I’m working on a story about wildlife management at airports and this week did a ride-along with Nick Atwell, the  Aviation Wildlife Hazard manager at Portland International Airport.

His team is responsible for keeping animals – mostly birds, but also coyotes -away from airplanes, and one of the tools they use are home-made traps like the one above that allow birds to be safely captured, and then banded and relocated.

“Sometimes we drive them a few hours away,” Atwell told me, “Sometimes we fly them to Seattle and take them to the Canadian border.”

Here are some snaps of a few other tools the PDX wildlife team uses to keep birds away:

These and other images and stories gathered from airports around the country will be part of my next “At the Airport” column on USA TODAY.

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