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Modern Falconry

The content below is from Episode 167 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

This week’s recommendation ties in nicely with the main event 🙂

  • Live like royalty for a bit.
    • Not all can afford this, I really shouldn’t be able to myself, but travel to a nice all-inclusive resort and just live like a lazy emperor for a week or so.
    • My wife and I (mostly my wife) threw quite the banger for our wedding. We had a blast and we had like 140 people attend.
    • Those people were kind enough to give us money towards our honeymoon and despite my boring urge to save it and put it towards an extension on our house, we did in fact spend that on a luxurious vacation.
    • We went to Costa Mujueres near Cancun Mexico.
      • We drank, ate, enjoyed entertainment, explored Isla Mujueres, and completly broke our mundane routine. It was phenomenal.
    • It cost lots of money, but was worth it and the money we spent was given to us to enjoy it the exact way we actually enjoyed it.
    • We met new people and talked about things that normally wouldn’t enter our minds had we stayed in our little valley mountain home in western Pennsylvania.
  • One thing I learned while at this fabulous resort was that it is common for resorts to employ falconers to scare away pesky birds that might poop in resort guests’ cocktails… and that shizznit intrigued me to no end!
    • So of course, it is this week’s main event.

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • So there I was, having a Bohemian Negra beer delivered to me poolside, as I smelled the salt coming in from the Mexican Gulf.
    • I was doing my typical people-watching when I spotted someone who looked different from the rest. Usually, you see relaxed guests getting drunk or chatting about, or perhaps a smiling and hardworking staff member busting their ass to make everyone happy. But I was looking at a woman wearing a white outfit, a white hat, and one giant leather glove on her left arm. Perched upon this glove was a badass-looking bird of prey wearing blinders.
      • All of a sudden the Great Tailed Grackles, gulls, and other tropical/sea birds in the area started losing their damn minds!
  • It was such a bizarre experience.
    • One minute there were beautiful birds swooping down for people’s fries and squawking about… the next it was pandemonium. And within a few minutes, all the birds were gone except the blind falcon sitting on its owner’s arm at the edge of the pool.
    • One of the guys in our group told me he had read a few articles about this resort falconry. His name is Gabe and he explained how resorts in the US don’t employ this technique as often due to environmental groups causing a fuss.
      • When this brand of scare-away falconry is used, it scares the local bird species to flee for an extended period of time, which upsets the local ecosystem.
      • Apparently, during covid’s travel restrictions, the resorts were mostly empty so falconry wasn’t used as much and so a lot of bird species that had previously been scared away were now returning to a lot of tourist destinations.
  • Now, if you’ve ever thought about falconry before (chances are you haven’t seeing as it isn’t a popular thing), but if you have…
    • you’ve probably pictured some Mongolian warrior from centuries past wearing steppe wolf coats and training a falcon to gather intel or hunt small game.
  • Or perhaps a European noble in more recent centuries who’s taken up the rare hobby of falconry to impress his mates down at the pub.
    • I actually knew Falconry was still a thing because when I took Weight Training class in highschool and injured my knee, I was required to write essays each class about various sports. I found it more interesting to write about sports that were less common or bizarre… I thought it was a blow-off assignment because the teacher for Weight Training was the head football coach and I knew my coach wouldn’t flunk me no matter what… especailly since I was the #1 bench and squat lifter in my school… Turns out I actually learned something! LOL

Wikipedia says this about the sport of Falconry: Falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey. Small animals are hunted; squirrels and rabbits often fall prey to these birds

  • But the thing that astonishes me is that falconry is still practiced for practical means in the tourist industry.

Though falconry has historically been used for hunting, the modern practice has found a home at resorts across North America, Britain and the United Arab Emirates. The birds of prey function as a pseudo force field, providing an environmentally conscious form of pest control. According to the Los Angeles Times, there were 137 active permits issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for predatory-bird pest management between 2007 and 2019, with hotels, museums, vineyards, airports and even landfills getting involved.

“The presence of these predatory birds is a natural, nonlethal means of intimidating and scaring away nuisance birds,” said Paige Hansen, a falconer at coastal Georgia’s Sea Island Resort.

  • Paige Hansen is one of these falconers who gets paid to walk around Sea Island GA in the spring and summer months with a freaking raptor perched on her arm.
    • She helps the local merchants and tourists by scaring away local birds (such as the Boat-Tailed Grackle) from stealing produce and boardwalk fries.
    • Sea Island GA hires a total of 3 falconers to keep the birds away.
      • The falconers don’t just parade the raptors around, they have to weigh and feed, train and perform hunting exercises and clear their enclosures (scoop out bird crap) daily.
      • The resort has 6 Harris’s hawks, 1 Peregrine falcon, 1 Eurasian eagle owl, 1 barn owl, and an Eastern screech owl. (all pictured below)
Harris Hawk
Peregrine Falcon
Eurasian Eagle Owl
Barn Owl
Eastern screech owl
  • Well, Sea Island Resort noticed that guests didn’t just appreciate the lack of loud grackles flying around and stealing fries… Some guests actually would come to get a closer look at these birds of prey.
    • The resort’s falconry program also served as a major draw for nature lovers and animal enthusiasts over the past decade.

According to Jon Kent, the property’s director of outdoor pursuits, the falconry program debuted in 2011 strictly as a pest-control measure. But interest from guests created demand for organized activities ranging from a brief Hawk Walk — where guests head to nearby Rainbow Island, try on a falconer glove and practice recalling the bird — to the full Falconry Experience, a program that offers an opportunity to watch Earth’s fastest bird, the peregrine falcon, hunt its flying prey.

Wikipedia explains: “The peregrine falcon is the fastest bird, and the fastest member of the animal kingdom, with a diving speed of 389 km/h (242 mph).”

On Mexico’s Caribbean coast, just north of Playa del Carmen, the Rosewood Mayakoba employs a small army of falconers equipped with Harris’s hawks — a species prized for its intelligence and agreeable disposition.

While there is no specific training regimen that the hawks require to scare off pesky birds, raptors are rewarded handsomely for their presence with abundant opportunity for fine dining, free flying and getting some much-needed beauty sleep.

Manuel García, the engineering director at Rosewood Mayakoba, said the hawks get a “high-quality diet” of quail, rabbit, chicken and rat, which helps domesticate them. Biologists and veterinarians who are trained to care for birds of prey tend to the hawks’ health needs. And while the birds are earning their keep, they have been known to slack off on occasion, going off-property to soak in the splendor of the Yucatán coast from a literal bird’s-eye view.

“From time to time, hawks feel like flying a little further and visiting the neighboring hotels, prompting their handler to run across the property in search of the bird,” García said.

  • That was going to be the end of this episode, but I wanted more of that ancient Mongolian steppe falconry because it is so badass!
    • These crazy bastards use 17 pound eagles to hunt!
      • From NomadicTrails.com:

The Kyrgyz, Kazakh, and Mongol traditions date back 900 years to the time of the Mongol Empire. Like traditional practices elsewhere in the world, the art of hunting with eagles is on the verge of extinction. But Mongolian Falconry is alive and well kept in Kazakh culture here in Mongolia.

Moreover, people all around the world practice the primal culture of hunting. But hunting with birds of prey is more challenging, as it takes three to four years to teach a bird to hunt. Further, the Golden Eagle weighs 3 to 7kg (7 to 17pounds) and the hunters have to keep their bird on a stretched arm. Not only this style of hunting makes it a difficult sport but at the same time, it offers an invaluable glimpse of the past and present of traditional hunting.

CREDIT:

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