PEST CONTROL 2.0

Airport tries out falcon drones

The Robird is coming to Edmonton International Airport, and he has a message for his feathered friends — dead or alive, you’re coming with me.

The airport will start using a falcon-shaped drone this spring that flaps its wings and mimics the flight patterns of a real raptor to scare away birds that pose a danger to aircraft.

“Birds can get habituated, especially if there isn’t any kind of lethal reinforcement, but they’re hard-wired to respond to a predator,” airport wildlife specialist Jul Wojnowski said Tuesday.

“They react to preserve themselves and fly off to seek shelter.”

The device will be operated by Calgary’s Aerium Analytics, which is also providing the airport with drones for surveying and mapping.

It can run for 12 minutes before the battery runs out.

Wojnowski expects to deploy it over the nearby golf course, ponds, disturbed soil and other locations that attract gulls, geese and ducks, keeping it hundreds of metres away from such critical sites as runways and approaches.

It’s the first time such technology has been incorporated into an airport’s regular wildlife management plan, he said.

During the summer, the airport brings in a falconer on weekends with real peregrines and a Harris’s hawk to help keep down a local avian population, which can grow to flocks of thousands moving through the property at migration times.

The electronic version should be easier to guide than the flesh-and-blood Falcon 1.0.

“It will put a chase on … You can control the direction you want to send the birds, if there’s an area you want to steer them clear of, or a flight path.”

The airport also uses pyrotechnic bangers and screamers to shoo away troublesome fowl, sometimes shoots them to reinforce that the noise means danger, and traps and relocates wild prey birds because they can cause problems hunting near the runways, Wojnowski said.

The Robird will be deployed during the week for about three months, then airport staff will assess how well it works.

“My hope is that we will see a reduction in birds using the airfield and the property, too. Hopefully, a predator exhibiting hunting behaviour will discourage them.”