Sport and working hawks and falcons

Here are some photos of our favorite hawks. These are not mine, of course, but those of Meri Patni, the Raj Dulari. Back in her ancestral home in Kashmir, her family was famous throughout northern India for their trained hawks.

Meri Piari Patni was asked for a cup of tea, but she said that she was busy in the backyard.
Ah, the patience of a husband.

A female hawk

A harris hawk
The Harris's Hawk is now widely used in European towns to scare pigeons and starlings.
There have been recent (as of 2005) reports of escaped Harris Hawks breeding in the wild in England.
Many airports use falconers to scare these birds away from the land around runways and reduce the risk of birdstrikes on planes. Animal welfare issues aside, it is an interesting endevor. Falconers employed in these situations and in airports generally train their birds not to kill, but rather to drive and scare the birds away. John James Audubon gave this bird its English name in honor of his ornithological companion, financial supporter, and friend Edward Harris.
They are catagorised as "least concern" and do not qualify as threatened, nor near threatened.
This method of driving away birds is proven very effective at Rotterdam Airport and others.
Geese and gulls cause the most serious bird strike incidents. Other approaches try to scare away the birds using frightening devices, for example sounds, lights, pyrotechnics, radio-controlled airplanes, decoy animals/corpses, lasers, etc.

A gyrfalcon patrols New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Whether hawks are kept primarily for sport, subsistence hunting, or airport work, they are special creatures.