Some have soft-sounding names like Juliet, Pablo, Ivan, Tally, Remy and Dante. Others bring to mind warriors or super heroes: Apache, Attila, Mav, Flash and Baron.

The faces behind the names have hooked beaks. Their toes are flesh-piercing talons.

They are falcons, hawks and one nasty bald eagle named Ivan. They work at Pearson International Airport, from one hour before sunrise until one hour after sunset.

As “employees” of Falcon Environmental Services, they are charged with frightening away nuisance birds, eating them if necessary, so they don’t wind up in airplane engines. Their payoff for a job well done? A tasty hunk of raw quail served by hand.

Falcons knock their prey out of the air, whereas hawks are low-flying birds and wrestle their prey on the ground.

Bird strikes are going up in Canada and Transport Canada has mandated that all airports have a wildlife control program in place. Not all airports use birds of prey, as Pearson has for several years; others use explosive devices.

The issue of bird strikes came to the fore in 2009 when Capt. Chesley (Sully) Sullenberger was forced to glide a US Airways jet into the Hudson River after a bird strike knocked out the jet’s engines after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York.

Rob Shevalier, 40, the manager of Falcon Environment Services, and his 12 wildlife control officers want to make sure that doesn’t happen at Pearson.

“It could happen, but the chances are small,” Shevalier says, adding that last year at Pearson there were fewer than two bird strikes for every 10,000 landings and takeoffs.

Bird strikes altogether were up in 2009 at 1,513 airport incidents from 1,230 in 2008. Pearson has the second most reported number of any airport in the country. The latest figures from Transport Canada show that in 2009, Toronto had 97 bird strikes, while Vancouver had 140.

Neither the Greater Toronto Airports Authority nor Shevalier says you can eliminate bird strikes altogether at Pearson because of its creeks, ponds and grasslands.

“You can’t prevent birds from flying through a 4,500-acre space,” Shevalier says. “It can’t be done.”

Falcon Environmental Services, which uses birds of prey at JFK International Airport and four U.S. air force bases, rears its birds at a farm in Alexandria, Ont. Only the best and brightest — about 30 in all — are brought to Pearson for duty.

The littlest one, a kestrel falcon named Ferocious Pete, is hardly bigger than a large man’s hand — but pound for pound, he is the strongest.

For larger nuisance birds, such as geese, Shevalier relies on a five-year-old golden Lab, Tucker. Even as big as Ivan is, even the bald eagle won’t take on an aggressive goose.

In the SUVs that patrol the grounds, the birds ride shotgun. Tally, a Harris hawk, likes the passenger seat, perching on the headrest. At the right time, wildlife control officer Darren Smith, 33, rolls down the window and the Tally flies out, gathering height and making sweeping circular patterns against the blue sky.

Inside their warehouse at the north end of the airport, the falcons and hawks await their next assignment with a foot tethered to perches only metres from each other. The staff are accustomed to the smell and the squawking that goes on.

Each morning, the birds are weighed in, much like a fighter trying to stay within a weight class. Too heavy and they get lazy.

“You don’t want them starving, but you want them hungry,” says Shevalier, Pearson’s self-described “Bird Man.”

A meal of raw quail attached to a lure also keeps the birds close to home. Once in a while, a bird will make a break for it, but they have transmitters and a tag with a number to call.

Shevalier’s love of birds began when he eyed a bird of prey outside his school window as a youngster growing up in Erin, Ont. That inspired a school project on birds and a lifelong love of the outdoors.

He is undeniably fond of his feathered employees. His favourite is Flash, a falcon that broke its wing when it slammed into a bridge while chasing a pigeon. He is nursing it back to health.

Tugging on his baseball cap as he manoeuvres his Ford-150 pickup truck around the airport grounds, Shevalier smiles and remarks: “This is my office. My 4,500 acre office.”

And when he’s in his office, that’s the cue for the nuisance birds to get lost.