Meet the birds of prey that work at hotels - The Washington Post

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The next time you’re lounging poolside at a palatial resort, you may notice a hotel worker who seems odd in a luxury setting: a professional falconer strolling around with a raptor on their gloved arm.

Though falconry has historically been used for hunting, the modern practice has found a home at resorts across North America, Britain and the United Arab Emirates. The birds of prey function as a pseudo force field, providing an environmentally conscious form of pest control. According to the Los Angeles Times, there were 137 active permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for predatory-bird pest management between 2007 and 2019, with hotels, museums, vineyards, airports and even landfills getting involved.

“The presence of these predatory birds is a natural, nonlethal means of intimidating and scaring away nuisance birds,” said Paige Hansen, a falconer at coastal Georgia’s Sea Island Resort.

During the spring and the summer in Sea Island, Ga., Hansen walks around the beach club with a raptor on her arm to deter boat-tailed grackles from stealing food. The resort employs three dedicated falconers to care for the birds. That includes daily weighing and feeding, training and hunting exercises, and clearing their enclosure. The resort’s roster includes six Harris’s hawks, one peregrine falcon, one Eurasian eagle owl, one barn owl and an Eastern screech owl.

In addition to keeping the property free from these chatty, raven-like grackles, Sea Island’s falconry program has also served as a major draw for nature lovers and animal enthusiasts over the past decade.

According to Jon Kent, the property’s director of outdoor pursuits, the falconry program debuted in 2011 strictly as a pest-control measure. But interest from guests created demand for organized activities ranging from a brief Hawk Walk — where guests head to nearby Rainbow Island, try on a falconer glove and practice recalling the bird — to the full Falconry Experience, a program that offers an opportunity to watch Earth’s fastest bird, the peregrine falcon, hunt its flying prey.

On Mexico’s Caribbean coast, just north of Playa del Carmen, the Rosewood Mayakoba employs a small army of falconers equipped with Harris’s hawks — a species prized for its intelligence and agreeable disposition.

While there is no specific training regimen that the hawks require to scare off pesky birds, raptors are rewarded handsomely for their presence with abundant opportunity for fine dining, free flying and getting some much-needed beauty sleep.

Manuel García, the engineering director at Rosewood Mayakoba, said the hawks get a “high-quality diet” of quail, rabbit, chicken and rat, which helps domesticate them. Biologists and veterinarians who are trained to care for birds of prey tend to the hawks’ health needs. And while the birds are earning their keep, they have been known to slack off on occasion, going off-property to soak in the splendor of the Yucatán coast from a literal bird’s-eye view.

“From time to time, hawks feel like flying a little further and visiting the neighboring hotels, prompting their handler to run across the property in search of the bird,” García said.

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Meet the birds of prey that work at hotels - The Washington Post
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