Hawai'ian falconry? Not holding my breath

Catching up on the Internet after at least a week's absence, I see that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is considering delisting the Hawai'ian hawk or 'io (Buteo solitarius). [HT Terrierman.] The 'io breeds on the Big Island of Hawai'i, where as the island's only resident raptor it preys on a wide variety of avian, mammalian (mostly introduced rodents) and invertebrate prey, and is occasionally found as a vagrant on other islands in the archipelago. On Hawai'i it can be found in agricultural areas and secondary (largely non-native) forest as well as its historical habitat of native forest. Apparently its willingness to utilize such secondary habitats has contributed to its relatively secure (for an island endemic species) status, as populations have remained stable over a twenty-year period.


Over the last few years, as states like Delaware and Connecticut finally put falconry regulations into place, the North American Falconers' Association (NAFA) finally achieved its goal of legal falconry in 49 states. Hawai'i had always been considered a non-starter because the 'io was listed as an endangered species, and the state was understandably opposed to the use of non-native raptors. If the 'io is in fact delisted, it will be interesting to see if Hawai'ian falconry with the 'io might someday become a possibility. Of course, any efforts in that direction will be need to be extremely sensitive not only to the usual opposition from opponents of field sports, but also to the bird's significance as an 'amakua or (roughly translated) totem animal in traditional Hawai'ian culture.

Andrew Wyeth: Ripples on a pond

When I heard that the artist Andrew Wyeth (see official website, Wikipedia biography) had passed away on Friday at the age of 91, it was not unlike hearing that a distant relative had died: my Uncle David has always considered Wyeth a major artistic influence. Just as a stone tossed to water causes ripples that radiate long after the stone's disappearance, Andrew Wyeth's work continues to affect David's painting and my own artistic sensibilities, and likely will for some time.

Like Wyeth, David is considered a "regionalist" painter, depicting rural scenes mostly in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Also like Wyeth, David works in watercolour and egg tempera. (I personally prefer his watercolours, with their more subdued tones.) He's had numerous shows and exhibitions, but I suspect his favorite was the one in Andrew Wyeth's hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania.

Here are a few snapshots of David's work from my dad's collection, though I suppose one day I will have to start thinking of it as my collection. (These small photos don't begin to do justice to the paintings, but will have to suffice.)

Annapolis boat yard, pen and ink, 1971. Good drawing is the basis for great painting.


Onion shed, watercolour, 1973.


One way in which David's work differs from Andrew Wyeth's is that while David's landscapes almost always include man-made elements (houses, barns, etc.), the human form rarely if ever makes a direct appearance. Some critics, I assume, would draw psychological conclusions about this aspect of David's art, but I also suspect that most of those conclusions would be completely off-base. My uncle, like most in the family, could hardly be classified as an extrovert, but a gentler, more personable man you're not likely to meet.

Pump house, watercolour, 1973.


I have always admired, perhaps because it comes with great difficulty for me, the way artists like David can suggest detail that isn't necessarily there, as for example in the leaves and textured bark of the tree behind and to the left of the pump house. Robert Bateman, another artist both David and I admire, is a master of this.

Burkittsville, watercolour, 1984.


Watercolour is a difficult medium for a number of reasons, but one has to do with its transparency. Unlike with oils or acrylics, for example, there is no white paint. White comes from the paper itself, so the white areas in a painting like this (the snow, the fences, the sunlit sides of the house) are not painted but painted around. The unforgiving nature of the medium therefore requires a good deal of planning as well as meticulous technique; David typically "scouts" a painting with several visits to explore various points of view and study the changing of the light, but paints at home using photographs for reference. He does not consider himself bound by the physical realities of a location, however, often rearranging various elements for artistic effect.

On my last visit home in November, with the painting itself in the back seat of the Outback and a Maryland highway map pointing me toward Burkittsville, I set out to locate this scene. It wasn't difficult to find: Needwood Farms, established circa 1795, is located perhaps a mile outside the town of Burkittsville, right off Highway 17. Once there, I could see that David had flattened out the field in the foreground; from the point of view he used, the house is actually half-hidden behind a rise in the field. (Also, as you can see in the photo below, the evergreens around the house have grown much bigger since '84.)


