If any of you have ever visited the Seawall, and many other areas onbase, you will have noticed all the Hawks that fly around looking for food.

Why did this problem start?

- I believe it was from the sailors throwing food up at them, and them always knowing they can find food around there.

How can this be prevented, or try to limit the amount of Hawks flying around?

- I have no clue, but interested to hear everyone's opinions..

I will share a short story:

- I was once at the USNH galley eating outside in the seats they have where you can sit on the tables. Well that day I had some chicken breasts and chicken legs. I ran inside to fill up my drink really quick after leaving my tray on the table, and when I returned by huge chicken breast was gone. I was shocked!
There were 2 other people eating outside, and I looked at them with a complete stare like "What they heck just happened?" They told me a huge hawk came down from my tray and grabbed the chicken breast. I looked up, and there were 3 flying above. They were just flying all over the place, like something was dead below..

Take my advice: DO NOT FEED THESE GUYS! Your only adding to the problem for many years to come.

I can just see it now, some kids playing around the Seawall on Yokosuka Base and some hawk grabbing some kids arm that has food in his hands..

Does anyone else have any interesting stories?

This picture below I took on December 5th, which they were flying all over the Fleet Recreation Center.
There were a lot of them!!!

They are equally bad here in Ikego. A few years ago I was at an end of season party for my son's t-ball team. We were in the big field, and I was about take a bit of pizza when something really hard hit me in the back of the head. It was so hard that I thought some little kid had accidentally hit me with a baseball. I was too disoriented to notice that my pizza was gone, until I saw it drop to the ground about 20 feet in front of me. A hawk had grabbed it out of my hands, and then accidently dropped it. Another one swooped by and got it.

We are very careful now with food outside. We've noticed that they always come from behind you, so we literally always watch our backs. I've also noticed that they won't usually attack if you are in a larger group. I always see them when they have Cherry Blossom festival on main base, but they don't start swooping down until the crowd has cleared later on in the day.

The crows here are a problem as well. They "stalk" my kids all the time.

A few weeks ago I was coming out of the Yokosuka Commissary when I saw a hawk swoop down and grab a woman's hair. She had just gotten out of her car and was on her way inside the Commissary. It frightened her so much, she ran back to her car and got inside. After a minute or two, she got out and continued on into the commissary. Pretty wild! I don't know if it snatched something from her hair.

PLEASE DO NOT FEED THEM!! There are TWO idiots that live in NIKKO Tower in Ikego that have been throwing food and feeding the hawks. It is dangerous just because of everything that was already said above. Are you serious!!! There's a partyroom there that people bring food into and there are little kids playing at the park who also sometimes have snacks. When we were here back in 2000-2003 my daughter and son were eating lunchables on the picnic table between the baseball and soccer fields. A hawk swooped down and took her lunchable from inbetween her hands. A few months ago I was eating a bagel at Berkey Field and a hawk swooped down and tried to grab it from me.
STOP FEEDING THEM!!! Eventually they will get hungry and go somewhere else. There's nothing like going to a BBQ at one of the pavilions and cannot enjoy yourself outside of the pavillion because you have to worry about them stealing your food or worse, getting your hand or whatever cut by a talon.
STOP FEEDING THEM!!!!!!!

ps
what are the rules on using bb guns to shoot them? just kidding (maybe)

Yes, I am sure we could fill volumes with stories. My teenage daughter has had ice cream snatched from her hand, I saw a little 4 year old walking with her mother have her granola bar snatched, my daughter's friend had to go to the ER when one grabbed her chocolate bar out of her mouth and she got facial scratches. It's scary; just like Hitchcocks's "The Birds".

hey lets open up a day each month were we let the kids shot pelet guns at them by the sea wall, they will love it!!! We could make the kids that are on trash duty clean it up or get some NUB's to do it.

I just had to search the site and make sure that we aren't the only ones having a problem with this! Several times they have swooped down and hit us when walking over by Niban tower and my friend who lives there has the same problem as well. Wings actually hitting us in the head, I don't know if I have ever been so freaked out! It is pretty bad my son can't even have cereal in his stroller without a bird stealing it. Someone in Ichiban/Niban/Sanban must be feeding them from their balconies it is just crazy.

My 3 year old son calls them evil robot birds.
he was eating a poptart a few weeks ago and we told not to, and one came down, took it out of his hand but he would not let go and the had a tug a war fight with the dam pop tart. my son let go and the bird bite his hand and scathes his face by his eye.

i know i win parent of the year award but he was screaming all i could say was I TOLD YOU NOT TO WALK AND EAT THE DAM POPTART!

