Falcon Finishing School
By James W. Dawson

TWO SHADOWS DRIFTED ACROSS THE SUN-DRENCHED CLIFFS OF ECHO CANYON IN CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN. A CRY DRIFTED IN FROM THE CANYON, AT FIRST BARELY A WHISPER BUT THEN SWELLING INTO THE DISTINCT CALL OF PAIR-BONDED FALCONS. THE LONG SHADOWS CAME TOGETHER SUDDENLY AND BECAME ONE AS THE BIRDS SWUNG UP TOGETHER TO PERCH ON THE CLIFF FACE.

These birds had raised young almost to fledging, only to have all four babies leave the nest prematurely. No one knew why the babies jumped too early. One of the fledglings was still in our care at Liberty Wildlife and we had hoped to reunite it with its parents. I brought my binoculars down, disappointed that the pair now seemed uninterested in the nest, spending more and more time away from the cliff. Now a family reunion was no longer an option and a different plan would have to be devised to return the falcon to the wild.

This little peregrine was found in a backyard near Camelback Mountain and came into Liberty Wildlife as a growing nestling with patches of whitish natal down still visible on her head and wings. She had a leg fracture, a difficult and unusual break that was hard to detect and slow in healing.

Nearly a year passed before she was putting her full weight on the leg. She was grown by now and had developed into quite a beauty. Her long body was sleek and streamlined, built for dogfights and sky chases against an endless blue backdrop. Her intelligent eyes, framed by dark moustache stripes, stared confidently back at me as I looked at her in her flight pen. She sometimes pumped her wings so hard that she rose and floated momentarily above the perch. I knew it wasn't so, but I couldn't help imagining she was trying to stay in good shape for things to come.

Parental Lessons
Peregrine falcons make their living catching birds. During aerial pursuits, they use many different methods to catch prey, including the renowned vertical dive or "stoop." A stooping peregrine does more than simply free-fall. High-speed photography has shown that they adopt body shapes and contours to minimize drag and increase their speed beyond calculated terminal velocity. The physics behind this are not well understood but dives exceeding 200 mph have been confirmed, earning the peregrine the title of the fastest animal in world. The forces at work are awesome - a falcon falling at eye-blink speed must visually track, follow, match speed with, and hit another bird that is flying as fast and as evasively as it can. When predator and prey come together, the falcon must deal a blow hard enough to incapacitate without being injured by the impact.

But this kind of precision isn't born into young falcons. They must learn how to fly, dive, and chase. The learning curve is long and can come to an abrupt halt - young falcons have been known to misjudge and collide full-force with the ground, killing themselves instantly. In nature, parents provide the necessary training. Home schooling takes place near the nest site and first involves mock chases between offspring and parents. Revving the lessons up a notch, parents bring prey up in the air and make drops to waiting youngsters. Chasing and grabbing falling prey is good practice. Eventually parents push up the difficulty level by dropping live prey capable of giving the students a good run for their money. If the offspring fails to catch it, the adult retrieves the prey and repeats the performance. About six weeks after fledging, wild youngsters are duly educated and leave the nest area to earn their own living.

Finishing School for Falcons
The long recovery time of the Camelback nestling didn't allow for parental training. Liberty, as this peregrine falcon would come to be called, was now mended but needed lessons in the real world - floating on the wind, discovering how to use her wings. With such a long learning curve, starvation or even death by another predator would likely be the price of inexperience.

The time-honored sport of falconry appeared to provide an answer. Falconry is the sport of training birds of prey to hunt wild quarry with a human partner. Falconry birds are carefully trained to fly free and return willingly to the falconer. This approach might allow the peregrine Liberty to learn to fly gradually while remaining in human care where food and shelter from predators could be provided.

Liberty Wildlife was fortunate that Tim Riordan, a Master Falconer living in Tucson, agreed to take on the time-consuming task of working with Liberty. Those who know Tim consider him to be the best of the best among falconers. Possessing a rare combination of insight into raptor behavior, the savvy of an experienced outdoorsman, and the deep intuition of a talented animal trainer, Tim is a personable individual who has specialized in falcons, specifically peregrines. More telling, he has had only a few birds throughout his many years of experience - the mark of a falconer who can truly train birds to return to him.