The ridge behind the farm is the low backbone of South Mountain, where on September 14, 1862 Major General George B. McClellan's Union troops attacked General Robert E. Lee's scattered Confederate forces, which ten days earlier had advanced into Maryland for the first time. McClellan took the three gaps held by the Confederates, achieving a significant Union victory at this stage of the war, but failed to press his advantage. The Battle of South Mountain was consigned to obscurity through McClellan's delay, which gave Lee time to gather his army near Sharpsburg, on the west bank of Antietam Creek. The ensuing battle there, on September 17, marked the single bloodiest day of the American Civil War.

David's personal website (like the gallery site here) is definitely worth checking out despite being a bit out of date, which is a reflection of the fact that health issues threatened to put an end to his painting career. Happily, he has made a remarkable recovery from what can be an utterly debilitating condition, and is painting once again. I hope to be able to post more later. Meanwhile, condolences from our family to Andrew Wyeth's. His was a remarkable talent.

Twenty-seven 8x10 color glossy pictures...

...with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was, to be used as evidence against us.

Well, not really, but these were taken by a cop.


Conservation officer Dina Barta from the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission did my facilities re-inspection (part of the falconry permitting process) when I moved a couple of years ago, and expressed an interest in coming afield with me. A few months ago we bumped into each other while we were both stocking up on dog supplies, and traded contact info. Yesterday, we finally got around to hawking together.

Dina and her friend Keith met me at a State Recreation Area that holds a good population of cottontails as well as fox squirrels, a species I enjoy hunting but for which Stekoa harbors less enthusiasm. Temperatures were in the single digits, but bundled up against the cold, we ventured into the woods along with Maxine and Anya. Almost immediately, Stekoa changed direction, going at right angles to our intended route—a good indication of game on the move. Sure enough, when we caught up to him, a rabbit flushed from the undergrowth and was immediately taken. Total elapsed time: about three minutes.

[Making in.]


I rarely try for more than one rabbit in a day, but all the conditions were right: a quick first kill, company along (they had planned on seeing more flying than this), and an absence of pressing responsibilities elsewhere. So I rewarded Stekoa lightly, put the rabbit in my vest, and we set out again.


Weather like this often drives cottontails underground, so I was not at all surprised that flushes thereafter were few and far between. Dina and Keith didn't seem to mind at all; they were clearly enamored of the hawk (Dina noted that "If redtails were rare, everyone would agree they're the most beautiful bird alive") and also impressed with the way Max and Anya worked cover. I have to admit I was impressed with the dogs, too, unfazed as they were by the cold. They also showed off their athleticism—at one point we ventured into unfamiliar territory, and I was surprised to arrive at the edge of a bluff overlooking the creek. Forty or fifty feet down, with a path (made by what, I wonder?) going straight down an incline of at least 60 degrees. But Stekoa was flying ahead of us and Maxine, intent on her mission of staying with the hawk, barrelled straight down, crossed the frozen creek like nothing extraordinary had happened, and continued hunting. The less-confident Anya followed her before, I think, she knew what she'd gotten herself into, and got stuck three-quarters of the way down. I tried to "ski" down sideways, leaning hard into the hill, but traversed the lower half of the hill on the seat of my brush jeans—where there isn't a layer of tough Cordura nylon. (Fortunately, Dina didn't capture this episode with her camera.) Anya then scrambled back up the steep slope and followed Dina and Keith around to an easier crossing.

[The dogs investigate the site of a "wild" rabbit kill. The predator could have been any of several: hawk, owl, fox, coyote, or bobcat. I had to stash the frozen gutpile on a nearby branch to keep Max and Anya from chowing down.]


We ended up hunting for about two hours before Stekoa got another shot at a rabbit. This was an unusual flight, not especially exciting from a visual standpoint but tactically interesting: He glided most of the way, easing up, over, and around the flank of a small stand of sumacs to take a cottontail hiding in the grass on the far edge. Until Stekoa pitched down and the rabbit started squealing, I hadn't thought it was a hunting flight at all, just a routine glide to a new perch, and I wonder if the bunny was likewise lulled into a false sense of security by the casual approach. In any case, the rabbit was put in the bag, and we were done for the afternoon.

[Stekoa eats while Anya looks on. The dogs got rewarded, too: rabbit legs with a bit of meat left on, what falconers call a "tyring".]