THIS would make part of a great "shotgun" fam-fire for security, ASF and interested personnel.

Chum the sea-wall. and back off about 30 feet.

Yokosuka's first trap/skeet course. We'll have to figure out the points later...

I believe they are actually Black Kites- the pigeons/rats of the Raptor World.

This is just 2 funny!

Actually, this is a problem across Japan. Outside of Tokyo, there are some rather famous botanical gardens (they were even featured as the setting of the Sailor Moon R movie, and if you've been in Japan for any length of time, you ought to know Sailor Moon!), and last spring my parents came from the US to visit me. Birds started stalking us as soon as we found ourselves some snacks. In Kyoto and Nara, similar situations. I believe these were crows or ravens, but the problem is the same anywhere where large groups of people gather and eat.

Even when you don't have food in your hands you have to be careful. Early one morning I was walking through the Commissary Parking Lot and a hawk picked up a battery that somebody left on the ground. The hawk quickly realized it was not food, released it, and almost clobbered me from fifty feet above! Ya' gotta' be alert when they're in the area, not paranoid, just alert.

lol @ Sea for admitting he knows about Sailor Moon....

Hey Loki I used to watch sailor moon everyday before school. I didnt know anybetter I was just hoping that they would forget to blur them out when they changed outfits...

Ah ha ha, I watched Sailor Moon every morning before school, too. Jeez, I think I was in 7th grade. Transformation sequence was hot. Sailor V, FTW.

Anyway, my husband had a girl in his shop who was walking to work one morning eating poptarts... hawk swooped down and grabbed the one she was eating. She was so pissed she threw the other one down... and the hawks grabbed that one up too, lol.

Meaning, picnics and outdoor BBQs suck here.

I wish a motha f****** hawk would take food from me... I would kill them all off one by one. I would have a melt down if one took meat off my grill too, all hell would break out.

If it wasn't for Sailor Moon, I wouldn't speak 日本語 now, and although I might well be here, I probably wouldn't be as interested in being here. And I concur with Elizabeth, Sailor V (Aino Minako) was (is?) my favorite Sailor senshi. We must be about the same age, because I was also in middle school.

Trust me, I'm hardly the only anime fan in Japan, and even then, I certainly don't have the most crazy of hobbies. One of my endorsing officers, a O-5 (just retired a few months ago) is a furry. TMI, Sir. TMI.

I can't believe he admitted he is a furry!!! OMG. O:

And yep, Minako. Def the best... we're going to Akiba today, I've mostly grown out of anime but I'm looking for Rurouni Kenshin stuff today, lol. I'm 26, BTW.




Oh, and the hawks... if you live in a tower, it ain't cute to feed them from there. That gets really scary... and my car is down there, lol.

Yep, also 26. And I'm not sure whether the commander only told this to OCs/MIDNs/JOs or whether he shared it with his enlisted peeps, too, since I am in the former group.

Do you all realize you could have sold these true stories to companies that make snack foods and made tons of money by them using the stories for Super Bowl commercials. "Hi I'm Eric Cartmen and I love Snacky Poof's, G@d D#m& you those are mine! Stupid birds of prey, you must respect my AUTHORITIE!!!" You could have made millions but instead I'm reading these idea's for free. No really I understand the bird problem. I remember when the dumpster were moved on the piers and you could see where the old ones were at. There was a perfect square of white outlining where the old ones were placed. Did not know the hawks/ eagles became such a problem. I use to love watching the locals throw fish in the air and see the eagle's dive and catch them mid air.

Man: I love cheesy poofs,
You love cheesy poofs.
If we didn't eat cheesy poofs,
We'd be...
Cartman: Lame.

My friend was walking with an unopened 6 inch Subway in a plastic Subway bag.

You guessed it, gone. Those hawk things must have precision guided radar. I bet one of them was crouched in a nearby bush holding the laser guidance thing and aiming it at my friend's lunch. SWOOSH, gone baby gone. Wish he had recorded it, that's a YouTube million views right there.

What are those birds, anyway? They're not seahawks, they're one chromosome away from being in a Godzilla movie.

You guys should join the lil anime group on here.

You guys should join the lil anime group on here.

no.

Anybody ever eaten hawk before? How's it taste?

lol i was talking to liz and the other one not you D-bag.

ROFL.

Well, we had Cornish game hens for Thanksgiving and they were tasty (J/k, they're just chickens)... bird is bird, can't go wrong with fried bird...

