Published August 17, 2026 03:49AM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Had you braved the bumper-to-bumper traffic on any one of the four bridges leading to Ocean City, an island-town on New Jersey\u2019s coast with eight miles of sandy beach, muscled your way through a phalanx of umbrellas, bikinis, and bros to claim your spot by the Atlantic, and spread out your towels and blankets for a day in the sun, you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking the hard work was over. But then, in all likelihood, you\u2019d look up and notice the seagulls. Legions of them. Flocking together in formations so thick they\u2019d block out the clouds.<\/p>\n
This, Angelina Caselli tells me, is what the beachgoing experience used to be like at Ocean City, where the number of people balloons to almost 150,000 every summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d throw pizza crust in the air and it would bounce off a seagull,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
How many gulls were there? It\u2019s tough to say for certain. But Caselli, who has called Ocean City her place of employment since 2019, says there were thousands. Maybe 3,000, she guesses. Maybe four. Enough that grabbing a slice at the popular pizza joint Manco & Manco up on the boardwalk was akin to taking your life into your hands. All right, maybe not your life. But until recently, pizza, fries, cotton candy, and caramel corn were not treats to be savored, but valuables to be guarded against swarms of winged pickpockets. Take your eyes off your pizza for a second, and chances were good a dive-bombing seagull would snatch it right off your plate.<\/p>\n So I was warned. But on a Friday in mid-July, the salty air my only reprieve from a scorching summer sun, I barely count three-dozen seagulls above me. And as I approach my destination not far from the city\u2019s famed boardwalk, I soon discover why. Inside a building that resembles a backyard toolshed are 13 birds: a pair of dark-feathered hawks, brothers Marco and Polo, one owl who\u2019s an absolute unit, and ten falcons. Three rows of predators with sharp talons. There would be a 14th bird here, too, another hawk called Karen, named for her impeccable ability to never shut up, but she\u2019s off in Atlantic City guarding a bunch of high-rollers at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino.<\/p>\n Quickly, the purpose of these birds comes into focus. The small shed is a mews, a place for resting raptors, and Caselli and the handful of staff inside, clad in green caps and shirts, are trained falconers with East Coast Falcons, an outfit in North Jersey. Their mission? To walk Ocean City\u2019s boardwalk and protect tourists against the hordes of seagulls\u2014with birds of prey.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is the original bow and arrow, the original gun to go hunt with,\u201d Caselli tells me as we walk around the mews.<\/p>\n After years of waging battle on the gulls, Ocean City turned to a thousands-year-old remedy to defend the boards and the tourists who visit every year. Handled carefully by Caselli and crew, these birds patrol every day, from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Not to kill, mind you, but to scare. To frighten a population of bold gulls, and to keep a summer ecosystem of people and prey living in relative harmony\u2014even when pizza is involved.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Just before 1 P.M. I meet up with Caselli<\/strong>, who\u2019s the manager of the abatement program. As we exit the mews, she\u2019s wearing a gloved, thick leather gauntlet on her left arm with a two-pound falcon, Cookie, sitting atop. Right now Cookie\u2019s in pre-game mode: A hood, which looks like a tiny version of an old-timey football leather helmet, covers her head so she can\u2019t see. Falcons, as Caselli tells me, are visual predators. Keep them literally in the dark, and they know it\u2019s not go-time.<\/p>\n Caselli is a 22-year-old with a maturity that belies her years and a knack for the dad joke. Later that afternoon when Cookie does what birds do\u2014you know, shit in public\u2014Caselli describes it as \u201cdropping ballast.\u201d She got her start back in 2019, when Ocean City was putting East Coast Falcons through a trial run. Caselli, then in her late teens, and her family were in town for Father\u2019s Day, and after she saw a person with a hawk strolling the boards, she was hooked. That night she went home and emailed the guy who would become her boss, Erik Swanson, who pulls up just as Caselli is telling me her origin story.<\/p>\n If the dictionary came in picture form, you\u2019d see Swanson under the entry for \u201coxymoron.\u201d Sporting a grizzled gray beard, specs, and a ponytail, he\u2019s soft-spoken in person; it was difficult for me to hear him over the engine of his massive, lifted Ford F-150. Swanson is a master falconer, someone who\u2019s been training raptors since the early 1990s. Before then, he taught police and narcotics dogs, but switched to birds after learning to work with eagles at the Turtleback Zoo in West Orange, New Jersey.<\/p>\n Falconry, he says, is very much its own club, one where you have to expect the occasional nips, nicks, and cuts that accompany working with predators. \u201cEverybody that works here, we bleed every day. It\u2019s just the way it is,\u201d Swanson tells me.