On our way out of the woods, we encountered a deer hunter just entering—it was the last day of the firearms season. Dina checked his permit, and even though Keith and I hung back we could hear the man spoke with a pronounced accent. Dina later told us that all the deer hunters she'd checked lately had been Russians—apparently they're the only ones hardy enough to sit still for hours in this late-season weather. We at least got to walk around, climbing in and out of the creekbed, keeping ourselves warm through exertion.

[I like this shot; you can almost tell by looking how the sun offers light but little warmth on a day like this.]

All in all, another good day. Stekoa certainly enjoyed himself—just don't get too close with that camera!

A new icon

Cool new widget, courtesy of Paste magazine: Obamicon.me

"Weather Channel"

That kind of day.

In the city

Journal Star outdoors writer Joe Duggan had a nice column in yesterday's paper (link here) about a sharp-shinned hawk at his house. Coincidentally, just a few hours after I read the article, Julie T. called to tell me about a hawk (it turned out to be a Cooper's hawk) she had seen perched in a bush in her front yard. "The sparrows were in a state of panic," she said, as indeed they would be with an accipiter in the neighborhood.

All of which got me thinking (again) how fortunate we are to have such a plethora of urban wildlife here in Lincoln. The last few mornings, in between irritated slaps at the snooze button, I've been hearing a pair of great-horned owls in the trees behind the house. Karl Linderholm recently sent me this picture, probably taken by Mitchell, of a screech-owl at their back deck.


Then, of course, there are the redtails (one of whom I occasionally find perched on the fence just outside Stekoa's mews, prompting me to wonder what sort of communication might be transpiring between these normally asocial birds), merlins (easier to find in town, where they enjoy a concentration of European starlings, than out in the boonies), and the Capitol peregrines (previous posts here and here). City living definitely has its ups and downs, but seeing all these raptors on at least a semi-regular basis certainly helps to make it tolerable for me.

"A Long December"

This one by Counting Crows captures some of the melancholy and regret that can characterize this time of year, but not without an element of hope as well: "And there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last..."



[Skip ahead to about 1:20 for the start of the song.]

A happy New Year and peace to all.

Three for the bookshelf or coffee table

I've been reading three relatively new large-format bird books lately, and offer this comparative review. (Almost too late for holiday shopping, I know, but it's a free service.)

First up is On Feathered Wings: Birds in Flight by Richard Ettlinger. This is primarily a photographic collection, purporting to be the first composed entirely of avian flight photos. The pictures are by the author and six other contributors, including Colorado falconer/photographer Rob Palmer. (I met Rob at a NAFA meet a few years ago, even drove him around briefly, and while I doubt he could pick me out of a lineup after such a short meeting, he struck me as a genuinely nice as well as talented fellow.) The book is unevenly divided into four sections: "Killers on the Wing" is the longest, followed by "Wings Along the Shore", "Wings of the Wetlands", and finally the abbreviated "Songbirds on the Wing"—eleven plates in this section, eight of which are photographs of swallows (certainly better than my efforts in that area). I'll confine my commentary primarily to the section on raptors.

As promised in the introduction, many of the photographs are "impossible" shots, or would be to ordinary mortal photographers: well-composed, crisply-focused, dramatic images of hawks and owls in flight. Some were taken at well-known migration points; several others are of falconry birds, either explicitly identified as "captives" or depicting commonly-trained birds outside of their natural ranges (e.g., Harris' hawk in Utah). In none of these latter shots, however, are the standard articles of falconry "furniture"—jesses, bells, telemetry transmitters—visible, so I assume that these have been digitally excised.

Also in the introduction, Ettlinger describes the book's images as "proving anew that a picture can be worth more than a thousand words, that text is an unnecessary embellishment." If only he had taken his own hint... I could overlook statements like "Birds are the only vertebrates able to get away by flying and to live pretty much every part of their lives in the air" (he's never heard of bats?) and assertions that birds mate in mid-air (true, possibly, of swifts, but not of most birds). But descriptions of peregrines "dive-bombing straight down at 200 miles per hour, skewering the victim in their beaks [italics mine], and spiriting it off..." are less excusable, considering that one of his collaborators is an experienced falconer. Ettlinger also presents some erroneous (or, at the least, highly unorthodox) taxonomic theory as fact: Beneath an exquisite Rob Palmer photograph of a stooping American kestrel, he claims that "The black ear patches on the sides of the head and the extensively gray wings of the male...reveal that this North American falcon species is not a true kestrel, but rather a hobby." The aplomado falcon might qualify as a New World hobby, but the AK's affinities are squarely with the kestrels. As for the description of bald eagles as "nearly deaf", I'll keep an open mind, but I'm skeptical.

