Ford Motor's assembly plant in Hermosillo, Mexico churns out over 300,000 pickup trucks and sports utility vehicles a year, employing 4,300 workers and a security guard known as "El Charro."

El Charro, a common term for a Mexican cowboy, is no ordinary watchman. He stands about two feet tall and patrols the skies above Ford's 12.1-million-square-foot plant in the northern Mexican city about 175 miles from the U.S. border.

And the hawk is a nightmare for other birds, which is sort of the point.

Pigeons have besieged the plant for years, posing a health risk to workers and disrupting daily operations. They can get into light beams and factory equipment, and buffing bird droppings out of freshly-painted vehicles is no easy task.

"Having birds inside creates a lot of risks," said Jesus Teran, central maintenance manager at Hemosillo.

When the problem started getting out of control a couple years ago, plant managers took action. They tried blaring sounds of larger birds. They hung replicas of "predator" eyes in pigeon hotspots. Nothing worked. Birds got so comfortable and familiar with the plant that many would wait for doors around the facility to open before barreling inside.

Teran, a 25-year Ford veteran, said staff at Hermosillo had been researching other tactics for scaring off pigeons, especially a cohort of birds that had built nests in the plant. They settled on falconry, an ancient practice of hunting smaller game with trained birds of prey.

Falconers say that one, or a small team, of falcons or hawks can be flown over an extended period of time until the smaller nuisance birds start to disperse. Their goal is to scare the pigeons off; fatal incidents are typically accidental.

The Ford team found a falconer who brought in a Harris's Hawk named Chalino, but the operation immediately ran into trouble. Chalino bumped into another hawk while on patrol at the Hermosillo plant. The two flew away together and never returned.

The falconer called for backup, and in July 2025 the flying cowboy arrived to restore order.

El Charro is fed before showing up for his shift, which normally begins in the afternoon and lasts two to three hours. In a typical day's work, El Charro will cover half of the building's exterior, methodically searching for hot spots and pointing Ford staff to nests that are later removed.

El Charro is a rare bird, said Jennifer Coulson, vice president of the Raptor Research Foundation and a certified master falconer. Coulson said the animals are hard to train and deploy, and the U.S. government tightly regulates how many are licensed to go into nuisance-bird abatement.

Abatement work has exploded in recent years as a more humane alternative to poisoning or killing the birds, Coulson said. Airports rely on birds of prey to drive out smaller birds that might collide with planes and helicopters. Landfills sometimes hire falconers to keep seagulls from carrying trash away. Wineries may use them to scare birds scavenging for fruit.

Officials in Ocean City, N.J. spent $370,000 this year to keep aggressive seagulls away from diners' plates at restaurants along the Jersey Shore, according to New Jersey Monthly magazine.

"The goal is not to kill the prey, but scare the prey so it doesn't come back," Coulson said. "But it usually requires repeat visits by the hawk."

El Charro didn't have to clear the same bureaucratic hurdles as his American peers, but he's proven to be up to the task.

Ford said the hawk has logged more than 300 flights, over 1,170 hours in total, achieving a roughly 80% reduction in evidence of bird activity in areas monitored around the plant.

"It has given very good results," Teran said.

The Harris's Hawk works particularly well for a factory setting, Coulson said.

"They are social birds of prey, which is unusual," she said. That makes them work particularly well in training, as they quickly see the falconer is "working for them and with them," she added. The hawks naturally hunt in challenging environments, which makes them adept at flushing out pigeons crowding into a factory.

Workers at Hermosillo generally seem tickled by the presence of El Charro, Teran said. Many ask for photos with the hawk whenever El Charro is with his owner.

"It's not something you can normally do," he said.

For now, there's no timeline in place to wind down El Charro's role at the plant. If anything, he has become necessary to keep the local pigeon population in line, Teran said.

"El Charro has to ride every day here," he said.