As the sun rises over a sprawling berry farm in South Glastonbury, a trained falcon rises into the pink dawn. Her swift, sudden appearance panics a cloud of starlings and sends them fleeing toward the hills.
Behind this breathtaking scene, hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake.
"It's a war out there," said Erik Swanson, a licensed falconer.
Starlings can cause more than $100,000 in damage to a half-million dollar blueberry crop. Accompanied by eight trained falcons, Swanson is spending July and August at Rose's Berry Farm.
Working 11-hour days, seven days a week, he and his falcons _ which are trained to chase the birds away, but not to kill them _ will protect the blueberries.
This is the second year that Henry and Sandy Rose, owners of the 100-year-old, 100-acre farm have hired Swanson, an employee of Falcon Environmental Services Inc., based in Plattsburgh, N.Y.
A growing number of farmers in the U.S. are turning to falconers to protect their crops. As more farmers find their fields hemmed in by suburban developments, the old methods of wildlife control noisemakers, shotguns and poison are less tolerated.
"Everything we did, our neighbors did not like," said Sandy Rose.
At a cost of about $400 a day, the falconry service is more neighbor-friendly than the 120-decibel propane cannons the Roses once used to rout the starlings, and it doesn't bother the farm's visitors or customers, who pay $2.25 a pound for pick-your-own blueberries.
Starlings typically eat insects and grubs, but when the blueberries appear, they "go sugar crazy," Swanson said.
Three years ago, starlings destroyed 20 percent of the crop.
"They have an innate sense of when things are ripe," Sandy Rose said.
More:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/connecticut/ny-bc-ct-fea--farmfalcons0809aug09,0,6444476.story
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