DOWNTOWN — The wind rushed by, distorting Fred Seaman’s words.
“Johnny Depp’s loving this wind,” Seaman says.
Up at a vineyard in Southern California, Seaman, 53, and Depp, a falcon — not the actor — are participating in what Seaman calls “a 4,000-year-old cooperative relationship.”
However, Seaman, a falconer, says that relationship has evolved over the past few decades and has led to his presence at the vineyard chasing and frightening away Starlings and other pest birds that threaten the vineyard’s crops.
“This is relatively new technology using falconry for commercial purposes to protect something,” Seaman says.
For his company, Airstrike Bird Control, that “something” is usually agriculture, landfills and resorts.
Depp and Seaman recently left a site, where the wind was still enjoyable for the falcon, but was a little out of the norm for them — an office complex in Santa Monica.
Seaman spent 10 days at The Water Garden off Cloverfield Boulevard, where pests were posing a health and safety problem to the 2,200 employees of the 75 firms with offices there, said Cindy Giordano-Taylor, senior director of marketing at CB Richard Ellis, which manages the 17-acre property.
“There were 50 to 100 [seagulls and pigeons] at a time who had been spending time at the beach rummaging through trash cans eating food,” Giordano-Taylor said. “They find their way over here to the man-made lake to bathe and drink and, how do you put it nicely? There were bird droppings. They were ending their day here after sitting in trash cans.”
The 1 1/2 acre lake was a hot-spot for the birds, said Kris Hedin Thursday, the falconer who has been at the property for three weeks with her 3-year-old Harris hawk Mia Farrow.
Hedin stood near the edge of the lake with Farrow perched on her leather glove next to a vacated mini-waterfall that Hedin said used to be occupied by dozens of birds at a time.
Now almost a month into their indefinite contract with The Water Garden, only one hawk, Farrow, is needed to keep the pests away. At the start there were three to four.
One is still enough for most of the seagulls, who either avoid the property entirely or for the more daring, fly a little lower, see the hawk and quickly shoot off in the opposite direction.
The focus, Seaman said, is not on the falcons catching and killing the gulls, but rather on protecting sites from pests whose fear of the falcon or hawks, both predators, is enough to drive them away.
Since Farrow is not allowed to catch and kill gulls and seagulls, the hawk, who Hedin said normally eats jackrabbits, is fed quail meat.
“I’m not free-flying her here. The presence of a predator is enough to frighten them away. Except for George, he’s kind of the bane of my existence right now,” Hedin said.
George sat in the middle of the lake. From the shore the seagull almost blends in with the ducks around him, but Hedin and Farrow both had a hawk eye fixed on the bird, whom Hedin learned this week limped from an injury.
Hedin spends her hours dealing with “George and a few of his friends” and the occasional passer-by who stops to ask a question. Those hours change daily to avoid making a pattern to which the pests can adapt.
People who come up to Hedin ask her two questions. “Is that a falcon?” (Farrow is in fact a hawk) or “Are you just hanging out with a falcon?”
Falconers, even non-commercial ones, are licensed by federal and state authorities.
Hedin, like all hopeful falconers, began her career with a two-year apprenticeship with a master falconer before joining the company two months ago.
Hedin lives in Santa Cruz, Calif. but is temporarily staying in Santa Monica where she is with Farrow constantly, except for nights when Farrow stays in a perch box that Hedin declined to give the location of.
Hedin had admired falcons and hawks ever since she was a small girl and now working at The Water Garden with them every day she seems every bit enamored by them. Ironically, however, Hedin treated gulls and pigeons, which she now recognizes as potential health dangers and in some ways as her “prey,” in a much different way.
“Six years ago I was in a local newspaper feeding seagulls with my husband. I was part of the problem,” Hedin said.
The “problem,” now nearly eradicated at The Water Garden, has left many tenants and stragglers with an appreciation for these birds.
The falcons, Giordano-Taylor said, have had a subtle presence at the complex and serve as an enjoyable diversion for tenants who are fascinated by them.
“They’re beautiful birds,” Giordano-Taylor said. “It’s a peaceful and natural way of fixing a problem that we needed to fix … . People are just fascinated by them. One tenant was so interested he want to pursue [falconry], and the ducks are having a very fun time by themselves.”
Back at the vineyard, Seaman is not surprised by the reaction the falcons and hawks have been met with in Santa Monica.
“It’s not unusual for any human to have a relationship with any animal. It is just what humans do. Falcons make great partners,” Seaman said. “They don’t bark.”
news@www.smdp.com
