THE ARCHIVE

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

‘The Second Coming’, by W.B. Yeats

The RyanAir pilot of flight FR1102 from Frankfurt carrying 166 passengers, was probably not thinking of his school-book Yeats as he performed a heroic emergency landing on November 11th, 2008, at Rome’s Ciampino Airport, after 12 small starlings were sucked into his engines. Nor the USAir pilot who ditched his plane in New York’s Hudson River in January after a collision with birds. What most paying passengers don’t realise is that in today’s busy airways such collisions are not uncommon. In Barcelona, and 95 percent of all Spanish airports, this potentially disastrous threat is reduced by the use of predatory birds, mainly falcons.

Like many airports, Barcelona’s El Prat stands on a natural bird sanctuary. It is built on a low delta near a large urban centre, much like JFK’s Jamaica Bay or Heathrow’s Thames Estuary, and is the perfect place for migrating flocks to eat, rest and resume their seasonal flights. Birds have been flying for 150 million years. Humans began sharing their airspace only about a century ago. Naturally, collisions occur.

Internationally, recorded bird collisions annually cause over $500 million in damages and 500,000 hours of downtime. From 1960 to 2004, 455 military and civil aircraft were reported destroyed, and 405 lives lost, due to crossed paths between birds of steel and those of feathers. Aviation officials have tried many things to deal with the problem, only to find that the cheapest and most ecological method works best.

“Before 1996, when we started here, they used bio-audio sounds, flares, some airports still use lasers, but nothing scares a bird like a falcon,” said Xavi García, 38, of the Barcelona Falcon Centre. “When I send him up, you won’t see another bird for kilometres. Falcons can change migration patterns. Birds get used to lights and sounds. Once a flock sees a falcon, they won’t return for at least a generation.”

Falcons are the fastest animals on earth. Their cruising speed ranges between 40 and 110 kilometres per hour, with a maximum swooping speed clocked at 440 kilometres per hour. Different species fly at different heights. The average falcon weighs a kilo and has a wingspan of 80 to 120 centimetres. “They’re like athletes,” said García. “We weigh them every day. Their diet is poultry and we measure it. If they get fat, like a footballer they don’t perform well. We train them for about three months before they can work. They can live up to 20 years, but normally work for 12 to 15. We breed our own; most centres do.”