Outside their house in Brigstock, Nothamptonshire, falconers Wayne and Donna Davis train their birds with the help of bait, GPS systems and special hoods. The falcons are being trained to scare pigeons away from the renowned grass courts of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, held each year in July -- a job Davis can't get enough of.
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00:00 25 years, 23 years I've done it now.
00:11 But I don't take it for granted, every day is enjoyable.
00:15 I mean, how could you not enjoy it?
00:17 You know, you go in, fly the birds early in the morning, sit down, watch a bit of tennis,
00:23 have a Pimm's or something like that.
00:42 So when we're at Wimbledon together, we generally start at 4.30 in the morning.
00:48 We enter where the grounds are very, very quiet.
00:52 It really is like going into a church.
00:53 It's very, very quiet and Rufus just can go and fly around and he's upon the roof and
01:01 then he'll go off for a little bath and then he'll come back.
01:04 So it's kind of his domain.
01:06 He just flies and he will make sure that nothing has gone under the roof during the night and
01:13 or early morning.
01:14 And he's just there to make sure that the pigeons know that there's a resident hawk.
01:20 Once they know that, they know that actually it's not a safe place to be.
01:24 So that's really what you want ingrained.
01:26 It's got a range of, it doesn't matter, you know, it can be 100 miles or whatever.
01:41 This is called a herd and we use it to manage the falcons.
01:47 This falcon's very calm so it doesn't really need one, but in the event of one getting
01:51 stressed, we can pop that on and it calms it down.
02:12 And now, as I said, we've worked at West, one of my favourite places to work.
02:15 I mean, I was there for the Queen's funeral and coronation and we actually, the falcons
02:23 we can fly outside, the hawks we can fly inside, you know, and I was there for the Queen's
02:29 Jubilee and the whole shebang.
02:31 So it's quite a little feather on my cap, so it's just an excuse to put on.
02:42 (slurping)