Farmers using falcons to scare off crop-eating birds

(LATimes) - Falconers bring an ancient twist to modern farming. They're not cheap, but neither is netting. And the 'stooping' technique can be more effective than scarecrows, noise and flash tape.

To keep pesky birds away from his blueberries, veteran farmer Mark Flamm has blared recordings of avian distress calls, shot noisy "bird bangers" from a pistol and ordered an employee to shake a gravel-filled bottle at the sky.

He even went old-school and planted a scarecrow.

"That didn't work," said Flamm, 58, who once lost a fifth of his berries to his feathered foe despite the efforts, "though I got a picture of a bird sitting on the scarecrow."

That's when he called in the falcons.

Starting three years ago, the central Washington state grower hired Vahe Alaverdian of Falcon Force, a master falconer based in La Crescenta, to drive out the flocks of sparrows and starlings that were fattened off Flamm's fields.

Using a hunting technique that some think dates back to the Bronze Age, Alaverdian prompted his raptors to launch into a series of high-speed dives, called "stooping," meant to mimic the capture of winged prey. The maneuvers — not unlike an aeronautical war dance — trigger an innate panic attack in the fruit-munching birds, who are either paralyzed with fear or flee for new surroundings.

The falcons are trained to scare, not snack on, their targets.

"It's amazing. Suddenly all the other birds go quiet because they know they could be eaten," said Flamm, who has seen his crop loss from birds dwindle to around 3%.

In the age-old face-off between farmer and bird, falconry has presented a relatively new way to tip the scales in man's favor.