Today’s edition of Nice Matin has a short report on the Hotel Martinez in Cannes. For the second year the hotel has called on a falconer and his team of ten Harris Hawks to patrol the garden in order to discourage the local seagulls, who have no qualms about helping themselves to food from guests’ plates.
But what happens if one of the hawks is tempted beyond endurance by a tasty morsel on one of the plates and the gamekeeper turns poacher?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Maybe they should just serve salads. That will put the birds of prey off! 🙂
Don’t forget that there will also be a basket of bread on the tables, FEEG.
I think the bread would have to be moving pretty swiftly to attract birds of prey, Sheona.
I accidentally pressed the Google translate button and the headline then read:
“In Martinez, falcons to protect customers gulls”!
I’ve experienced the same gull attacks at harbours in Cornwall. The birds are huge and I wonder whether they would be deterred even by the biggest hawks.
Ahem! Hawks are carnivores. Unless the restaurant is serving steak tartare I think they will reckon it’s pretty short commons and the gulls are a better bet!
They tend to like their dinners warm and pulsing and on the wing!!
In the ten years we have been in this house I have never seen a hawk, eagle or raptor once on the ground or eat anything set out for birds. The only thing they want is the birds that feed at the bird tables. We put them under trees to protect the little birds from the big ones! Apart from that they eat voles, mice and rabbits. We have so many big birds there are no rabbits or squirrels here, all been eaten!
Which reminds me of a similar nuisance we have at some of our more rustic restaurants here. Monkeys!!!
They don’t go after your food, much more valuable stuff than that, anything shiny on the table or surrounds, car keys, phones, handbags, cameras, room keys, anything left unattended for a microsecond and they pounce.
There’s normally signs warning patrons of the menace but tourists just don’t seem to either pay attention or believe.
“Excuse me waiter, but yon monkey just stole our (enter any one of the above here)”
Ha ha, it’s not as if the monkeys have a fixed address 🙂
That’s reassuring, Christina, that the hawks would not be tempted.
Janus, a few years ago when we were spending the winter in Gibraltar, I put up a post here about the injured seagull we found on a path and the hawk that had caused the injuries sitting near by on a fence post. The hawk was smaller than the gull but it was the winner.
Soutie, the apes on Gibraltar are also a problem and restaurant staff warn clients about them. A sharp smack on a metal tray tends to discourage them – as well as making the clients jump!