Some Birds Past

I got a 7/8 Gyrfalcon, 1/8 Saker male falcon from a commercial breeder in Wyoming. He became He became, as most birds raised this way do, a quiet social imprint who loved dogs, and flying on the Henderson ranch.

He was doing fine when a rich young ornithologist of my acquaintance insisted on “starting” him for me. He didn’t need starting– he was already chasing things. I suspect that the kid just wanted to chase things with a Gyrfalcon; the bird was in a self indulgent slow development stage as most Gyrs are. He fed the bird a poxy bridge pigeon to save money. Any fool knows that poxy pigeons kill a bird as sure as cyanide. The kid who killed the bird never even told me because he was afraid I would be “sad”, especially when the breeder told me he would never give me another bird because I was “irresponsible”. There really is no excuse for not telling me this had happened. I’m of the “No excuse, sir” school, so I never told the breeder what actually happened.

This is Tuuli, a male Gyr Prairie, one of the best, if no the best, birds I ever had. He used to allow the dogs to sniff under his tail, and beat them up if they didn’t find quarry fast enough. I have no idea why this picture appeared.

This is Chicken. She was Barb – Taita. She was very fast but could not soar, which is why she got killed. She carried songbirds away. I had few ducks on the plateau. The same year I lost the Gyr, my friend Bodie lost his Peregrine and asked if he could borrow Chicken. She killed nine ducks larger than herself on the golf course. One morning she missed her strike and rather than soar around the pond, she landed on a power pole and promptly fell to the ground, burnt to calcified ash. It happens. About four seconds later, Bodie, who is a military Scot and a Zen swordsman, called me on his cell phone and said “Stephen, I just killed your falcon.” I was sad, but guess which one of those people I’d give another bird to?

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