One of the delights of living in this territory is the connections we have formed with interesting people who do interesting and compelling things with their lives. Hank and Laura Minor have returned to Sisters after a sojourn in the Seneca country of New York, and on Tuesday they invited Ceili and I to join them in a training session with their Red-tailed Hawk Dex.
Hank is a long-time, serious falconer. In a profile in The Nugget Newspaper back in 2017, he said:
“I apprenticed under hardcore game hawkers who had a number-one rule: fly your bird hard and fly it often.”
In that spirit, we shared a morning workout with Dex — and it was wonderful. A privilege and an honor.
Matthew says
Cool!
Paul McNamee says
Sweet! Jealous!
I’ve become friends with falconers/rehabilitators in town. Despite the plethora of red tailed hawks around, the survival rate their first year is still astronomically low. 80% won’t survive their first year.
My friends are licensed to trap and train a fledgling and get them through their first year. (I think per season, but in one case, she’s had to keep the bird a few years because it still hasn’t demonstrated enough natural hunting skills to be released.) Funny, isn’t it? You’d think not but it’s not all instinct and the birds need to learn some things, usually the hard way, because the parents kick ’em out.
We’ve had a lot of juveniles around this summer. They finally stopped screeching for their mommas to do everything for them. Here’s hoping they flourish.
JimC says
Yes, that mortality rate tracks with what Hank was saying.
Matthew says
Off topic, but Wise about Texas has a short (15 min) podcast about an incident involving the Republic of Texas Navy. I don’t remember studing this in Texas History. (Yes, I was taught specifically Texas History one year in elementary school.)
http://wiseabouttexas.com/ep-90-cozumel-texas/
Keith West says
Awesome!
lane batot says
I’ve always been fascinated with falconry(I love Steve Bodio’s stuff!), but not inclined to practice it myself–it is VERY particular in ways that I don’t think I’d do well at. I’ll stick with mah dawgs! Speaking of which, I’ve always wondered how something like falconry ever even got started, but I think I saw what might have been the spark that got someone to thinking, long, long ago, and it involves dogs. And since hunting with both dogs and hawks is common, perhaps there might be something to this: I had a relationship develop between a Cooper’s hawk and some of my dogs some years back. My backyard has a thick clump of brush made up mostly of a tangle of grapevines, that small birds dive into for protection when hawks buzz my many bird feeders. My dogs picked up on this, and would plunge into the brush to try and snatch the grounded birds, which would then flush and one of them would inevitably get nailed by the waiting hawk. This happened repeatedly all that year, and was fascinating to watch(well, if you weren’t a small bird!). I havta wonder if some ancient hunter, out hunting with his/her dogs, witnessed something like that, and decided to familiarize themselves with handling raptors directly!