Daily Inspiration: Meet Bladen Benson

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bladen Benson.

Hi Bladen, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I started my journey with falconry at age 10 after my grandfather found an injured falcon on the ground. We took her to multiple care facilities, but no one wanted to help us. From there, my grandfather and I learned how to take care of this little, amazing creature and eventually found our way towards the art of falconry. I practiced falconry all through high school, hunting and flying birds of prey. It was not until I reached college that I began looking for a different way to create an income and way of life for myself. I knew that I had a special skill to train these animals in a way that most people could not think of. This way of thinking helped me create the small business we are now running in Arizona, Desert Kings Falconry.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road. When I first began the company, everything was going great. I had just landed my first resort contract and was reaching out to different places to offer our services. We signed our first contract on February 10th, 2020, but I didn’t realize that a pandemic would hit the world and close everything down. By the second week of March 2020, we had lost all of our resort contracts. Little did I know, this we a blessing in disguise. It forced us to look at different markets and expand our skills. We began focusing on removing pigeons and other pest birds from big commercial properties.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
Desert Kings Falconry Specializes in pigeon removal in two areas: Solar Panels and Commercial Properties.

We use trained hawks for commercial properties to catch sleeping and unaware pigeons during the night hours. The hawks are trained to follow a spotlight and catch the unsuspecting pigeons. We perform this process until all of the “roosting” or nesting pigeons are removed; the pigeons that the hawks catch are placed back into the food cycle for the hawks to feed and live off of.

When it comes to solar panels, this is an area of our work that we love and make a difference for our residential customers. 100% of the solar panels we are hired for are residential homeowners. Flocks of pigeons can begin to live under these panels as they provide an immense amount of shade and shelter for the animals. This can be a huge problem for homeowners in collecting as much energy as possible for their homes and saving repair costs and damages the solar panels might take on from the pigeon feces. We take pride in this area of our work and perform our best.

We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role you feel it’s played for you.
I believe luck comes when hard work and opportunity meet. I think that we create our luck by offering something completely different from the conventional method of bird removal. Customers come to us; customers hire us because they want something different. They do not want traps or bird spikes. They want Desert Kings Falconry to come out with their trained hawks and falcons and remove these problem birds from their homes.

Pricing:

• $80 an hour for contracted work
• One time services fee of $210 for Single family homes
• $80 an hour for single family homes that have over 20 pigeons living on their homes.

Contact Info:

• Website: desertkingsfalconry.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/desertkingsfalconry?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=