I was driving back from the Comm yesterday and a hawk swooped down and hit my windshield. It didn't really scare me because I saw them before I drove under the group (3 or 4 flying around...did a car hit something...anyone see a dead cat?), but it disturbed me regardless. Maybe it didn't like my music.

...It hit your windshield!? I would of flipped out and probably swerved into a group of school children going to church.

Maybe they knew you were coming back from the comm, loaded with food, lol. That's so crazy. They're gonna start dive bombing us in the parking lot when we get our groceries.

You know, birds' bones are thin and hollow. If you saw one coming at you, just grab a wing and bonk its head on the ground. Now you have dinner. It's not animal abuse if it attacks you first. although over here I don't think there is such a thing

Threat Level Bravo. All birds will be searched upon entry into the base. We have reliable sources who claim the birds are working for North Korea.

Oh I see. thats what they mean when you see signs about speed monitored by aircraft. The aircraft are actually looking for rogue hawks. They just say they are monitoring ground traffic so as not to cause a panic. well it's out of the bag now

I am sitting near the C-Wall on my laptop sitting in my car.

I am watching 3 different Gazebo's full of males throwing food to the Hawks.

It just triggered my memory about this post, and I had to raise this to the bases attention once again.

MY RECOMMENDATION:

Signs need to be created on the base.

DO NOT FEED THE HAWKS, IF CAUGHT (SOME TYPE OF CONSEQUENCE)..

This problem needs to stop! There are too many of them.

What makes this story so bad, is right in between the groups of males throwing the food, there is another Gazebo in between then with 2 small small little girls, around 2 and 4.. They were just standing their right near their moms scared, because there was literally over 100 hawks all flying around trying to get food from these guys.

I am not blaming these guys. They think its fun, and just funny to see the hawks coming down grabbing their food, and the BASE has never put out information to STOP or SAYING IT WAS WRONG!

So when are we going to put a stop to this? When someone gets hurt? When a kid gets grabbed on the arm when the hawk is trying to grab something from the young child?

So many people see this as a problem, but yet nothing is being done about it. I will also post this in the commanders awareness for Yokosuka.

I had one smack me in the back on Tuesday and take my nikuman out of my hand.

LOL... I was more upset at the loss of the nikuman than I was the hawk hitting me.

I concur that this problem needs to be addressed and signs would do the trick. I did see a sign like that behind the Naval Hospital when you walk out towards the picnic area. I walk to the base almost every day from the Shiori area and have seen the crows and hawks swoop down on people holding food. I wonder if the address this at Indoc?

The week of Easter I had not 1, but 4 Hawk attacks on myself or a member of my family. One time it tried to get plastic embossing plates from me (an arts and crafts item), A lunch bag from my son, a granola bar from my daughter, and then again it stole a whole bag of groceries out of my daughters hands, and flew off with it. Luckily all I lost was a container of bleach wipes, and some ziploc bags. It's very, very frusterating because it takes about a minute and a half to walk from my car to my house. We are sounded by "jungle", and the Hawks sit on the tops of the trees and wait to attack. For the rest of that week I carried one of my husband's softball bats with me while I unloaded my Jeep. It sucks to have to turn around every 7 steps to look for a hawk.

You are close, they are "Black-Eared Kites" (Milvus lineatus). They are fairly common in East Asia but overall, the species is on the decline. They favor farmlands & wetlands but also frequent human habitation where they feed on garbage. They are just being birds, the fault lies with the people feeding them over the past decades.

I just want them to put signs up near the C-wall indicating to people its not SAFE for people to feed the hawks.

If the hawks think they can get food from humans, they will continue to pester people walking by eating a sandwich, ice cream, etc...

Its not just happening to grown adults, its happening to KIDS!

When are we going to listen and make this change? When someone gets there arm slashed by a hawk's claw?

They are just being birds, the fault lies with the people feeding them over the past decades.

I agree!

Its not the birds fault. Its are stupidity, and its just getting way out of hand.

On a weekend and you see large groups of people having picnics, you will find a few groups just thinking its funny to throw food to the birds. It then attracts hundreds of them, all looking for food.

Get some signs up, so people realize its not APPROPRIATE to throw food to those birds.

They have signs for bottles, and people listen to some degree. At the very least, they know its wrong, and you will never have everyone 100% follow the rules, but the #'s would definitely go down if we can get some signs up there, telling people DO NOT XXXXXX to the birds.

Does the seagul alkaselser thing work with hawks?

No, it does not. Digestive process is different. They'll just spit it back out.

Does anyone know if they put up the signs anywhere?

DONT FEED THE HAWKS!!!!