The youngest highflier at Wimbledon this year was Jack, who was 38-days-old, when the tournament began. Who is Jack you might ask? Jack is a Merlin Falcon and a member of the team of birds whose job is to keep pigeons out of the play area.
For years, stray pigeons, have fluttered on to the All England Club’s prestigious courts at major moments, distracting players and bringing interesting matches to a halt.
The problem came to a head in 1999 when German  players  Boris  Becker and Nicolas  Kiefer were twice dive-bombed from the grandstand roof by pigeons! In addition, the Pigeon droppings, with high levels of ammonia, were ruining the Wimbledon lawns.
Offer for help came from Wayne Davis. His firm, Avian Control Systems, has been in the business of keeping pigeons off factories, landfill sites, hospitals, and other places of work that are plagued by birds. In 1999, desperate for a solution, the beleaguered officials of the All England Lawn Tennis Association accepted the offer from this ‘pied piper’.
And it turned out to be a 100% success. Although Wimbledon is becoming more high-tech, with giant screens and other innovations, the most effective and humane solution to the problem of pigeons had been achieved through a low-tech predator with a four feet wingspan!
Avian Control system is a one man, three birds, company. Hector, the hawk and Finnegan the falcon are the two experienced, ‘professionals’. Little Jack will fly out this year with a predatory L-board around his neck! Now the bird handler has also a 24-day-old fledgling falcon named Socrates. The senior hawk retires from service this year and Socrates is to take his place in the team. The baby is currently on training. He is being taken on patrols of the site and walked on the grass in order to acclimatise to the surroundings.
During the tournament the birds on duty fly above the club two or three times a week in the mornings. Released from the roof top of the courts, they chase any loitering pigeon in the area.
The big birds do not get to catch the pigeons as their mere presence is enough to frighten them away! During the non-tournament season too, the bird handler gets the birds to visit the site, once a week. This has to be done as the pigeons do not register the hawk’s presence in their memories for very long and it needs a regular reminder to keep them away.
Using falcons to frighten off pigeons is only a modern use for an ancient sport. In Chinese and West Asian cultures, falcons and hawks were trained to hunt. The trained bird would catch a pigeon and get it to the handler. Ironically, the only other bird that can be trained to ‘work’ is the pigeon. Ancient Persians were the first to train and use homing pigeons to carry messages. 
Can owls be trained to carry messages? Yes, but only in the fantasy world of Harry Potter!