Falconry World

Well this little brancher won’t be going hungry. This picture was taken by Garrett Smith in Secret Canyon, Utah, USA last week. They were looking for climbing areas and came across this eerie. Good job mother wasn’t home to greet them; if she’s taking deer for her chick then a climber would be just fine as a main course for herself…… after she’s removed the North Face packaging of course.

Sometimes in life we all want to drown a bird we dearly love due to her incessant nagging, yet we don’t due to the threat of jail or worse, no ironing, sex and back to microwave meals. (I’ll soon find out if my wife reads my posts) However this wild sparrowhawks demonstrates (not the one in the picture that could only just bath itself) that darwin’s theory of the fittest and the wisest is still alive and strong…..Which is more than I can say for this magpie after….. Watch the video here, you’ll not be disappointed.

My wife often tells me that during the falconry season she becomes a falconry widow. Apparently my posture changes, I stop cutting my hair and gain a musty smell like damp dog or worse if a day old chick has been forgotten in a jacket. My clothes are always the same colour (Greens and browns) and my general fashion is that more commonly seen on the catwalk of a big issue seller(homeless magazine here in the UK). Only on field meets do I request an ironed shirt and put on my Sunday best mole sking trousers, wax jacket and get out a fresh lure.

She reads me like a book and can tell my success in the field by the fact that either I enter the house with the bird on fist whistling or the glove enters the house closely followed by a Tasmanian devil, blaming everything in the world for conspiring to ruin my birds flight. [Read more]

I set off for Salt Lake City from Manchester Airport early on the 28^th May 08. I was up at around five and was sitting chatting away to the boxer Ricky Hatton by 8am whom I’d filmed on the 24^th May in Manchester Cities football stadium beating Juan Lazcano. His swelling had gone down and he was in good spirit and looking forward to his next fight in the states. I had my own battle to contend with. A long haul flight to Chicago. Hang around for four hours in the airport and then another three hour flight to Salt Lake City.

I eventually got to Salt Lake City at 9pm Salt Lake City time or 4am back home. It was a long day and I was relieved to see Robert Bagley and Dave Marshall some 23hours after I’d got out of bed back home. Robert had also just got back from Australia the day before so goodness knows what time his body clock was at. I was stopping with Dave Marshall, who’s house was on the side of mountains that frames the city on nearly all sides. The view from his living room window was fantastic. A million street lights, with black mountains rising into the sky filled with shimmering stars.

It was an amazing sight, but I needed some sleep. I went to bed at 11pm and was up at 7am just like at home.

The view in the morning was even more spectacular. I’d expected a vast desert but as you can see it isn’t. The great thing with the city is that in the day it looks so wooded. Apparently Dave tells me, nearly every tree in the city was planted. From up here for the most part all you can see is trees except for the Central Business District. On the roof of Daves garage was what a Californian quail.

They were all over the city running around in pairs. Just the right size for a sparrow hawk or should I say sharp shin now? Dave took me to a diner and we got the day started with an egg and bacon bagel and a fine cup of tea. Marshall Head Quarters is about 15 minuets from the city in a now industrial area. We go past a large oil refinery, built during the Second World War to prevent the Japanese bombing the fuel supply and pushing up prices….If only they’d have known. Anyway, the HQ is just like the picture on the Marshall web site. However inside are a number of rooms with technicians, working on receivers with microscopes,

Checking the board on the new digital field marshall before testing and “Burning in” for 24hrs

engineers working machines slicing solid blocks of aircraft aluminium into the smallest part from a remote computer.

The noise inside is like a falconers nightmare; Bleeps from every direction yet it is somehow very peaceful with everyone just going about there business. After a quick introduction I was given the guided tour….

Above:- Marshall digital receivers getting “Burned in” over night

Well I’ve just returned from Utah, I’ve had no sleep for nearly 24hrs, and was in training with Dave Marshall until 12 at night before getting up at 5.30, talk about burning the midnight oil. Oh, and I’ve got to film darts in a tinder box at Bolton, England tomorrow for five days in a row…..and I still can’t stop smiling.

I didn’t really know what to expect on my visit to the Marshall Head Quarters in Salt Lake City, but what I covered in five days was fantastic for a falconry “addict” like myself. I’m going to post over several days as it would be too much, to cover my trip to Utah and Marshall radio telemetry in one go.

Marshall radio HQ surpassed any expectation for quality and demonstrated meticulous attention to detail, and testing like heating every falcon transmitter to 120c then freezing to -40c before starting to test. I’ve also seen and read a hand written copy of Jack Mavrogordato, A Hawk for the Bush, written in one, by the very man.

I’m working solid for five days after today so I’ll post when I can and give you a details of:-

• Marshall radio telemetry HQ.
• Robert Bagley’s paradise for longwingers,
• meeting Steve Chindgren and Ed Pitcher
• having a personal tour of the Peregrine Fund world center for birds of prey,
• being trained how to understand telemetry better by Dave Marshall.

Plus whatever comes back to me after some sleep….

‘To sleep perchance to dream, back in those open spaces

of Bagley’s longwing paradise thy would be….’

Shakespeare I’m not, but I bet even Willy didn’t have hawking ground like this.