Heroes on the Wing

When I was in college my best buddy was making his student project film about falconry. Another student at our school who lived at home with his family had some kind of license to care for wildlife and would rehabilitate injured birds. He had a little owl for a while. But my buddy got interested in doing his film when this fellow had a red tail hawk and was attempting to teach it to hunt. He had the hood and the big glove and the whole deal. Dave got some great shots of the bird being released. She would fly around the back yard and take off over the trees. And it was very dramatic when she would return, wings spread wide, talons stretched down and open and alight back on the trainer’s arm. I got to wear the glove once and feel the mass and movement of that beautiful creature and those claws gripping my arm through the leather. That may have been when I fell in love with raptors in general and hawks in particular. Somewhere I have a photo of Dave and me with camera and light meter standing with the trainer and his hawk, Tosh, on a rock face high on the side of a mountain. Wish I could find it. The story has an unsatisfying end. Before Dave could finish his filming, the hawk apparently tired of the whole deal and decided not to come back one day. That was the end of "The Essence of Falconry." It would have been a cool film.

(note: It's been eight months since this post and I finally did come across the image and a few others so here they are. I remembered wrong, though. It seems the bird was already gone at this point. The shots made were a vain attempt to finish the film.)

We lived in Florida for a number of years. What a great place for bird lovers that state is. In certain seasons, for months at a time, osprey would eat on a branch in a tree in our backyard every morning and evening. They would catch a fish in a nearby lake, then swoop down over the pond next to our house, usually making a circle or two to check out whether things were quiet around their intended dining spot, then land on this certain horizontal limb that was unusually clear of obstructions. They would spend a half hour or so devouring the entire fish and finally fly off. Once in a while you would get to see one hunting at a lake, demonstrating amazing sight and coordination by shooting down, flaring over the water and snatching a fish from just under the surface as if it were trying to cooperate with the process. I noticed that when the actual snatch is made, the bird doesn't have the benefit of it's keen eyesight. They don't look down and back but do it by timing and feel. Fabulous birds they are. The osprey eats nothing but fish, earning it the nickname of “fish hawk.” Eagles, on the other hand, are opportunists.

We lived in central Florida and between our town and the next one happens to be the densest concentration of bald eagles outside of Alaska. There were far fewer than osprey, but seeing them was not uncommon. They would often soar curiously high, even higher than the buzzards. They would always engender a bit of national pride when they were close enough to see the regal white head. But eagles became a tainted hero to me. It turns out they are not real picky about what they eat. And, perhaps like our politicians in this way, are not always honorable in going about getting what they want.

One afternoon our osprey friend came soaring overhead as usual with his fish dangling from one talon. But he was maneuvering faster and more erratically than usual. There was an eagle chasing him. A second osprey, also with a fish was in the air nearby. The eagle and osprey number one performed a spectacular dogfight over the street and several front yards. They banked and spiraled and dove and flapped for height as if putting on an air show for the neighborhood. They had FAA low altitude aerobatic waivers as the stunting was at times no more than ten feet above the ground. The osprey was getting the worst of it as it had the burden of the fish to deal with. The eagle was trying it’s best to steal supper. Now I know the eagle is perfectly capable of heading over to the lake and getting his own fish. I was thinking that this attempt at thievery was costing far more energy than it would take to just go get his own meal. But the eagle kept at it. Eventually a really close pass unnerved the osprey and it dropped the fish in the grass in front of me. The scoundrel of an eagle ignored this completely and took off after the second osprey and proceeded to dogfight that one until it too dropped it’s fish. Mr. eagle also let that one go to waste and all three left the area empty handed. It was all spectacular to watch and great fun, but it sort of marred my image of the noble eagle.

The osprey and the hawk don’t have the eagle’s reputation and symbolism to live up to. They are sort of secondary in the raptor status hierarchy. That may be why I like them more. Let somebody else deal with the potshots that the leader always attracts. I’ll trade the fancy white head feathers for being left alone to do my thing under the radar any day.