Hurd, a falconer, and Cheddar, a juvenile Harris’s hawk, are contractors hired by Tampa International Airport to visit a few times a month and deal with unwanted guests.
It’s a 3,000-year-old, human-devised method for fighting a 100-year-old, human-made problem.
Airfield operations compliance manager Brett Bell is the guy driving the truck.
Planes take off and land at Tampa International Airport each day carrying thousands of passengers blissfully unaware of what’s happening in the giant, grassy fields below. Bell and his small team are the specks down there, looking out for the even-smaller specks — herons, egrets, turkey vultures, pigeons, gulls and so on — threatening to damage or bring down airplanes.
One of the hawks was profiled in the Mike Rowe episode on the airport in the “How America Works” series. Preview below
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