San Antonio Express-News (TX) 
 
A Section Page 01A 
 
Falcon fear factor 
  
Guillermo X. Garcia EXPRESS-NEWS STAFF WRITER   
  
Publication Date : January 19, 2007 
  
Jeff Diaz has a message for the tens of thousands of noisy grackles whose messy presence downtown is the bane of city officials. 
Be afraid, be very afraid.

After years of unsuccessful efforts -- from deafening explosions to flashing lights -- to scare the pesky birds from their downtown and River Walk roosts, city officials hope Diaz's squadron of raptors will fly to the city's rescue.

An experienced falconer, Diaz, 45, is proposing to use up to a dozen African Augur hawks, Faker falcons and European eagle owls to scare the 35,000 to 45,000 grackles from the heart of downtown.

It is a natural, environmentally friendly alternative to poison, flashing lights and thundering cannons, Diaz said.

But it's not going to be friendly for the grackles. Although some may be killed in the process, the idea is to scare them off.

"Once they see the hawks or falcons, it is just tremendous to watch them panic and scatter so quickly," said Lincoln St. George, river operations superintendent of the newly created city Downtown Operations Department. "There is nothing like a natural predator to put the word out that the grackles better stay away, or else."

St. George said it may be the first time a city contracts with a falconer to deal with unwanted winged squatters.

For years, city officials have fretted over how to get the grackles, protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, to vacate the premises and trees in the River Walk and Convention Center area.

Officials have tried bird bomb guns, firecrackers and flashing lights, as well as placing speakers in trees with recorded sounds of predators and distress cries.

Currently, city workers use German-made "bird bomb guns" that use a firecracker-like device to scare nesting birds. But the adaptable grackles quickly get used to the sound, temporarily taking flight and then quickly returning to the same spot, St. George said.

Although it hasn't been tried locally, another method that has failed elsewhere is feeding noxious birds Avitrol, so-called crazy corn, which gives them a "bad, hallucinogenic-like experience," Diaz said.

Diaz said his program works because his raptors trigger the natural, genetically-coded "hunter-hunted" instinct inherent in all birds.

"Raptors have been hunting prey for hundreds of thousands of years, and that fear (prey have) is hard-wired into their DNA; they don't forget," he said.

"They do scare the piss out of the grackles to get the heck out of the area," St. George said. "When grackles see those (six-foot wingspans) above 'em, they get the fear of God in them."

He is finalizing negotiations with the city to develop a formal plan for officials to consider. St. George said the fee will have to be less than what the city now spends on dispersal efforts.

The plan would be in two stages. First, the raptors would roust the grackles out of their current roosting sites to a nearby area -- probably Travis Park.

"From there, we'd push them along further east, by imprinting in them the danger they face if they were to return" to the downtown sites, Diaz said.

He said the scaring effect "will last the entire nesting season," during which time the prodigious grackles can have two sets of offspring in as little as nine weeks, Diaz said. "But the adults pass on to the young the 'fear factor' that can last the entire season."

He'd bring his birds from his Corpus Christi headquarters to San Antonio for up to three roosting seasons over the winter months.

The raptors would take to the downtown sky in conjunction with laser lights or strobes as part of the "hazing process." The grackles then would associate the lights with the "fear trigger" brought on by having seen the raptors flying overhead.

"It's tried and true, it works simply, naturally, and it is guaranteed to keep them away," Diaz said.

ggarcia@express-news.net