yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Forget Scarecrows—Falcons Protect This Farm | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

We're kind of like security guards. We arrived before the sugar content of the fruit starts going up. As the foods ripen, the birds are more and more attracted to it, so we stand guard ten hours a day in that field until basically the fruit is harvested. Birds damage anywhere from five to ten percent of our crops, especially blueberries, cherries, and apples.

So we were looking at ecological and more sustainable ways to control it. Birds that come into our orchard, she likes your job. We're using the natural predator-prey relationship of raptors and other birds of prey against pest species like starlings, pigeons, and seagulls. We prefer our birds to chase them but break off on command and come back and be fed.

Because these birds are weight managed, they're like Olympic athletes. They have a very set weight for which they perform their best. So when we're protecting the cherries and blueberries, we get it first thing in the morning. We want to get out here right before the, you know, all the problem birds come in. We really don't want them to get their meal, achieve their meal, so we try to block that, so they'll be forced to go somewhere else.

When we do that, we typically will stay here all day long. We use the dogs to flush birds on the ground between the canopy of trees. Very often, we'll run in with a cowbell, and they're going up and down the rows scaring off birds while we have a falcon up above waiting.

Sometimes they've got a mind of their own, are able to get in a thermal, they'll go up, and then they drift off and cross mountains and stuff. We have radio transmitters on them, we can go retrieve them. The birds are not pets; they're companions. We work with them seven days a week, long, long hours, 14 hours a day. We take really good care of them; they're very dear to us.

More Articles

View All
Perfect Aspect | The parts of speech | Grammar | Khan Academy
Hello Garans. Today I want to talk to you about the idea of the perfect aspect of verbs. What that means is that it’s not, you know, beyond reproach or that it’s like beautiful and shiny. No, no, no. What it means is really that whatever we’re talking abo…
The Spartan Way: How to Unf**k Your Life
What’s the first thought that comes to mind when you think about Spartans? Many of us will conjure up an image of the Battle of Thermopylae, as depicted loosely in the 2007 film 300. The common understanding of the battle is that 300 ruling class Spartan …
Analyzing concavity (algebraic) | AP Calculus AB | Khan Academy
So I have the function G here; it’s expressed as a fourth degree polynomial. I want to think about the intervals over which G is either concave upwards or concave downwards. Let’s just remind ourselves what these things look like. Concave upwards is an i…
There Is Something Hiding Inside Earth
We’ve found a new planet, home to octillions of the most extreme beings living in the most absurd and deadly hellscape. In absolute darkness, crushed by the weight of mountains, starved of oxygen, cooked alive, bathed in acid, salt or radiation. And yet, …
Lucy in the Sky with Asteroids | Podcast | Overheard at National Geographic
What sparked my interest in space was just dreaming about the stars. This is Adriana Ocampo, she’s a NASA scientist, and back when she was a kid in Argentina, she’d grab her dog and head to the roof of her house. You know, we would go every evening that w…
Finding percentages with a double number line
We’re told that Omar’s class has 28 students in it. 21 of them take the bus to school. What percentage of the students in Omar’s class take the bus to school? Pause this video and see if you can figure that out. All right, well, I’m going to try to visua…