It's a MARMOT

There has been quite a bit of discussion in my crowd as to what the Bald Eagle in this photo is carrying, with guesses ranging from a cat to a  prairie dog (the last group obviously hasn't seen an eagle up close!)

Keith Brady, who knows the photographer, solved the problem: it is a yellow- bellied marmot: photo by Ken Risi.

Image query

David W in Texas, an old falconer like me, sent this unsourced image. In it, a slightly stylized eagle appears to be attacking a human, while the nose of a tazi just enters lower left. Anybody out there who can translate the title or tell us anything about it? (Style but not subject of art looks Japanese to me).

Hereditary cool?

My late friend Aralbai of Bayan Olgii was sometimes known as "The Coolest Man in the World",  on the strength of this sort of... call it an Internet poster made (not by us) of him:

Here he is in younger days, with his son in 1997 on our first expedition.

He was a dedicated hunter, and like me he could get impatient at the slow pace and artifice of photography and films. Here, on the first trip, he is rolling a cigarette during a break. He grinned up at me, offered me a home- rolled, and delivered an opinion of the proceedings behind with several well- chosen swear words. In English.

He became a mentor to Lauren, shown here with him on her first trip, when she was 16. He was her first eagle teacher.

In her Fulbright year she hunted, but also did things like study nests.

Aralbai and his now- grown son also rode with Cat during those years. A Wyoming cowgirl is as much a member of the club of the horse and the guild of long riders as a Kazakh;  after beating Armanbek in an improvised race, Cat won a silver- embellished riding crop. He is grinning here, and he seems unembarrassed. At this point Aralbai still looked good too...

And then he was gone, quickly, of the cancer that seems to take so many of my generation there. It IS downwind, not too far, from the historic Soviet nuclear test sites in Kazakhstan. Lauren helped him get to the big falconry fiesta in the Arabian Gulf; I would love to have gotten his impressions...

But his son may also explore other shores. The image below, sent again as a found object by a friend, suggests he has inherited the title.

Random images from Africa

I'm sorting images from our South Africa trip this summer, and came across a few to share. This is a crested eagle – a species we saw frequently.

I'm not positive, but I think this next one is a snake eagle.

I snapped this next image in a village shop in Lesotho, and of course it reminded me of Steve. If you read the print, the eggs are from Magdelena (South Africa, not New Mexico).

Dispatch From Mongolia (Lauren McGough)

These flights! They are amazing and addictive. I liken these eagles to Houbara spotter falcons, who somehow see that rust colored spot scooting along in the distance - and immediately become pure predatory power. Many times I never see the fox, I just trust that that is what the eagle sees. Once she's powered out over the valley, becoming just a speck herself, I often finally see the fox myself, and hold my breath as I wait for the two to converge. In a way, its like longwinging. My favorite flight style, which has a seemingly low success rate, but is spectacular to watch, is when the eagle keeps all of her height from the mountain and when directly over the fox, folds into a teardrop and stoops completely vertically. The fox has a lot of options to fool the eagle then, but I don't think I'll ever tire of seeing an eagle, all grace and raw power, stoop hundreds of feet.

There have been many great things, but I've also had some troubles lately. On a very windy day, we were on the mountaintop waiting for the slip, flying two passage eagles together. A fox appeared, we two slipped, and waited. The fox was clever, and disappeared. The eagles broke off pursuit and began to fly aimlessly, very buoyant in the wind. The mountain we were on was stupidly steep (one where you secretly hope you don't get a slip). It was impossible to ride down, we had to get off of our horses and walk them down, which took a good 20 minutes. By that time, the eagles had gone and we were baffled. We rode across the valley for a good half hour with lures until finally we spotted them soaring along another mountain ridge. If I thought the other mountain was steep, this one was a great deal more so. Suddenly both eagles stooped and caught a Pallas' cat on this mountainside. It was nothing but a stream of stones, no way one could ride up or climb (without equipment anyway, and even then...). We couldn't do anything but gaze up those hundreds of feet (it seemed that high) while the eagles broke in and started to eat their fill. The other falconer in desperation started to attempt to climb, but before I knew it both eagles had bumped, regained their soar, were soon specks in the sky, and then flew away upwind out of sight. What an awful, lonely, sinking feeling that is. You feel like such a puny, weak creature when you try to follow an eagle with nothing but a cheap pair of binoculars and a pony-sized horse.

But follow her I did. Or at least I tried to. And, defying all my expectations, I found her on a dead horse on the steppe, just before nightfall. I was able to approach close enough to grab her jesses...phew! The poor other falconer didn't find his eagle, and as far as I know, is still looking for her.

The continuing adventures of Lauren...

Text to come soon-- patience please!

