BIRD ON BIRD PEST CONTROL

摘要

Pests, especially the kind that fly, are a common problem for sea ports, creating an unsightly and dangerous mess that is often expensive to clean up. Luckily for port owners and workers, there is Hope: a 10-year-old Harris Hawk. Hope has been deployed, along with his handler, Layla Bennett (both pictured above), to the port of ABP Southampton to pursue a natural approach to pest control through a process called hawking, which is helping to keep the port pest-free. ABP Southampton is the UK's number one vehicle handling port, with around 750,000 vehicles passing overthe quayside during 2013, and gulls' feeding habits of dropping seashells from a height pose a risk of damaging the ranks of new cars awaiting import or export on the estate. Hope and Bennett are responsible for scaring off the port's resident gull population. Hope's frequent patrols of the sky deterthe gulls from nesting around the port, putting an end to the problem.