in 2013, spends about $250,000 a year for the service.
Chavez says he takes care to pair the work with the right bird on each job.
An aplomado falcon works best for agricultural clients plagued by starlings and sparrows. The landfill sites are frequented by hybrid falcons and Harris’s hawks. A bigger job, like spooking Canadian geese off a golf course, might require a bigger predator, like Chavez’s Eurasian eagle-owl Bo.
Chavez cares for each of his charges with the fastidious attention a coach might apply to star athletes. Birds train regularly, though they can get days off depending on weather conditions and where they are in the molting cycle. Chavez also makes adjustments for injury – his birds have been hurt after crashing into fences, power lines, windows and other man-made hazards.
Each bird weighs in daily to determine how much restaurant-grade quail it can eat.
“You want to feed them as much as you can,” Chavez said.
“But you don’t want them to get fat and happy.”
Among Chavez’s stars is Anna, a 10-year-old peregrine falcon. Within seconds of having her hood removed Anna recently made a run at the ocean, looking to hunt seagulls. Chavez followed her every move on a tablet synced with her two GPS trackers.
Within minutes, she had closed in on a beach 2.2 miles away, traveling about 300 feet in the air and effectively frightening away all prey for miles.
After flying like this for a few minutes, she returned to Chavez and the meat he had prepared for her, carefully stored away in Tupperware containers.
“I do like to say she likes me,” Chavez said.
“But she really likes my food.”
Staff writer Erika Ritchie contributed to this report.
Contact the writer: lawilliams@scng.com