<\/p>\n They usually fly birds just one at a time. Most fly for a half-hour; some fly for several hours. Marco, Polo, and Karen are Harris\u2019s Hawks, a breed with brown feathers on their bodies and red plumage on their wings. Ozzy is the group\u2019s Eurasian eagle owl. The falcons, whose shift goes from noon until dark, are a variety: Some are pure breeds, like saker and Barbary falcons, two species that perform well in hot weather. Others are cross-breeds: Strawberry, the oldest of the bunch at 22, is a cross between a gyrfalcon\u2014the largest and most powerful falcon\u2014and a Barbary falcon. And while falcons can fly as high as 10,000 feet, they\u2019re usually only flying to 400 feet for patrols.<\/p>\n To join this archaic practice, per the federal laws in place, one must first pass a 200-question multiple-choice test on raptor biology and ecology, and then complete a two-year apprenticeship. One element to note is that raptors, the ones used by falconers and companies like East Coast Falcons, are always captive-bred birds. (Swanson carries a regulatory permit to do this work; his employees are covered by that same document.) Falcons and other raptors used for abatement must acclimate, to some extent, to human interaction. Raptors that hatch make their imprints on humans, and begin to view a person as a parent. But it just so happens that hawks, falcons, and owls thrive with human companionship.<\/p>\n \u201cRaptors in the wild, they\u2019re not always successful at hunting. The reality is a lot of hunts are going to end in failure,\u201d says Julie Cotton, co-manager of operations at the California Raptor Center inside the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. Many wild raptors might not eat for several days. And although they don\u2019t display affection like that of a dog or a cat, they are excellent students. Adds Cotton, \u201cThey do have the ability to observe and to learn that their actions can produce consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is why one of the core components of the apprenticeship is to catch and train your own wild, red-tailed hawk. Taking it under your wing as an apprentice is a way to learn how to communicate with birds of prey. It\u2019s a relationship built on a foundation of respect.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s entirely voluntary,\u201d says Caselli when I ask her why the raptors return to her after a seagull-frightening sortie over Ocean City\u2019s boardwalk. \u201cThey trust you to not lie or cheat them out of a meal, that you\u2019re going to be a good partner to them.\u201d<\/p>\n Just an hour later I get a sense of what she means. We\u2019re walking the boards near Manco & Manco when we spot a tourist who\u2019s dropped a bucket of caramel corn. Overhead several wily gulls start flying circles, obviously eying a meal. Caselli raises her left arm high, and Cookie\u2014still hooded, by the way\u2014unfurls her dark brown wings as if she\u2019s giving the air a wraparound hug. Right at that moment, Caselli blows a whistle she\u2019s carrying, and the gulls overhead scatter. Then she removes Cookie\u2019s hood, unhooks her from the leash, and watches as she sails into the sky, pumping her wings until she reaches the top of a nearby pavilion.<\/p>\n When Cookie\u2019s time is up, Caselli heads to a nearby dune. She pulls out a lure from the messenger bag slung across her body and begins spinning it in great circles, blowing her whistle at the same time. Cookie, sensing her cue, comes flying back, and when she arrives, Caselli has some dried quail meat\u2014a raptor favorite\u2014in her hand, which Cookie happily takes. Then she re-leashes her falcon and puts the hood back on. And we walk back and forth between the boardwalk\u2019s intersections with 6th Street to 15th Street, for another hour, a pair of beat cops searching for gulls\u2014with a falcon on hand ready to fly if any get a little too close.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Dispatching raptors to scare off seagulls<\/strong> may appear bird-brained, yet the notion of employing the animals to thwart unwanted creatures isn\u2019t a foreign concept. Disneyland sics feral cats on unwitting rats who scurry onto park grounds. And while Ocean City never originally set out to hire East Coast Falcons or anyone else to use birds to fight birds, the problem with its seagulls got so bad by the late 2010s that city officials were willing to look anywhere for a solution.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were having a number of issues and complaints of aggressive seagull activity: swooping down and stealing an ice cream cone from a three-year-old or a kid riding their bike with a piece of pizza,\u201d says Daniel Kelchner, director of community services with the city government. \u201cQuite frankly, the seagull problem had really started to negatively impact some of the perception of us as a safe community.\u201d<\/p>\n The city has tried other methods to chase the gulls away. Loud noises. Fishing line. Plastic owls. The occasional public service announcement still blares over the loudspeakers along the boardwalk: \u201cAs per city ordinance, it is prohibited to feed the seagulls and other wildlife.\u201d Nothing had worked, and other abatement methods\u2014scattering poison or bringing in shotgun-wielding hunters\u2014were deemed too inhumane. The connection with East Coast Falcons was forged by city business administrator and municipal engineer George Savastano. Savastano reached out to Swanson through his website. When the two of them met, Swanson says, Savastano was incredulous. \u201cCan this really work?\u201d Swanson remembers him asking. The pilot program was such a success that the city handed Swanson a contract, renewed in 2023, and again in 2025. The current contract runs through 2029, and, according to Kelchner, the city paid East Coast Falcons $369,996 to patrol its boardwalk this year.