AFP-JIJI
FEB 2, 2018
MEXICO CITY – Far from the
crowds of passengers, lines and passport control, Madison spreads his wings on
the side of a runway at Mexico City’s international airport, the busiest in
Latin America.
He is one of several peregrine
falcons deployed to prevent “bird strikes” — a hazardous collision between
birds and planes that can have dangerous and even catastrophic consequences.
In 2009, for instance, a U.S.
Airways jet had to ditch in the Hudson River in New York after a flock of birds
took out its engines. In January this year, a Mexico-bound KLM flight made an
emergency landing after hitting birds on takeoff in the Netherlands.
“It’s dangerous. Birds don’t mix
with planes. They can hit a turbine,” Oscar Chavez, a 26-year-old who is one of
the biologists handling the falcons, told AFP.
Each day, Madison and another
peregrine falcon named Ilse are on duty at the airport, which sees 44 million
passengers pass through it each year.
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