Eagle & Child

My reaction in email was:

Consensus is that it is fake-- have been dealing with tons of mail on it. I heard of one eagle in Mongolia 20 years ago that attacked a kid but it is rare if it happens.

Africa's Crowned eagle is another story. A primate and antelope predator of the forest, it has been implicated in several attacks on kids and in the fifties (I think without checking date) a baby's skull was found in a nest in Zambia. It was also what probably killed the Australopithcine fossil called "the Taung Baby". A friend who knew one flown in Zimbabwe for baboon control said she made him very nervous before she had killed. I also know of one that killed a German shepherd in London. Here is Alberto Palleroni flying the much smaller male, and a photo of the Zimbabwe bird by Craig Golden, who told me the tale.

I might add that the only ones I ever saw at any length, a pair owned by Mima Parry- Jones in England, were unnerving in their catlike Gos agility-- the male could fly straight up ten feet-- and their yellow- eyed appraising stare...

UPDATE: After examining I don't even think the bird who comes close is an eagle-- if it is "real" at all, I think it is a blown up image of a red kite! See the shape of the wings, and of the tail as she passes... at first it looks convex, but as she gets beyond it looks concave and the wing shape is right. Color looks like the less forked immature. I have seen a few real ones, and Tom Russell's father- in- law sent me some thing from Switzerland last year of a guy that feeds hundreds in the winter. Lots of images to choose from there!

A small reward

I have an irrational love for small biomorphic objects-- toys, sculptures, pins, animal images from other cultures. My family knows this. Last weekend, in celebration of the imminent publication of An Eternity of Eagles, the Peculiars picked up this tiny Harpy eagle, carved from a native nut by some South Americans, at the International folk Art Fair in Santa Fe. The tiny dragon has a lot of character. In the first photo she stands in front of a soapstone native Bald eagle from Reid and Connie Farmer and a photo of the VLA by local photographer Michael Mideke; in the second she stares down a relative drawn by artist- blogger Carel Brest van Kempen.

UPDATE: Jackson shows us the maker here. And Annie D, where to get one.

Links, Pix, & Assorted Phenomena...

Lauren's Aquiling is up and running again and, at least until her book on her year among the Kazakhs is out, the best place for exotic falconry and adventure tales...


There is some pretty funny and often grotesque animal photography up at Nature Wants to Eat You. HT Annie Davidson, who also sent this video of a walking octopus.

Tim Gallagher, who recently completed a book on his harrowing expedition to the heart of the Narcotraficante strongholds of the Sierra Madre in search of the (almost?) extinct Imperial woodpecker, wrote the short version here, and added a link to the only videos of this largest of all woodpeckers...

Dr Joseph Rock explored the remotest parts of central Asia and southwestern China for the National Geographic in the twenties and thirties. Teddy Roosevelt's big- game hunting sons thought Minya Konka in "his" territory near the border of Szechuan and Tibet-- he wrote about in in 1930-- was higher than Everest. A couple more Americans laid siege to it in 1935 (they were also hunters, armed with a Springfield .30- 06 and two "heavy" SMLE's) and found it was formidable but not quite that high. Yvon Chouinard, Al Read, Kim Schmitz, Rick Ridgeway, and Harry Frishman (Peculiar's biological dad) made another attempt on it in 1980, not long before Harry was killed in a climb in his "backyard" Tetons, but they ran into disaster. Bruce Chatwin allegedly caught the legendary "bat fungus" that did in his AIDS- compromised body in a cave in the vicinity, which is also home to the Naxi people and their still- living goshawk falconry. (Chatwin also put Rock's book, and Emperor Frederic II's falconry text de Arte Venandi cum Avibus, into his posthumous story "The Estate of Maximilian Tod").

Obviously there is a book there, and eventually I hope to go, with Lib and Peculiar. Meanwhile I suspect the greatest single source of useful material is at the Arnold Arboretum near Boston, where Rock's archives reside, full of treasures like this photo:

("Horned Rifles" too!)

Good News!

If given my many hints and more it IS news. I have just signed a contract for, not one, but two books with Globe Pequot Press!

The first, The Eagle's Shadow, is virtually done: a natural and cultural history of All Things Eagle, with over 100 already- acquired illos from petroglyphs and shamanistic religious objects to Kazakh stamps and advertising art; even a harrowing shot (in both senses of the word) of an eagle about to meet its doom in 50's Texas, taken over a shotgun, out the window of a diving Piper Cub. Evolution, religion, art, anthropology; enmity, amity, falconry; persecution and conservation.

The second is a "Sporting Library" a very opinionated -- that is, MY opinion-- bunch of wonderful reads on hunting and fishing, broadly defined, that I am in the process of putting together now. I could quote from the proposal but a recent letter of mine to a writer who is in it may be more succinct.

