Imagine it's a nice Sunday afternoon and you're out with some friends, watching a little soccer, drinking a cold beer. You take a sip. You take another. Mmmm. So refreshing. You go to take another but notice something's off. There's some white shit in your beer. Gross. As you stand to go buy another, a shadow suddenly passes over the field. You look up, and then…This is basically the situation at Aberdeen Football Club in northeast Scotland. The city of Aberdeen has long struggled against hordes of seagulls, and the issue is apparently particularly severe at Aberdeen FC's Pittodrie Stadium. For the past few seasons, the team has employed a "fully licensed company" tasked with dealing with the birds. But now things are getting serious. The team is bringing in a hawk.
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From this afternoon's press release:"Aberdeen FC has adopted a strong policy regarding the City wide problem with seagulls. The club has employed for the past few seasons now a fully licensed company who specialize in eradicating and controlling these birds. This company have been taking care of the nests and eggs three times a week to keep the birds controlled. [sic]"Currently Aberdeen FC has no nesting in and around the actual stadium buildings, however we cannot control this out with our boundary and birds are nesting in and around the flats around the stadium."We continue to have a hawk flying during the week at Pittodrie and also an hour before doors open on match days. In addition to this, last year we installed an automatic audible warning system which distributes various distress calls from different birds to act as a deterrent. For obvious reasons we cannot fly birds of prey during games."Seagulls are very intelligent birds and will always gather where a large crowd of people are and where food is consumed so we would urge all fans to take care and use the bins provided for unwanted food which will assist in controlling the seagulls. […]"Aberdeen FC will continue to do all we can to combat this issue and ensure the match-day experience is a positive one for Dons supporters."[Guardian]