Bottom line: On Feathered Wings is a visual treat, but the text should be taken with a large grain of salt—or skipped altogether.

Our second book, narrower in scope but more substantial in execution, is Paul Bannick's The Owl and the Woodpecker: Encounters with North America's Most Iconic Birds. I'm not as far into this one, but Bannick seems to be reasonably solid on natural history despite a relatively recent introduction to bird studies: his main interest was amphibians until a chance encounter with a saw-whet owl set him on a new path, and he set out to document and study all of North America's owls and woodpeckers. This pairing is never completely explained, but he does note that both are indicator species, and that about half of North American owl species are dependent on the work of woodpeckers for nesting locations.

The book's chapters are organized by geographic range and habitat type, starting on the Pacific Coast and moving counter-clockwise all the way to boreal forest and Arctic tundra. The appearance and behavior of owl and woodpecker species typical of each habitat are discussed, along with notes on population status and conservation measures that might be undertaken to benefit the region and its avifauna. Bannick's excellent photography can be found on nearly every page; in addition to intimate depictions of his target species and sometimes their neighbors, he has a good eye for landscapes, and his portraits of each habitat could be considered almost definitive.

Unlike Ettlinger, Bannick provides a bibliography for those interested in further research. A nice bonus is a CD collection of owl and woodpecker recordings (both calls and drumming in the case of the woodpeckers) by Martyn Stewart. Even without the CD, I would recommend The Owl and the Woodpecker to anyone interested in either or both of these groups; with it, this book constitutes one of the best bargains I've encountered at the bookstore recently.

The last book in the collection is the most narrowly focused, and succeeds for that reason and others. Owls of the United States and Canada: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Behavior, by Wayne Lynch, was published last year by the Johns Hopkins University Press—which should be indication enough that this is a definitive work. Like Paul Bannick, Lynch is a gifted photographer as well as a writer, and all but one of the photos in the book stem from his own fieldwork. Here, however, the text does not take a backseat to the photography; Lynch goes into much greater ecological detail while still maintaining a readable and often personal style. Lynch's own anecdotes are supplemented with frequent reference to the work of other ornithologists, and he appends the substantial bibliography expected in an academic book.

The book is organized topically. Many readers will find "Son et Lumière", the chapter on owls' sensory adaptations, the most surprising and enlightening. Owls are often assumed to have hearing and vision far superior to that of humans, but the research findings related by Lynch indicate that human auditory capabilities closely match those of owls, and while the average owl has more acute vision than the average human, there is enough overlap that some visually gifted humans (think Chuck Yeager) may have the edge over individual owls. Where owls really seem to shine is in the area of spatial memory: Those species that live in the darkest, most densely wooded or spatially complex environments are the most territorial, and often very catholic or flexible with regard to diet—in lean times, it's easier for them to switch to secondary or tertiary prey than it is for them to move to a new, unfamiliar location. This "nocturnal syndrome", correlating wooded habitats with strong territoriality, long tenancy, and flexible diet, has obvious implications for rehabilitators releasing owls that have recovered from injury or illness.

While I suspect that The Owl and the Woodpecker will outsell Lynch's Owls of the United States and Canada, the latter will be the first choice of serious raptorphiles. But they are complementary works, and if resources allow, why not read them both?

[Related post: a photo-essay on eastern screech-owls can be found here.]

Final act of defiance

This is one of those wordplays that will make you smack yourself on the forehead: "Why didn't I think of that?" Dan Piraro, creator of Bizarro (and BizarroBlog), did think of it. And then published it in newspapers across the country. Just in case yours isn't one of them...well, here you go.

"I Love the World" (a.k.a. "Boom De Ah Dah")

Susie's been playing this when she's at the computer, and singing it around the house when she's not, and now it's stuck in my head. So here you go...may as well get stuck in yours.

>

Keep an eye on that Pomeranian

From WXII, Channel 12 in Winston-Salem, comes this story about a small dog being carried off (and then dropped) by a raptor. As usual when the non-specialist media venture off the pavement, some skepticism is called for. For example: "[Veterinarian Mitchell] Spindell says that large birds like this red-shouldered hawk can do a lot of damage in the blink of an eye." Okay, so he just happens to have a red-shouldered hawk handy, which I suppose made the camera crew's day, but the implication that a redshoulder could have carried off even a toy Pomeranian is a bit of a stretch. A redtail, maybe, or a great horned owl (even in the daytime), but a redshoulder?

