Harris 'Falcon' helps grape growers in France (1 Viewer)

Early this morning, the BBC news reported the use of birds of prey in France which were being used to keep other birds from feeding on the grapes and thus this summer there has been a bumper harvest. It went on to say that the falcons were far more environmentally better than using pesticides. They kept saying that the falcons did this and the falcons did that. The clips to me were showing Harris Hawks. From my taxonomic lessons, such birds Parabuteo unicinctus are not falcons but are from the family Accipitridae. Maybe my knowledge is not up to date and I stand to be corrected but it looks like the BBC have not quite got their facts right.

In fact, Harris' Hawks belong to the accipitridae family, as also the harriers do, but are in any case not falcons. However, that's the kind of things you learn only when you dedicate some time to birds. For the most watching TV all these names may well seem to be synonyms.
I've also seen here in Chile Harris' Hawks being used for such 'pest control'. The guy I know doing that has also some Aplomado falcons, but the hawks seem to be more effective because of their larger size and more threatening looking for small birds.

A nice lack of research - I imagine they thought they're handled by falconers, therefore they must be falcons.

the french falconers had prairie falcons in that same report. i thought it was odd to see those birds in europe..