Birds of prey used to keep other birds away from Muskoka landfill

Birds of prey are working overtime at Muskoka landfills to keep unwanted pests out.

Using birds of prey to manage bird mitigation isn’t a new thing but it is new to the District of Muskoka and some of its landfills.

For the second year, Andrew Carroll with Royal Canadian Falconry out of Haliburton has been called on to bring his birds to help reduce health risks, property damage and even unwanted bird attacks on staff.

Today, he’s at the landfill in Bracebridge with ‘Hara,’ a Harris hawk he started training seven years ago.

“Falconry based bird control is using trained birds of prey like eagles, falcons, or hawks like Hara here to deter nuisance birds from specific locations. There is an abundance of gulls in the area these are gulls, and they are causing a disturbance for the workers,” said Carroll.

The birds can also be a hazard to district staff because of the diseases they can carry. While the birds of prey will attack the unwanted birds at times, they mostly just help keep the birds away by fear.

“The instinct from the gulls is to leave the area because they don’t want to be eaten by the predator,” said Carroll.

“In the past, the district has tried difference noise deterrents, they’ve tried decoys, different floating ribbons that are meant to detract different birds and they all were very temporary,” said Renee Recoskie with the District of Muskoka. “They still kept coming back and they kept growing in concern, so this, so far, has been the only program we’ve seen it sort of better off for us.”

“It’s very effective on sites like this where it’s the gull’s main food source. You are going to have to be here a lot because they are going to want to come in and eat every single day,” explained Carroll.

And that is why they are here with the birds of prey almost every day during the summer.

The program costs about $80,000 a year but the district says it is incredibly effective. As for the company that runs the birds, it says it does offer educational classes to the public out of its Haliburton office.