Reminds me, of course, of one of Gary Larson's best:

HT remchick, my best source for strange news out of North Carolina.

Smokepole hunting

My brother Greg, who has never hunted before, just took his first white-tailed deer during Maryland's black-powder season. Not with one of those modern in-line jobbies, either: his thunderstick is an 1861 Springfield rifle, firing a .58-caliber Minié round. That's a big chunk of lead, and I wasn't surprised to hear his doe dropped where she stood. One deer, one shot.

This particular Springfield pulls double duty. It's more often fired, sans Minié ball, at bluecoats when Greg re-enacts with the 13th Virginia. He is the adjutant for the Confederate Military Forces Society; in addition to dressing up and playing soldier (often for the education of kids at living-history events), the CMF raise funds for battlefield and flag preservation.

Greg's deer tag allows him to take two does and a buck, so there may be more pictures to follow. Meanwhile, Greg, congratulations! (And save me some venison.)

Update: Two corrections from Greg. First of all, he took his doe during the regular firearm season, during which he can also hunt with his muzzleloader. Secondly, he has to take two does and a buck before he's eligible for an extra buck stamp—but he can take as many as ten does.

I think the Maryland DNR may be getting serious about thinning the herd; the issues, as usual, are carrying capacity (too many deer overbrowse their habitat, leading to drastic fluctuations in deer populations and adverse effects on other wildlife) and human-deer conflicts (especially vehicle-deer collisions). Successful hunters who may not actually need eleven or twelve deer are encouraged to participate in Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry, a program that puts venison where it's needed most.

Right enough for chickens

Circumstances made me miss both the NFA field meet three weeks ago and the NAFA field meet underway right now, but I did get to spend the last few days hawking with Art Graves. He moved to the Nebraska Sandhills nineteen years ago for the express purpose of hawking grouse, specifically greater prairie-chickens and sharp-tailed grouse. Chickens are far more common than sharps where Art lives, and so make up the majority of his flights. He flies gyr x peregrine tiercels, and maintains very high standards for himself and his birds. For Art, a good flight means not just a high pitch (a thousand feet or so) and a vertical stoop ending in an explosion of grouse feathers, but his hawk attaining that pitch by pumping all the way up, without missing a single wingbeat. His current bird, Jimi, has already killed several prairie-chickens this year, but lately has displayed a tendency to set his wings on occasion; this, along with a reduced pitch, is slowly driving Art mad. As I said, he maintains very high standards.

We set out early yesterday to find prairie-chickens. They roost and loiter in grassy cover, but often feed in cropland, so Art concentrates on pivot-irrigated fields—mostly corn in this area, but occasionally soybeans or wheat—where grouse congregate in the mornings and evenings to feed. (Grouse-hawking takes a lot of space. Art is a bit of a homebody for a grouse hawker, rarely venturing away from his local hawking grounds even for a field meet. He estimates that he has access to about 40,000 acres, which he scouts on a regular basis; even so, he occasionally has trouble finding "flyable" birds.) Cruising past a recently-harvested cornfield in his big Toyota pickup just after sunrise, Art caught a glimpse of what might have been a bird hunkered down in the stubble. Easing to a stop in the road, he sighted down the rows with a Nikon spotting scope and confirmed it was a not a pheasant (best avoided because of pheasants' tendency to put back in after the flush, thereby lowering a gamehawk's pitch over time) but a prairie-chicken. He tossed out a blaze-orange hat to mark the spot, put the Toyota in reverse, and backed up several hundred yards to a low spot in the road where we could put on Jimi's telemetry transmitter, unhood him and release him without flushing the chicken prematurely.


Once unhooded, Jimi roused and quickly left the fist, flying in a businesslike manner in the cold morning air. (Even a half-Arctic hawk is adversely affected by warm weather.) He usually follows Art's truck well, a big plus when there's a lot of ground to cover between the release point and the quarry, so Art jumped back into the driver's seat and drove off-road until we were even with the hat. Getting out and looking up to find Jimi before we walked in for the flush, we saw only empty sky. Art pulled out the telemetry receiver, hoping it would reveal Jimi as just a speck directly overhead, but instead the signal was on the horizon in the direction we'd come from. After a few minutes, Jimi came skimming in low, apparently having chased a flock of pigeons or some other "check" he'd spotted while we were taking off in the Toyota. He landed expectantly in the stubble and waited for Art to produce some food. Instead, a frustrated Art presented an ungarnished fist and announced, "We're doing this again."


