This is an occasional series giving a behind-the-scenes look at airport jobs.
When a flock of birds collided with the jet engines of US Airways Flight 1549, forcing Captain Sully Sullenberger to land the airliner onto the Hudson River in 2009, it brought the hazards of bird strikes into stark view for the nation.
Since then, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport has boosted efforts to prevent birds from colliding with the roughly 2,500 commercial flights the airport handles each day.
"We statistically have so many aircraft moving about here in Atlanta that there's a high likelihood of a wildlife strike," said Atlanta airport wildlife biologist Steven Boyd.
Boyd, who was Hartsfield-Jackson's first wildlife biologist when he was hired five years ago, recently received tacit recognition from airport leaders about the importance of his work. The airport just hired a second wildlife biologist to help Boyd protect planes and their passengers from the often unseen risk posed by birds and other wildlife.
Hartsfield-Jackson’s assistant general manager of operations Paul Meyer said in a written statement that “it was apparent to us that we needed to hire an additional wildlife biologist” for the airport’s efforts to operate a safe and efficient airport.
The new wildlife biologist, Jeffrey Miller, starts this month and will help Boyd tackle the myriad tasks of airport wildlife management across the 4,700 acres that comprise Hartsfield-Jackson’s land. The work includes trapping hawks, scaring birds off with loud cannons, and sometimes using lethal force — with coyotes, for example.
Through September, Hartsfield-Jackson had 186 reports of wildlife strikes listed for the year, according to FAA data. One example from Sept. 30: A Delta flight from Montego Bay into Atlanta reported that it “struck a bird during the landing roll,” according to the report. Airport staff inspected the runway and “removed the remains of a Great Egret,” the report said. No aircraft damage was found.
In each case, Boyd’s job includes overseeing the collection of bird remains and identifying the bird species. If he doesn’t know the bird type, he oversees the packaging of the remains and sends them to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. for its bird specialists to identify.
The variety of birds killed this year include a red-tailed hawk, mourning doves and barn owls.
Boyd advises and works with a variety of other airport staff, including for landscaping, to make sure the grass is cropped appropriately to minimize its attractiveness to birds. Grass too short can reveal seeds or insects that attract birds, while grass too long attracts rodents that want to hide, but end up attracting more birds.
He also works with airport construction planners, to try to prevent standing water or other things on a construction site that might attract birds.
During the busy season for bird strikes, from July to October when young birds are emerging from nests and other birds are migrating, there might be about a bird strike a day reported at Hartsfield-Jackson, Boyd says.
The southside of the airfield, where the newest runway was built in 2006, has the most animal activity. There, “the wildlife haven’t relinquished their habitat just yet,” he said.
The day-to-day work of responding to bird strikes often falls to airport operations staff, who are responsible for patrolling the airfield and responding to reports when a bird is hit. They drive vehicles equipped with bright lights, horns and sirens to scare off animals, and have on hand kits to collect wildlife remains.
Those kits include alcohol swabs, nitrile gloves and resealable bags that airport staff use when reporting to a plane hit by a bird to collect the snarge — the feathers, blood and other remains after a bird strike.
“Getting all the players [at the airport] on the same page has been a big challenge,” Boyd said. That includes airline staff, who are “trying to move as many aircraft as possible…. They’re obviously concerned with safety, but maybe not species identification.”
"The layman may just want to wipe it off and move on," Boyd said. But an airport wildlife biologist wants to identify the species of each bird strike to figure out what birds are in the area, and how to prevent them from interfering with flights in the future.
One of the most unusual bird strikes during his time at the airport was a pelican in 2014.
“That’s very rare, because brown pelicans are normally not alone, and typically by a body of water — usually along the coast,” he said. “The Smithsonian identified the species and called me and said, ‘You might want to sit down for this.’”
“I was very surprised,” Boyd said. “I think [the pelican] was just moving through.”
New AJC airport jobs video series
Today AJC.com rolls out a new video series, Jet Fueled Jobs, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the people who keep the world's busiest airport running. About 63,000 people work at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, making it the largest job site in the state. Among them is airport wildlife biologist Steven Boyd, who helps to prevent bird strikes in the sky through diligent work on the ground.
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