J.F.K. Falcons

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! And they don’t mix very well. In collisions between the two, birds certainly get the worst of it. But aircraft have also been damaged , and sometimes humans die as well. It’s a worldwide problem. In Israel, more fighter planes have been lost to birds than enemy fire. One way airports have dealt with the problem is to gun down birds who fly into their airspace. But over the last two years, one of the nation’s busiest airports has been using Falcons as natural predators to scare sea gulls away. And it’s reduced the number of shootings dramatically. From New York, Neal Rauch has this report.