"As you said it will be a challenge to come up with around 100 best sporting themed books and authors, but I am neither limiting myself to literature per se nor God help us just traditional "hook and bullet"sources. I want science and art and history. Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison and Joe Hutto and maybe even Brautigan will be in it, sure. But I also plan books on paleolithic cave paitings, poetry about fish, stuff from Russia (Arseniev, Prishvin, Turgenev of course). The translation of Emperor Frederic II's book on falconry, and Cambridge poet Helen Macdonald's modern one, and The Goshawk (and more TH White). Out of Africa, Elspeth Huxley, Man Eaters of Tsavo. Caroline Gordon's novel and bird hunting stories about Aleck Maury, which McGuane loves, and Cross Creek. William Beebe's Pheasant Jungles. Geoffrey Household's literate thrillers with hunting themes. Bob Jones' fierce surreal Blood Sport, and Kerasote's gentle Blood Ties, and Blood Knot (English; one of last year's best books period, with some fish). William Humphrey's My Moby Dick about a trout, and Gavin Maxwell on harpooning sharks. Norman MacLean and Roderick Haig Brown. Brian Plummer's Rat Hunting Man, and Caroline Blackwood's fox- hunting women."

There is a lot out there and I am already having fun. Suggestions enthusiastically encouraged, as is forwarding to friends!

Hunting Eagles

If there is a common image of eagle falconry it is that of a fur- hatted Kazakh or Kyrgiz nomad on a short furry horse, hunting foxes or wolves; this has been reinforced by my own book, by the wonderful art of Vadim Gorbatov, and even by the BBC TV show referenced here a few weeks ago.


But like many good things, "eagling" has been invented several times, almost independently. In the twenties the legendary English setter breeder William Humphrey flew a female golden and is said to have taken over one hundred foxes in Wales with the help of his dogs, but he had no disciples. Freidrich Remmler flew eagles in Finland and Russia and even the US, but his only pupil was reclusive Dan McCarron (one of the best, who I hope will someday write a memoir), who knew him when he was a child. Also in the US, Charles Browning, fed up with eagles taking his gyrs, trained the legendary tiercel "Messiah" to hunt sage grouse from the soar.

Meanwhile, in England, Alan Gates accomplished the improbable feat of taking game with an eagle, breeding her, and then doing the same with her son. He was the first westerner recognized as a "berkutchi" by the Kazakhs.

(And for now, we will leave aside more exotic sorts like traditional Japanese eagling, or the kind from Africa, started perhaps by the late artist David Reid Henry and his crowned eagle and reaching its most baroque form in the "Brush War", when Rhodesian troopers flew eagles at night from half- tracks while carrying automatic weapons). I believe one crowned may still be used in Zimbabwe for monkey control...

But in Germany and Austria after the war a real shared tradition grew up, one that spread to eastern Europe and now features some of the best flights that exist. In Hunting Eagle: The Development of German and Austrian Eagle Falconry, Martin Hollinshead chronicles the little- known (at least in the west) invention and spread of this demanding but incomparably exciting form of falconry, which is now so advanced it is hard to believe that most of its history is post- 1960!

If not quite "present at the creation" Hollinshead was on the scene soon after, has flown eagles over there, and knows the principal actors and innovators. As a long- time advocate and practicioner of quality hawking for ground game (see other books on his site), he understands the prejudices eagle austringers had to overcome. As recently as ten years ago, I was still being assured by people who had never seen an eagle fly that they were clumsy, lazy, vicious, and incapable of stylish flights -- this despite the fact that I had seen such flights in Asia and America. Hollinshead's meticulous and informed account should dispel such pernicious myths for good. Not only does he document how mysteries of training and breeding eagles were solved, the second more or less for the first time; he also chronicles the rise of the great eagle festival in Opocno in the Czech Republic. Good eagles, as many have seen in videos, can take roe deer with the style and dash that a goshawk brings to hares, but also are agile enough to fly that quarry as well.

Eagle falconry continues to evolve. For a new interview of our friend Lauren, not only the first female berkutchi but the first westerner to train as a Kazakh eagler, see this post at Rebecca O'Connor's Operation Delta Duck. With new moves afoot to ban the use of eagles in falconry, let us hope the voices of such advocates as Dan McCarron, Al Gates, Martin Hollinshead and Lauren McGough are heard above the baying of the ignorant.

Cool

From "Max":

I believe I know that guy (;-); (pic is from 1998 but I have plenty more). He IS cool, and can out- drink me:

Air Force

Snapped this shot on the fly today. It's a hard winter in western Wyoming with deep crusted snow, and mule deer and pronghorn are starting to winterkill. Carcasses of big game animals are immediately targeted by avian predators. A weak rough-legged hawk landed at Jim's gravel pit yesterday, so he called state wildlife officials. Poor bugger was so weak it didn't take much to catch, with the biologist walking right up to the hawk and picking him up. There's a herd of about 400 elk about 25 miles south of our place out in the high sagebrush desert. Hope the rest of the winter is more gentle.