With Jimi again hooded and secured in the back of the truck, we set out for one of Art's most reliable spots, which he calls "the beanfield" despite the fact that it's been planted in corn for almost fifteen years. A few chickens were flying into the field as we arrived, but driving into the field, we spotted trouble in several forms. A dozen or more chickens were perched in the top of a tall cottonwood nearby; these will often draw the hawk's attention at the outset, but they fly off as soon as the hawk takes to the air, resulting in a long, fruitless and possibly hazardous tailchase. A few more chickens flushed from the corn stubble as we drove, but flew directly uphill and put in dangerously close to a fence. Finally, Art spotted a prairie falcon perched atop a pole on the near horizon. Wild prairie falcons are magnificent birds, and Art has an appreciation for them of course, but they are also a nemesis of sorts since they distract his hawks from their intended quarry; just the previous evening, we had watched Jimi expend most of his energy in a long chase across the sky to engage a prairie in a bit of aerial dogfighting before coming back (at a lower pitch) for a flock of chickens that were no longer there. Not again—we left the beanfield in search of another, more feasible slip.

We found one going down a narrow, rutted dirt track through grassland. Several chickens flushed as we turned in, rocking side to side in their distinctive pattern of quick wingbeats alternating with a brief glide. They flew more or less parallel to the track, and finally put in just on the far side of a round-topped hill about a quarter-mile away. This time, after releasing Jimi, Art stood on the running board of the Toyota to keep an eye on him as I drove toward the birds, hoping not to bounce Art off the truck.

When we eased to a stop and ran at a crouch to the top of the round hill, Jimi was directly overhead, and although he had briefly set his wings he was once again pumping his way upward; Art seemed almost satisfied with the situation. Then, just before we could crest the hill and flush the flock we had seen put in, a single prairie-chicken flushed wide from the slope below and to our right. Jimi folded and stooped, and despite the imperfect positioning managed to catch up to the fleeing chicken and deliver an audible hit.

For the benefit of those who have not seen them in action, I should point out that prairie grouse, especially prairie-chickens, are incredibly tough birds, infrequently brought to bag; with their armor-plated carapace (rap with your knuckles on a prairie-chicken's back and you'll encounter what amounts to a turtle shell covered in loose feathers) and will to survive, they can absorb a hard hit from a stooping falcon, bounce off the ground, and still keep flying strong—in falconer's parlance, they "take a lot of killing". So we weren't surprised to see this flight devolve into a long tailchase, which usually isn't successful even with the speed of a gyr hybrid. But then Art saw, through his binoculars, Jimi pitch up again and slam downward.

Art was concerned about where the flight had ended up, so we quickly jumped into the Toyota and drove almost recklessly to that general area: a barbed-wire fence paralleled a section road under a string of power poles, one of which turned out to have a ferruginous hawk perched on top. Inexplicably but fortunately, the ferrug either hadn't seen the conclusion of the flight or hadn't bothered to take advantage of the situation, and lumbered off as we drove up. A brief search with telemetry guided us to Jimi pluming the dead chicken amidst grass and sage in the roadside ditch, just a foot or so from the barbed wire. The absence of feathers on the wire, and an abundance of them on the slope above the ditch, indicated that Jimi had pounded the chicken into the ground just as it cleared the fence—a lucky thing, as the fence could easily have killed them both. Further examination showed how Jimi had been able to catch up to the grouse: the initial hit had taken most of the secondary feathers out of its right wing, leaving it under-powered and vulnerable.


For Art, it was an imperfect flight: Jimi could have been higher, shouldn't have set his wings, might have been able to kill one outright on the initial stoop had we been able to get a perfect flush beneath him. But it was good enough to kill a chicken in decent if not picture-perfect style; even more importantly, what could have been a tragic aftermath to the tailchase was averted. Given the number of variables and complications involved in grouse hawking—including (to list just a few) the hawk's weight and condition, both physical and mental; the temperature; wind speed and direction; cloud ceiling; geographic and temporal distribution of feeding and roosting sites for grouse, not to mention the mobility of the grouse themselves; presence or absence of stationary hazards like power lines and fences, as well as mobile ones like prairie falcons and eagles—it's too much to expect that any day's hunt will be perfect. If things didn't go perfectly yesterday, at least they went right enough.

