You Just Never Know Who Else Birds

Grazing on sagebrush

I was in Spokane, Washington two weeks ago for an evening meeting with scientists from our Agency who were attending the Society for Range Management annual conference. While at dinner with my administrator, one of the area directors, and another program leader, the topic of bird hunting came up. As it turned out, my agency's boss knows quite a bit about birds in general, beyond the rules-of-the-road for identifying species and sexes in flight that are required for a duck hunter to successfully hunt. I think the discussion began around talk of raptors - hawks in particular.

I asked whether he knew where the annual hawk count is conducted in the East?

"Yes, Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania."

I had remembered reading about Hawk Mountain in the Roger Tory Peterson biography I have just about finished - but not the specific place or the state where it is found. Migratory hawks make their way past it en route back to northern summer habitat.

Peregrine Falcon book

He also mentioned a fellow named Al Nye who was known for raising hawks - this was back when my Administrator was a young fellow. Back at my hotel room later that night, I did a little Web-searching and found a citation about Nye on page 135 in Peregrine Falcon – Stories of the Blue Meanie by Jim Enderson, published in 2005 by University of Texas Press. (click here) 

Getting it right. Among the earliest North American falconers to systematically use duck hawks to catch wild gave was Al Nye. His unorthodox technique in the late 1930s was to put the falcon in the sky, then to run through the fields, hoping for some unseen bird to flush to its doom. Nye was a runner, both in the fields and on the football gridiron at Penn.

Other falconers with peregrines began to get it right. After the war, Morley Nelson settled in Boise. His skill on skis with the Tenth Mountain Division in Italy landed him a job measuring alpine snow depth for the Soil Conservation Service. Nelson obtained a female duck hawk named Blackie that made a strong impression on ducks on the numerous ponds around Boise. Nowhere else on the continent did ducks hear, day after day, the harmonic sound of the lightweight bells placed on falcons to help the falconer keep track of his hunter.

During our dinner discussion, specific information Ed remembered about Nye: "Al Nye, who lived in Arlington and McLean, Virginia, was quite an innovator.  I accompanied him on several rabbit hunts with his falcons. Actually, they were broad-winged hawks, a Goshawk and a Harris Hawk, not true falcons.  Quite exciting.  Al was an All-American football player at the University of Pennsylvania in his early days.  He worked at the Pentagon as a civilian CFO-type person before his retirement and passing."
____________________________ 

Western Sage Grouse

It is interesting how birding not only intersects with hunting, but with range management as well. In a meeting a week later in Portland, I met with a few folks from eastern Oregon to discuss possible ways to restore range habitat quality for Western Sage Grouse and grasses for grazing, by removing invasive western juniper trees and using the biomass to make jet fuel. Whether cattle or bison, grasslands and grazing are tied together, and some folks have looked at how grazers on the range shift different kinds of bird populations (here). The juniper has an avian twist in the story, as the tree encroaches on the sagebrush-dominated rangeland, it provide elevated perch for raptors - the grouse exit as they are more in peril from their predators. All of this makes for imagining how the way things are today, could be changed in the future to look more the way they were in the past. (2)
____________________________

Falcon breeding hat

As a another side note, I know a fellow from my laboratory back in Oregon who raised falcons as a side business. He occasionally told stories of middle east princes coming to the United States to purchase his product - fascinating. But what was funny was hearing the story about a party he and his wife had once attended where all of the guests were to wear some kind of hat. Doug wore a "hat" used to breed falcons - true, you can read about it here.

___________________________________

(1) Review shown in Google Books: A superb success as a bird, combining great speed, aeronautical grace, and fearlessness...inhabitant of wild places, inaccessible cliffs, and skyscrapers...worldwide dweller, trans-equatorial migrant, and docile captive—the peregrine falcon stands alone among all others of its kind. Perhaps this is why so many varied people rushed to its aid when it faced decimation by pesticide poisoning. In this personal and highly entertaining memoir, Jim Enderson tells stories of a lifetime spent studying, training, breeding, and simply enjoying peregrine falcons. He recalls how his boyhood interest in raptors grew into an ornithological career in which he became one of the leading experts who helped identity DDT as the cause of the peregrine falcon's sudden and massive decline across the United States. His stories reveal both the dedication that he and fellow researchers brought to the task of studying and restoring the peregrine and the hair-raising adventures that sometimes befell them along the way. Enderson also seamlessly weaves in the biology and natural history of the peregrine, as well as anecdotes about its traditional and widespread use in falconry as an aggressive yet tractable hunter, to offer a broad portrait of this splendid and intriguing falcon.

(2) Purposeful management of the range vegetation for multiple purposes could help restore the habitat for the grouse. Click here.