Birds of prey are to be deployed in North Wales to stop seagulls attacking shoppers. The Coastal Hawks Project will put hawks and falcons on patrol in Rhyl, with their handlers wearing medieval dress.

Mike Espley, a Rhyl councillor, said he came up with the idea after witnessing 30 seagull attacks on shoppers in a single day.

The first patrols, planned for March 1, will include a European eagle owl, two Harris hawks and a peregrine saker falcon. Three unemployed people will be trained at a Welshpool falconry centre to take part in the project. Mr Espley said the birds will always be tethered to the handlers, and will not be allowed to fly.

“The presence of the birds of prey will be enough to get rid of the seagulls. We are not aiming to hurt them. This is their home as well as ours, but there have been far too many attacks on people. It couldn’t continue.”

He said that as well as being a deterrent, the birds would will be a tourist attraction. “The handlers will be dressed in medieval costume and will give talks about them during the summer months and seasonal breaks.” Mr Espley said that if the project is a success, he hopes to extend it along the North Wales coast

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To those to whom these words come, greetings from Olwynn ni Chinneidigh, Laurel Queen of Arms and Juliana de Luna, Palimpsest Herald.

The Laurel office is starting to review our policies and procedures for submissions. We expect that the eventual outcome will be a complete rewrite of the Rules for Submissions.

To start this process, we're asking the populace and heralds to give us feedback about the heraldic submissions process and how it should work. A survey which asks some basic questions can be found at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GLJZDDZ ; we'd appreciate it if interested people would take time to answer the questions there. Anyone can complete this; we promise to read all answers. We expect the survey to take fifteen to twenty minutes. Additional comments about or ideas for this process can be sent to rules@heraldry.sca.org.
We have several goals for this process:
- to make the Rules for Submissions easier to use for heralds and submitters alike
- to reduce discrepancies between the Rules as written and the rules as applied
- to reflect on the degree of authenticity we want for the registration process and how best to codify rules to evaluate it
- to reconsider the level of difference we should require between names and devices for registration

In all areas, the Society for Creative Anachronism has moved towards progressively better understandings of what people did in our period. Given this, we are not interested in discussing rules changes that would substantially lower our standards for registration of names and armory. But we are interested in exploring ways to make it easier for people register items that are in period style, whether or not they fit the rules as they currently exist. We welcome ideas about how to do that from all sources.
We look forward to hearing from you! The deadline for the survey is January 31; we will continue to accept comments by e-mail until the review of the rules is completed. Please forward this message to other mailing lists, so that as many people as possible can respond.

Juliana and Olwynn

NOTE: I have attempted, deliberately to turn off comments on this post - the best way to have your suggestions and voice heard is to fill out the survey and/or email to rules@heraldry.sca.org. When the time comes for making decisions and changes, side discussions and comments may fall through the cracks, but the survey answers will be all in one place.