And to the victor go the spoils.

"Alice's Restaurant Massacree"

Someone had to post this for Thanksgiving...may as well be me.



I had the distinct pleasure of seeing Arlo perform this on his "Alice's Restaurant" tour a few years ago. Other highlights included, of course, "City of New Orleans" and a spooky rendition of "House of the Rising Sun".

The historical background on the Massacree is here for anyone who might be interested.

Back later with some falconry...

photoblogging: snow in the highlands

Driving into western Maryland yesterday, I encountered altitude-effect snow: Snow showers at Sideling Hill, Big Savage Mountain, Meadow Mountain, rain in between. But on the western side of the continental divide, the snow had fallen in earnest.

In Bawlamerese: "Watch out for them deers, hon." Always a good idea, but especially in the snow.


Snow on pine boughs along Garrett Highway.


The Youghiogheny River near Oakland.


Goldenrod, also on the Yock.


The right tool for the job.


Every third or fourth car in the western Maryland mountains, it seems, is a Subaru. If only everyone would drive one... While I had dinner with friends/family in Oakland, darkness fell and the snow started again with a vengeance, swirling around as if a snowglobe had been given a violent shake. Not wanting to get stuck in Oakland—with another 24 hours of snow expected—I declined an offer of lodging and headed back up to I-68 and then I-79. As the weather worsened, hundreds of drivers in West Virginia and Pennsylvania parked along the interstate—not just on the shoulder, but in both lanes; wherever the mood struck them, apparently. Road conditions called for caution, but not for giving up. I carefully picked my way among cars, 18-wheelers, and more than a few Jeeps and eventually reached Washington, PA.

Sleep was bliss.

Sign of the times

This doesn't look like the work of an organized movement, but at least someone in Maryland has figured out the equation:

Paul G. Churchill, 1945-2008

Today is Veterans' Day, an especially poignant one for me as I am just now starting to come to grips with the loss of my dad, Capt. Paul G. Churchill, USAF, who passed away on Friday.


My dad was a member of the Pershing Rifles military fraternity and the Reserve Officers' Training Corps at the University of Maryland. He was heavily involved in the Pershing Rifles' acclaimed drill team, and also served as unit chaplain. (Among his other duties, he would occasionally "bless" a ham sandwich for his friend David Skillman, who was widely but incorrectly assumed to be Jewish.) He married his college sweetheart, Jo Ann Grammer, at the University chapel, and I was born in January 1967. Upon his graduation later that year, Dad was commissioned into the U.S. Air Force. Subsequent postings included Texas and Indiana, where my brother Greg was born. Then, in 1970, he was sent to Vietnam, assigned to the 8th Aerial Port Squadron at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon.

Vietnam, the Un-War: Where the unable lead the unwilling to do the unnecessary for the ungrateful.

—unknown graffitist at Tan Son Nhut

War has been described as "long periods of boredom interrupted by brief moments of terror", and that description would be apt for my dad's tour in Southeast Asia. He endured hot, humid weather; semi-regular rocket attacks; and a brief, accidental visit to an apparent Viet Cong depot (a story I may tell later). Then, of course, there was the separation from his young family.

Much of his time off-duty was spent keeping up contact any way he could. He recorded and mailed cassette tapes as well as letters and postcards. (Many of the latter I still have). Often, after a duty shift, he would wait in line at the comm office for hours to place a five-minute radio-relay telephone call to my mom. There was always someone else on the line, a necessity which made any sort of intimacy difficult, and the connection was not always good. Once, after several requests to "Please repeat, over," an airman at the relay station broke his silence to clarify what had been said: "She said she loves you, sir." Dad said the sentiment lost a lot in translation.

Otherwise, off-duty hours were spent in Saigon; at the officers' club, where a Filipino cover band might give Creedence Clearwater Revival or the Beatles a cruel battering; or just hanging out at the BOQ. Occasionally, there would be parties with the Australian contingent—the Yanks provided the steaks, the Aussies the beer, which represented a welcome change. Normally, the only beer available was Black Label; rumor had it that soldiers at a forward operating base once cheered the downing of a C-7 Caribou because its cargo consisted entirely of Black Label beer.

