Falcons at New York's JFK Airport Join the Flock of the Unemployed

John Kellermann is unemployed, too. He was the airport's head falconer. One dismal Sunday morning, he was standing as close as he could to his old workplace, on a clam-strewn shore in Far Rockaway.

"See where those brant are going?" Mr. Kellermann said. A flock of small geese was pumping westward above Jamaica Bay. "They're heading right out over the airport."

In the distance, as a Korean Air jet thundered toward takeoff, the geese crossed one of aviation's more bizarre dividing lines—out of a national bird sanctuary and smack into a busy flight path.

The awkwardness of its location led JFK to become the first and only commercial airport in the U.S. ever to try falconry. The idea was to teach the local birds nesting in the sanctuary that a flight over the airport fence might turn them into lunch for a bird of prey.

Falconers became fixtures at JFK, roaming it with lots of publicity. That was before the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's latest budget crisis. Now JFK's operator has cut short by a year its $3 million, five-year contract with Falcon Environmental Services Inc., of Ontario. It's negotiating (without bids) to award the job of banishing birds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The USDA doesn't employ falcons. Its main technique for getting rid of birds from airports isn't shooing but shooting—with shotguns.