<\/p>\n While the predators\u2019 job is strictly to scare away gulls, the occasional seagull ends up as a meal. When I arrived, I was already informed that two seagulls had been killed by East Coast Falcons\u2019 birds this summer. They are predators, after all, and even captive-bred birds can\u2019t buck nature. To get in between that natural inclination, handlers fly the birds about 10 percent above a bird\u2019s \u201chunting weight\u201d in grams. (The outfit\u2019s falcons weigh anywhere between 600 and 1,600 grams.) Doing so is enough to engage their hunting instinct: The falcon is at peak condition, which means it doesn\u2019t need to kill for food, although it will still give chase to pesky gulls. And, by this point, the bird knows its falconer will be there at the end to dish out some quail.<\/p>\n \u201cTheir bodies still function by these natural laws, which is what we harness to keep them moving,\u201d Caselli says. \u201cBut they don\u2019t want to chase the seagulls, really, because they know that chasing the seagulls is a waste of energy when there\u2019s a piece of food waiting for them.\u201d<\/p>\n To keep track of its birds, East Coast Falcons uses an app-controlled GPS monitor that allows falconers to view a bird\u2019s exact position, as well as a radio-telemetry unit attached just above each bird\u2019s claw. Caselli calls it the \u201cbread and butter\u201d of every falconer. It sends out a ping that interacts with an antenna to home in on a bird\u2019s position. Then there\u2019s the medieval: a small jingling bell.<\/p>\n Again, the aim isn\u2019t to kill gulls. Seagulls are usually thought of as nuisances. Caselli likened them to \u201ccoyotes of the air.\u201d The typical description is a comparison to rats with wings. Yet gulls are important pieces of coastal ecosystems. They dine on crustaceans and insects. They like trash. But they\u2019re also smart scavengers, and well-suited to habituating with crowds of people. That means they don\u2019t scare easily around humans. Some studies even show gulls tracking our eye movements. If we see fries, they see fries. Seagulls are so smart, apparently, that Swanson even says gulls in Ocean City have come to recognize his falconers.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know my falconers by face. They know their cars. They know their trucks,\u201d he says. \u201cIf they walk across a parking lot, the gulls start alarms, screaming at them.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought Swanson\u2019s description was a little incredulous, until I started walking the boardwalk with Caselli. Almost once every couple of hours, the same seagull would swoop low above our heads and release a loud, aerial, taunting squawk.<\/p>\n After one low pass, Caselli pointed out the gull, rolled her eyes, then turned my way. \u201cThey brave my presence,\u201d she says, \u201cfor that last almighty french fry.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We patrol all afternoon<\/strong>, and at 6 P.M., Caselli heads to the mews to bring out the big gun, Strawberry. I had been told about this bird by Swanson. \u201cShe runs the show, and knows which places to go and where to sit and what\u2019s the highest peak and where to look,\u201d he says. \u201cWe kind of just let her do whatever she wants.\u201d Caselli calls her \u201cturbo grandmother.\u201d She got her name from her previous job as a protector of blueberry fields. Whenever she scored a kill, the blood would drip down from her beak onto her plumage, dotting her chest with red droplets.<\/p>\n Back up on the boards, Caselli frees Strawberry from her harness right away, and off she soars above the ferris wheel and to a corner on the nearby Flanders Hotel. After a few minutes, Caselli heads to a dune to try to coax her back down. \u201cYou can\u2019t call her back until she knows her 30 minutes are up,\u201d she tells me, re-packing her lure and keeping her eye on her watch. Eventually Strawberry flies back to Caselli, and after a quick snack of quail, she\u2019s sent up again for the last half of her hour-long patrol.<\/p>\n This time, however, she doesn\u2019t come back\u2014which is, I\u2019m told, one of her behaviors. She was once gone from the mews for 24 hours and 34 minutes. \u201cShe had caught a seagull, eaten said seagull, and just decided that she was not hungry enough to return to me,\u201d says Caselli.<\/p>\n A strong sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu washes over Caselli as she begins leading me away from the boardwalk, consulting her GPS tracker on her phone. We find Strawberry at a condominium complex a few blocks north of the boardwalk. After a resident lets us inside, we spot her on the fifth floor. A waterfall of floating white feathers drops from above. \u201cLook,\u201d Caselli says. \u201cShe\u2019s got a gull.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s no lure strong enough to capture the falcon\u2019s attention. We watch, somewhat helpless, as Strawberry holds the gull in her claws and flies over to the roof of a three-story vacation house, perches herself, and continues plucking feathers. One of Caselli\u2019s co-workers brings her an entire frozen quail, which she connects to the lure, only to see Strawberry soar away again, back to a corner of the Flanders Hotel. It\u2019s 7:45 P.M. now, and we watch as Strawberry, belly full of gull meat, gives herself a bath in the gutter water.<\/p>\n Make that three seagulls this summer. Strawberry doesn\u2019t come back to Caselli until her feathers are dry.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.outsideonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Falcons3-scaled.jpg?auto=webp&width=3840&quality=75&fit=cover\"\/)
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