Taking on Liberty was no small commitment, Tim and his family would become very well acquainted with the falcon before he was through. From the get-go, she proved to be a challenge to Tim. Always mindful that Liberty was destined for a return to the wild, Tim's goal was to train her only enough to enable her to fly and return. Some taming was necessary but it was not to be overdone. In hindsight, there was no worry - she showed no proclivity at all for human contact. Following the tradition of good falconry, Tim recorded his thoughts and progress in a journal that allowed others a glimpse into this unique experience.

"I have spent many hours just walking at night with her trying to calm her down. She remains defiant, in spite of all of my efforts. But that's great as there is real wildness there! I must say that you guys did a superb job with this bird. She was absolutely feather perfect (a falconry term) when I received her from you. Her feet were perfect, and her talons were long and sharp as hypodermic needles. And she had no fear of my hands, as many rehab birds do."

No fear of hands had drawbacks - a nip of the beak or piercing touch of talons was likely to be Tim's reward for touching her. Personality conflicts and sore fingers notwithstanding, he patiently worked around her idiosyncrasies:

"I had hoped to wow you with great stories of Liberty's progress, but at this point progress is slow. She isn't a bit tamer, as Jim can attest to. Jim brought out the transmitter on Sunday, and got to see the big girl. I really have had to dig deep into my bag of tricks to get her flying in a manner that I can control her, and eventually show her wild game."

The transmitter mentioned was a tiny radio unit that went onto the bird's leg and emitted a signal that allowed Tim to track down a wayward bird. The radio proved to be invaluable with this bird, as Tim described:

"Another day I unhooded her, and cast her into the wind, only to watch her fly straight away, without ever looking back."

But she was flying, even if sometimes it was fast away in the wrong direction. She wasn't trying to get away; she just didn't have a sense of place and would inadvertently become separated from Tim. When he eventually found her and approached, she willingly came back to the security of his glove. He could extract some small satisfaction from the fact that she had spent quality time in the air.

And the lessons were taking hold. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, without anyone taking notice, she was turning wild in the truest sense of the term. And somewhere along the way, the former foundling rehab case became locked on a collision course with her destiny as a predator.

This collision came out of the blue, so to speak, just a mere six weeks into her training. During an afternoon flight session, Liberty disappeared into the sky and Tim prepared to radio-track her down yet again. But she seemed to be shifting and moving across great distances, and he couldn't locate her before darkness fell. She spent the night out alone in an area where predation by a great horned owl was a real possibility.

The next morning at dawn, an anxious Tim pinpointed her location:

"After spending a night out, I about died when I found her eating a dove on a rooftop! She had done it - she made the cut!"

No one expected her to catch prey this soon in her training! We had predicted six months, not six weeks, before a capture. She had indeed made the cut with this wild dove, one of the most challenging of quarry for any falcon. Tim wrote:

"I was teaching her to crawl, and she entered a marathon. Although captive, and not able to hunt, Liberty took on the deadly mindset of an adult peregrine. All she had needed was airtime to put it all together."

Liberty wasn't interested in coming to Tim, but he stuck with her throughout the afternoon. She took to the air and ate up the sky. He followed her with telemetry but never actually saw her again that day. She was far too high in the big blue, riding the clouds. Only the punctuated electronic beep, faint and ethereal, coming from the receiver in Tim's hand was evidence that she still existed. Her indomitable attitude, never lacking strength, had irrevocably morphed to the next level. It was time for her to return to the wild.

Tim was lucky to reunite with her the following day and again, for one last time, hold her on his gloved hand. He removed the radio transmitter and other falconry equipment in preparation for her release.

Flight to Freedom
I had the honor of setting Liberty free at her birthplace in Echo Canyon on Camelback Mountain a few days later. True to the spirit she had shown all along, Liberty courageously faced a wild prairie falcon that came in to express its territorial rights. Where most newly released falcons would have slunk away, Liberty stood her ground and even pushed back a bit in the air. The prairie falcon seemed perplexed by the confident newcomer and hung back. Then Liberty swung out of Echo Canyon, out of our view, and flew into her future on confident wings.

Through the long process preparing for her release, this peregrine had contact with many people - Field Services, Rescue and Transport, Daily Care, and Medical Services volunteers, veterinarians, and Tim, the person who knew her most intimately. Even though he couldn't be at the release due to family obligations, Tim was insistent that we not delay in returning her to the wild. His parting thoughts, those of a nervous teacher at graduation, spoke for us all.

"Today, I have only one wish for her - that she catches one more dove. If she can catch the next one, the others will follow. I am both thrilled, and terrified. I'll miss her, but there is only one place for Liberty - she made that clear. Today, we give her a shot at it."