The real Hawk Eye

Hawk-Eye technology has long been a feature in cricket and tennis but now a genuine hawk, Rufus, is ruling the roost over both Wimbledon and Lord’s.

Rufus the Hawk has been making pigeons’ lives hell for more than a decade at the Wimbledon tennis championships.

But once his morning shift is done at the All England Club, Rufus heads across London to Lord’s -- having been called in to do a special hit-job on pigeons during the Cricket World Cup.

“It is new territory for him,” his handler Imogen Davis told reporters at Wimbledon on Wednesday. “It’s new stimulation, a new area to go pigeon hunting.

“It’s a smaller area in Lord’s. Here we’ve got so much ground, whereas there, there’s lots of streets,” she said of the home of cricket, wedged in a plush residential area of north London.

“There’s quite a few pigeons in the trees and that’s his favourite way to find them. You see him dive into a tree. He can see 10 times more clearly, and further than we can.

“I see him go straight into a tree, full force, and they scatter out.” Rufus, who weighs one pound, six ounces (625 grammes), has a bit more work to do yet at Lord’s.

The 28,500-capacity ground hosts the group stage match between Bangladesh and Pakistan on Friday and then the final on July 14.

“It’s like a new playground for him to find new hiding places that the pigeons will be in,” said Davis. “It makes him a little bit more playful, mischievous and keen to work out what’s going on.

A Harris hawk with a one-metre wingspan, Rufus is now on his 11th Wimbledon championships and has met top players Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray.