The stench of decay lingers in the air, accompanied by the echoing shrieks of more than a hundred crows. The smell I can tolerate. The sound, however, pierces my eardrums and flows straight to the hairs on the back of my neck.
Peering to my right, I lock eyes with a fully-grown Harris’ Hawk. He’s less than a foot away—close enough that I can see the flecks of dried blood splattered on his angular beak.
Unimpressed by his human observer, he zeroes back in on the crows.
“He’s watching ’em like a hawk,” says jovial falconer Craig Golden, who is seated to my right and serving as a perch for the 3-year-old raptor.
Golden, Sun photographer Steve E. Miller, and I are crammed into the front seat of Miller’s truck, cruising the grounds of the Santa Maria Regional Landfill. Our goal: to see the hawk, He Who Has No Name, in action.
“Sometimes, the crows will fly up right to the window [of the truck] to see if I have a hawk,” Golden says. “If they see one, they go, ‘RAAAA!’ and fly away to the ocean.”
The crows are so smart, he adds, they can recognize his truck and his voice.
“As soon as I break the gates of the landfill, one of them makes the warning cry, and I’ll see 500 to 600 crows take off into the air,”
he says.
We’re hoping Miller’s truck will provide us with some camouflage as we slowly advance on the birds, which are perched on a giant chain-link fence. At first, it doesn’t seem to be working, as crow after crow lets out a defiant caw and leaps into the air. I’m about to resign myself to the fact that we’ve been outsmarted by a bunch of birdbrains, when Golden lets out a little shriek of his own and tosses No Name out the window.
Two seconds and a flurry of feathers and talons later, No Name has a juvenile pinned to the ground, and Craig is sprinting toward him to make the live crow/dead starling exchange. He rewards No Name with pre-caught food to prevent him from killing his prey.
Throwing my usually professional demeanor out the window as well, I shout an expletive and turn to Steve: “That was awesome! Did you see that?”
Steve, adding his own choice curse word, says: “No, I missed it!”
The Birdman
Golden has been providing his “bird abatement” services to the Santa Maria landfill for almost six years. His company, Safari Depredation Co., which he runs with his wife Kim Olson, also serves landfills in Lompoc and San Luis Obispo.
“Technically, my job is to haze the seagulls, which means ‘to scare,’” he explained in a recent interview with the Sun.
Seagulls are protected under federal law, and crows and other corvids can only be hunted during specific seasons, so Golden does his best to ensure his hawks and falcons don’t kill any birds. He said the landfill does have a special permit from the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife “in the unlikely event” of a fatality.
“If a bird is captured, it’s usually released unharmed,” he said.
For example, the crow that Sun staffers watched Golden’s hawk capture was released relatively unharmed, save for a few ruffled feathers and a fresh dose of fear.
“It’s kind of like getting punched,” Golden explained.
Golden estimates that when he first arrived at the landfill, there were about 5,000 to 6,000 seagulls circling its skies. Now there are about 500.
“The tractors were white, the ground was white from all the bird droppings,” he recalled. “It had become an employee health issue.
“So I did the program for a week free of charge to show them it was worth funding. At the end of the week, I was hired,” he said.
Along with bird abatement, Golden also runs educational programs in conjunction with landfill staff members. The program caters specifically to elementary school children and teaches them about the importance of recycling. The birds, he said, are a special bonus.
“We’ll get busloads of kids, and they’re all squealing, and I tell them about the landfill, the birds, and what we’re doing,” he said, adding that he often uses the teachers as volunteers.
“I go, ‘Who wants to see their teacher hold a hawk?’ and all the kids start screaming,” he said with a chuckle.
That youthful enthusiasm is something Golden understands: “I’ve wanted to work with hawks since I was 4 years old,” he said. “I used to train chickens to sit on my wrists.”
That passion eventually developed into a career—something Golden said he is thankful for every day.
“It’s all about the birds. They’re just marvelous creatures,” he said. “People say, ‘Oh, they cost so much.’ … But once a bird is trained, it’s priceless.”
Contact News Editor Amy Asman at aasman@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 19-26, 2010.
