Of the more than 100 workers who cycle in and out of the vineyard during harvest, four of them work in the sky. They are there to protect, not pick, the grapes. With wings and beaks, not buckets and shears, they nevertheless play a key role in bringing in the fruit. They are raptors, here on special assignment to help chase away smaller birds intent on feasting on the ripe grapes.
King Estate has used raptors as a pest deterrent since 2021. The raptors’ job is not to prey upon the birds – mostly starlings – that want to eat the crop. Rather, according to falconer Parker Christensen, they are like flying scarecrows that scare the pest birds and chase them away from the vines. In fact, it’s not uncommon to see a long row of starlings perched on the telephone wires just off King Estate’s property. Food sources for the birds are abundant out in the country so rest assured the birds won’t go hungry. The raptors’ job is to redirect the birds away from grapes that are such easy pickings to other sources of food.
Parker, who is with JT Falconry, arrived on site from Utah on Monday, Sept. 7. With him were three falcons, a hawk and his dog, Dingo. For all six, this was their first time working on a vineyard, so Parker spent the first few days helping the birds get acclimated and running through their training drills. Here is the starting lineup:
- Nadapeep is a one-year-old male peregrine falcon who, as his name suggests, is the quieter of the bunch.
- Snorlax is a three-year-old male peregrine/gyrfalcon hybrid, named by Parker’s young son after a Pokemon character.
- Loco is a female peregrine who was born this year and is still in training.
- Duke is a one-year-old male Harris’s Hawk. He doesn’t fly as fast as his falcon friends, who are known for their unsurpassed diving speed, but he is agile, intelligent and a good team player.
Up until harvest began in the King Estate Vineyard on Sept. 14, Parker spent the days training the birds and helping them acclimate to vineyard work. He uses a drone with bait attached to a line to run the birds through their drills. Once the real work began, Parker flies each bird at least once per day, depending on the number of pest birds to control.
“I can set my birds up to fly twice a day,” he says. “I focus my attention on flying them in late mornings and late afternoons.” In the early mornings and evenings he can use a special laser designed for agricultural use to startle the birds out of their roosting places. When the sun is shining high in the sky, the starlings tend to hide in the shade and that gives Parker and his feathered team a little break, too.
Parker can see the effect his patrolling raptors have had. “Compared to when I first got here, we have cut the starling flock about in half,” he says, adding that the remaining half “has been quite persistent.” But the team has stayed vigilant and has been able to keep the pest birds away and out of the grapes.
As for Dingo, the male black Lab, he’s along mostly as human’s best friend, although Parker notes he loves to chase birds out of the vineyard rows, as would any self-respecting Labrador.
When the grapes are all in, Parker and his animals will pack up and head back home to Utah, secure in the knowledge that they played an important part in a successful 2026 harvest.
