This birdy hangout is not a summer home: It’s a falconry mews, where up to 18 birds of prey, or raptors, eat, rest, cool off, and get groomed.

The catbird is a handsome bird, slightly smaller than the mockingbird, slate gray on the body with black on wings and tail (no white), and a distinct black stripe on the top of its head.

The use of raptors to haze nuisance birds appears to have been invented by the British military in the 1940s at an air base in Scotland, where peregrine falcons, whose diving speeds of nearly 200 ...