Sometime in 1970, Dad's idealism was challenged when he was ordered to supervise the loading, without paperwork, of a suspiciously unmarked black plane—his first direct contact with the reality of the secret war in Cambodia. (This would have been before the overt Cambodian Incursion, and probably represented either a ground component to the "secret war" or a preliminary operation by special-ops forces in advance of the Incursion.) His cynicism increased when he had to ship home the body of a friend killed in combat.

Dad was proud of his military service, but considered his time in Vietnam a wasted year. I'm not so sure about that. The war itself may have been a mistake, but I believe his essential decency made him a force for good and an ambassador for the American people. At a time when many servicemen treated Vietnamese people with suspicion and contempt, and ethnic slurs were applied to enemies and allies alike, Dad saw himself as a guest in Vietnam and treated its citizens accordingly. He and some friends stocked a refrigerator in the operations office with Coca-Cola and put up a sign: "Cokes 25 cents, or 10 dong for our Vietnamese friends." (I may have the conversion backwards; it might have been 10 cents and 25 dong.) This simple gesture earned him the respect and friendship of the Vietnamese civilians working there, and set an example for the men of his command.


For a recent birthday, our family gave Dad a Pendleton blanket entitled "Grateful Nation" in recognition of his service to country. In my mind, this includes not just his time in the Air Force (even after Vietnam, he kept his name on the rolls of the inactive reserves in case he was needed in uniform once again) but also his subsequent career as a teacher and his life as a true family man. As my brother and I today began the long and difficult task of sorting through his belongings—a task that could take months, as Dad was both a collector and a packrat; I once told him that when I thought about clearing out his house, I prayed I would go first—this was one of the first items I secured. Another: the Akubra hat with RAAF insignia given to Dad by an Australian officer in Vietnam in a gesture of friendship and solidarity.

If you have the chance, or can make a chance, thank a veteran today. Or anytime. I'll likely be on hiatus a few more days at least, but I'll get back online when I can. Peace to all.


Update: More on Dad from The Baker Street Blog, The Baltimore Sun, and The Carroll County Times.

Please?

The eagle says it all in this cartoon by Bob Englehart at the Hartford Courant. Congratulations to President-elect Barack Obama, and to us all.

Laying low

Here's to them that shoot and miss.

—old falconer's toast

Looks like another day for football and politics: Stekoa caught a rabbit yesterday, and I took the opportunity to feed him up and spend the day mostly indoors. The gun season for pheasant and quail opened last weekend, but hunter success was relatively low due to a late harvest—many gamebirds are still in standing corn and soybean fields—and with sunshine and temps in the 70s expected this weekend, I suspect many of the fair-weather shooters will be in the field for another try.

I should point out that it's specifically the fair-weather shooters I fear. Any bird-hunter still at it in December or January is obviously dedicated, probably knows what he or she is shooting at, and hopefully has enough ecological sense not to see hawks as a threat to gamebird populations. But the eighty to ninety percent of small-game permit holders who venture afield only in the early season make me fear not just for Stekoa's safety but also for my own. Hunter-safety education has reduced the number of fools who shoot at movement or even sound without positively identifying their targets, but it hasn't eliminated them. My caution, not to say paranoia, was reinforced when a pheasant hunter got Dick Cheneyed just last weekend near Valparaiso. And hawks always catch hell during the early season, as evidenced by surging admissions at Raptor Recovery Nebraska (which obviously account for only a small percentage of the hawks shot).

This time of year, I'll hunt early on a weekday, but no amount of blaze orange will convince me to risk a beautiful Saturday like this. So:

• Air Force at Army. Guess I'll root for Air Force, though my dad was ROTC, not Academy, and couldn't possibly care less about football, anyway.... Hmmm, maybe I'll watch Kansas vs. Kansas State instead.
• Florida vs. Georgia, which remains the world's largest outdoor cocktail party no matter what SEC officials may say or do. Go Dogs!
• Tennessee at South Carolina, a chance for Vols fans everywhere to revile Steve Spurrier.
• Nebraska at Oklahoma, a slightly-tarnished but still classic rivalry. Go Big Red!

Enjoy the weekend, and be safe.

Three days

Come writers and critics who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide, the chance won't come again
Don't speak too soon, for the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'
And the loser now will be later to win...
For the times they are a-changin'