Falcons hovering with menace over Cork? Yes, it is true, and the City Hall, no less, is behind it. You can poison crows and seagulls, apparently, and they will bounce back, but show them a falcon hovering overhead and they know you mean business.
The city dump on Kinsale Road will close for ever when the new "superdump" for the county becomes operational at Bottlehill. But meanwhile it is a rich feeding ground for increasing numbers of pesky gulls and crows. And the most environmentally-friendly way to contain them was to frighten the living daylights out of them.
For the past few months that is what falconer Mr Gary Timbrell and his five falcons have been doing. Mr Timbrell runs the Arrow Pest Control Company in Cork.
Falcons can be trained to hunt crows or gulls. If a falcon has become used to killing black crows from a young age, then at the dump it will ignore the white-coloured gulls and chase off or kill only crows. Similarly, a bird with a trained eye for a gull will leave the crows alone.
The birds are flown one at a time for an hour, and have been patrolling the dump each day for the past few months. Their arrival has reduced the crow/rook population there from 1,500 to 400 at present. Bad weather at sea of late has driven more seagulls towards the easy feeding ground on the dump, but their core numbers have also shown a dramatic decrease, says Mr Timbrell.
It is important for the falconer to be in sight of the bird after a kill takes place and it is feeding. Otherwise it will take off and literally "go native" within a couple of days, most probably never to be seen again.
Falcons, he explains, are not like dogs. Rover will love you to death for ever and you can train it to do your bidding. A mission accomplished followed by a reward such as a pat on the back is all Rover craves.
Not so with the haughty falcon. The bonds between it and the falconer are much more fragile. It does its handler's bidding chiefly because the human element of the partnership knows where the good hunting is. That is why it is important for the falconer to be in line of sight of the bird when it is eating its prey after a kill.
The presence of falcons at the Cork dump has had a salutary effect, says Mr Timbrell. Irregular flying times mean the crows and gulls never know when the falcon will appear. Sensibly, most of the crows and gulls have gone off to seek safer pastures.