Falcons will be brought in to scare away birds pecking at the Colosseum

Colosseum

Falcons are to be introduced in the skies over the ancient Roman Colosseum in a bid to scare away birds that are pecking away at the 2,000-year-old stone facade.

Seagulls, ravens and blackbirds are thought to have been the cause of several recent incidents at the iconic arena where masonry has fallen away, narrowly missing passers-by and tourists.
Officials are already in talks with several pest control firms to bring in the falcons, which are seen as the most effective way to reduce the number of birds which nest in the nooks and crannies of the Colosseum.
In recent months the numbers of birds flying above the Roman monument has increased considerably. Many are using it as a nesting ground and also peck away at the stone work and hideaway stores of seeds and food.
Experts say that the seeds which are left germinate, working their way into cracks in the stonework and helping to loosen the stone used by an army of workmen to construct the Colosseum, due to undergo a 20 million Euro restoration.
The problem has been compared to the classic Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 thriller The Birds starring Rod Taylor in which a Californian town is terrorized by a sinister and evil looking flock of ravens and crows.

By coincidence in Rome two years ago there were a series of similar attacks on pedestrians and tourists but none were seriously injured.
Rossella Rea, director of the Anfieatro Flavio, to give the Colosseum its proper name, said she had already been in touch with several pest control firms in the Rome and added: "In previous years the problem was just pigeons and their excrement damaging the stone.
"Now we have a problem with seagulls, ravens and crows who peck away at the facade with their beaks and the best way to control these birds and keep them away is with falcons.
"The birds peck at the cracks in the facade to hide away seeds and this combined with the weeds that grow as a result loosen the stone causing it to crumble and fall away.
"We were able to deal with the positions by installing the classic spikes which protected tourists as they walked through the monument but now we have ravens and crows - it's like something out of a Hitchcock film.
"Two weeks ago we had to remove all the waste bins and replace them with ones that had special covers over the top so that the birds could not get at the rubbish inside."
Umberto Broccoli, Rome council's superintendent of the city's multitude of artistic works, said: "Our monuments have two main enemies: climbing plants and birds.
"It's a very serious problem and the solution is not always simple as we cannot simply shoot them."
Rome's daily newspaper Il Messaggero suggested another possible remedy was the use of scarecrows, even suggesting they could be "dressed as gladiators.".
Pest control experts say the use of falcons or hawks is the best way of controlling problem birds.
In London they were used to successfully control the multiplying problem pigeons, bringing the transient population down dramatically from 5,000 birds to 1,000.
The method is seen not only as environmentally friendly but appropriate in areas from well known tourist sites to waste depots.

Costa Concordia captain 'not wearing his glasses' at time of collision

The captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, which hit a rock and capsized in January, was not wearing his glasses when the ship collided, his most senior colleague said.
Passengers, lawyers and investigators gathered in Grosseto on Saturday for the first hearing into the tragedy, held in a 600-seat theatre because the town's courthouse is too small.
The closed-door hearing is to discuss evidence that will be used in a forthcoming trial, including recordings from the ship's Voyage Data Recorder - the nautical equivalent of a plane's 'black box'.
Capt Schettino, 52, who is under house arrest at his home near Naples, was unable to see properly on the night of the collision because he had left his spectacles in his cabin, according to his first officer.
Ciro Ambrosio, who is also under investigation, told prosecutors: "When he took command of the bridge he didn't have his glasses with him because he'd left them in his cabin. He asked me to set up the radar because he wasn't able to see very well."
Survivors of the disaster have called for justice and a full explanation of why the accident happened, as the news of the captain emerged.

"For the sake of the people who died, we want to know the truth of what happened and to establish who was responsible," said Sergio Amarotto, a former passenger, as the first hearing in the investigation began in Grosseto in Tuscany.
"It was an incredible error – what kind of cretin could have done something like that?" said Mr Amarotto, 67, a lifeguard from near Savona, north-western Italy, who was on the cruise with his wife and cousins.
He said it was "absurd" that Capt Francesco Schettino claimed that the rocks that the ship rammed into on the night of Jan 13 were not marked on his nautical charts.
Mr Amarotto managed to escape from deck four of the 950ft-long luxury liner, where many of the dead were later recovered by divers.
The first officer also confirmed that Domnica Cemortan, a 25-year-old Moldovan woman whom Capt Schettino had dinner with that night, was on the bridge at the time of the collision.
"On the bridge there was the Moldovan woman, Cemortan. She was speaking in English. She came up to the bridge together with Schettino," Mr Ambrosio told investigators, who have put together more than 5,000 pages of witness testimony.
Miss Cemortan has said she had a crush on the captain and said that had the cruise not been brought to an abrupt halt by the disaster, they would probably have ended up in bed together.
Outside the hearing, Salvatore Catalano, a lawyer for the first officer, said his client had taken the initiative during the crisis, ordering the lifeboats to be lowered when the captain was apparently frozen by panic and indecision.
Capt Schettino is facing charges of abandoning ship, causing a disaster and multiple counts of manslaughter.
"He's in a bad way," said Paolo Bastianini, one of his lawyers, from his office in Grosseto.
"He is very upset for the death of all those people and particularly for the recent discovery of the five-year-old girl (the youngest victim)."
Four other officers from the Costa Concordia are under investigation for alleged negligence: Andrea Bongiovanni, Roberto Bosio, Silvia Coronica and Salvatore Ursino.
Three officials from Costa Cruises, the company that owns the Concordia, are also being investigated for allegedly delaying the decision to inform Italian maritime authorities of the disaster - Manfred Ursprunger, the company's vice-president, Roberto Ferrarini, the head of the crisis management unit and fleet superintendent Paolo Parodi.
None of them were required to turn up for the hearing.
The confirmed death toll from the accident is 25, with another seven people missing, presumed dead.
Divers are continuing the grim job of searching the flooded hull for human remains, while a Dutch salvage company continues to empty the ship's fuel tanks.
The Concordia was carrying 4,200 passengers and crew when it smashed into the rocks off Giglio, forcing a panic-stricken evacuation in the darkness, with some passengers and crew having to leap into the freezing cold water.
It was just two hours into a week-long cruise of the Mediterranean.