Oconee Forest Park

More trees of historic significance—purely personal significance, in this case. After our visit to TTTOI, we made an early-evening stop at Oconee Forest Park, on the banks of Lake Herrick.

The intramural fields on the opposite side of Lake Herrick are where I first saw and later played toli, but Oconee Forest Park is where I became a falconer. This was my hawking grounds for the two years of my apprenticeship and the one year that followed, before moving out to Nebraska. And I will forever be grateful to the forest manager, who, in recognition of falconry's minimal impact, made this outstanding wood available to me.

The Georgia piedmont doesn't hold many rabbits, and they tend to be found in thick, often impenetrable briars ("cheek cutters" is the local vernacular for the taller stands), so grey squirrels were our quarry. The tiercel redtail I flew during my apprenticeship, Watauga, was a truly brilliant squirrel hawk; his successor (after a couple of false starts with female redtails), Pocomoke, was less gifted but still effective, and transitioned to fox squirrels upon our move west. The grey squirrels Jessa photographed foraging in the treetops in the waning light of evening are the 20x-great-grandchildren of the squirrels we chased back in the day.

It was good to see the population is still thriving. At one point during our walk, I demonstrated a hawking technique Jessa hadn't seen before, "ringing the doorbell": I grasped a stout grapevine that climbed high up a tree to a squirrel drey, gave it a few abrupt pulls, and three squirrels obligingly popped out of the drey. Talley ho, had we a hawk with us. As it was, we saw only a Cooper's hawk nest. (The day before, I actually witnessed a pair of Cooper's mating from the backyard of our rental, but no birds were in evidence here.)

Of course the nest was in a pine—there are lone pines here and there, and even a few stands of pine, but the glory of Oconee Forest Park is in its hardwoods. I remember red oaks, tulip poplars, and sweetgum as the dominant species, but there is a fair bit of diversity here, and since this particular forest hasn't been logged for over a hundred years, some good-sized specimens as well. (Plus a few oddities and a nicely developed understory.)

I feel doubly fortunate to have begun my hawking career in this forest: not only was it beautiful and well-supplied with exciting quarry, but I know that I will always be able to come back and visit. Too many falconers' first fields have been paved over. Long live OFP.