Goshen man sentenced to prison in wild bird importation

WHITE PLAINS — A well-known falconer who once managed a program that used hawks to control the pigeon population in a Manhattan park has been sentenced to four months in prison for illegally importing wild birds from Africa. Thomas Cullen, 54, of Goshen was convicted in September of smuggling two black sparrowhawks into the United States under an exception to the federal Wild Bird Conservation Act that allows people to import pet birds. Prosecutors said Cullen abused the exception by saying the birds were being imported by a man who later testified that they were not his pets. Cullen also obstructed the government’s probe into the case, the U.S. Attorney’s office said in a news release. At Cullen’s sentencing on Jan. 26, Judge Colleen McMahon also fined him $1,000 and ordered three years of supervised release. He was scheduled to begin serving his sentence on June 1. The anti-pigeon program Cullen ran in Bryant Park was suspended in 2003 after one of the hawks swooped down and gouged a Chihuahua.