At the edge of a runway, a chirping is heard above the roar of planes. Colyne Plessis scans the sky and points to two tiny black dots: "There, we have two kestrels," she discerns from her blue eyes so piercing that she does not need her binoculars.

Equipped with noise-cancelling headphones, goggles and a nine millimeter, the young woman shoots in the air: it detonates, whistles and crackles, making the raptors flee away from the track. "It's fireworks, it's not made to kill but to make noise," she said.

Colyne Plessis is a scaretaker, a little-known but indispensable job in airports. "The animal collision is the second major accident risk for an aircraft," Sylvain Lejal, Orly's biodiversity referent, told AFP.

A collision can "cause significant damage to planes," Lejal said, such as an engine shutdown if the bird is sucked into the engines or injure pilots if it hits the windshield. However, serious accidents – such as in New York in 2009 when a double collision with geese necessitated an emergency landing – are rare. At Orly, the number of incidents requiring take-off to stop or return to the airport has even halved since 2014.

"Scientific skills"

Because the profile of the eleven Orly scarers has evolved a lot since then. "Historically, we recruited hunters. We needed someone who knew how to hold a gun," explains Sylvain Lejal, "we were working against nature."

But regulations and mentalities have changed: "since 2014, we have been working with nature", so that "today, the gun is really the last resort".

Now, "we recruit ecologists, because we need people" with "scientific skills" to develop green spaces to limit the presence of birds near the slopes. Their "real knowledge of wildlife" also makes it possible to "quickly define the species in front, its behaviors and find the right strategy to adopt" if scaring becomes necessary.

The profession of bird scarer, little known, is essential in airports for the safety of aircraft © STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP/Archives

Colyne Plessis is part of this new, more feminine generation. It was while looking three years ago for an alternation for her BTS in Management and Protection of Nature that she found herself embarked on the adventure, while she "did not even imagine that we were doing biodiversity on an airport".

At 23 years old and her strong character, the young woman has encyclopedic ornithological knowledge. She can talk for hours about the flight of the black swift - "which never lands" - or the difficulty of scaring a crested lapwing - "a very stubborn species, that nothing makes rise and when it gets up in a group, it looks like a tornado".

-Acoustic scare-

Her expertise is evident when she uses acoustic scaring. In her yellow vehicle surmounted by a rotating beacon stamped "Bird control", she has about forty bird calls.

When she anticipates an arrival or a pilot radios a problem, she analyzes: "There, we hear a lark of the fields. I can send the cry of its predator on the loudspeakers of the tracks to keep it away" or "emit from my truck the cry of distress of its species so that it approaches me," she explains, remote control in hand.

The profession of bird scarer, little known, is essential in airports for the safety of aircraft © Joël SAGET / AFP / Archives

Acoustic, visual or pyrotechnic scare: each agent adopts a different style to "create diversity and that birds do not get used to", explains the one who prefers rockets.

The main thing to make a good scarer? "Being very observant and knowing how to quickly study situations quickly," says Colyne Plessis.

Thanks to this reactivity, only about thirty unprotected birds are now slaughtered each year on this platform located in a migration corridor, where 30,000 birds can cross over the spectacular months of December and January.

Nevertheless, a hundred collisions occur each year. "I take it as a failure," says Colyne, "because obviously, we are there for the safety of planes and passengers, but also to save the lives of birds."

© 2023 AFP