Eevil Eagles

When I announced Darren's new book (Tetrapod Zoology 1) I mentioned a Darren drawing that contained, among other things, an Australopithecine and a Socorro County calf in mortal danger. Here is the proof, in the form of his 2004 Christmas card (click on it to enlarge):

The hominid is the (documented-- look up recent material on "Taung Baby") victim of a large African eagle, probably the crowned (Stephanoaetus coronatus), which still occasionally attacks them in the form of small children-- at least one incident in Zambia.

The calf? in the seventies, Audubon actually filmed a pair of eagles killing calves on the Tigner ranch, twenty miles south of Magdalena-- the unusually predator- friendly Tigners had invited them. The culprits were trapped and moved, and no other eagles have developed the habit since, although we know an eyrie there (Tigner's is our favorite quail- hunting habitat).

The third is the monstrous New Zealand eagle formerly known as Harpagus moorei-- I think it has been reassigned to Hieratus or Spizaetus, making it a close relative of very fierce smaller eagles used in falconry today. It was HUGE-- up to 45- 50 pounds, more than twice the size of any eagle alive. As shown here, it ate moas (bones have been found with punctures corresponding to the eagle's talons). Apparently, at least according to Maori legend, it ate humans too-- probably all upright bipeds look like food to a flying Velociraptor-- and it only became extinct when the Maori ate all the moas ("...and there ain't no moa"), just before European colonization, if then.

More in Darren's book, on these and other large eagle prey. The subject was the occasion of our first correspondence, which continues...

Two quick links

Tim Gallagher just sent this link to a new study of passenger pigeon genetics.It is NOT a big mourning dove, and is closer despite its long tail to New World Columba like the bandtail. This might give more weight to some of my speculations in A Feathered Tempest (developed more succinctly in my recent Living Bird link).

And Darren Naish has just published the first "Tet Zoo" collection! Darren is not just the best zoology blogger on the Internet-- I think of him as Blogfamily since we corresponded on his very first blog post, on eagles (I will write more about the book when I get it, and with his permission print a very funny Christmas card by him that features eagles, an Australopithecine, and a doomed, very local calf-- really!)

Vodka from our Mongolian "Home Town"

Lauren brought among other things (like eagle tack I have never seen-- be patient!) a bottle of new vodka named after the capitol of Mongolia's Kazakh "Aimag" or state, therefore the de facto "Berkutchi" capitol. The back is attractive enough, with a Berkutchi painted on it (all photos enlarge if clicked on):



But the front is sensational: a cutout in the shape of the Aimag showing a better view inside the bottle:




And who is that handsome eagler? It's ARALBAI! (Photo by Cat-- you can also see him in the "cowboy" hat with Lauren a few posts below, and read about him in Eagle Dreams).



Good vodka too-- thanks, Lauren!

Sharing Mongolia's beauty

I've been thinking about Lauren, and her upcoming journey to our eagle friends in Mongolia. Thought I'd share some random images from there, from my trip seven months ago. Enjoy.

"Our" Fulbright Scholar

As Patrick Burns is fond of saying, "The kids are alright."

Happily I know a few who are more than alright. Our campus is full of bright young people, and heralding their accomplishments is one pleasure of my job.

But we encounter some rare souls who, like Steve and his blog partners (and our readers), are moved by strong passions, big themes, strange places and real people; who not only listen to other drummers but follow ancient rhythms to their source.

Lauren McGough is such a one. Steve has been keeping us up to date on Lauren's travels and adventures in these and other posts and happily hosting her visits as she passes through the little hamlet of Magdalena, New Mexico.

We learned today (HT Annie Hocker) that Lauren, an Honors major in zoology and international studies at the University of Oklahoma, has received a Fulbright Scholarship and will use it to return to Mongolia's western province of Bayan-Olgii to resume her apprenticeship with the eaglers. She writes:

"As a falconer and aspiring ornithologist, preservation of the sport and the birds that make falconry possible is very important to me," she said. "I can't think of a better place than Mongolia, with all its unique wildlife, and arguably the very birthplace of falconry, to better understand human-animal relationships and effective conservation."

I hope Steve will chime in here with a good Lauren story. I've met her only once, but in that way you can recognize special people almost instantly, she stood out. We talked for a while after evening presentations at the last national falconers' meet. Her excitement to be there, around so many like-minded fanatics and fabulous birds, was clear. And yet she would not be intimidated; she has been around the world and our kind and seen things most of us have only read about.

She will surpass us and travel on to some unique destination in life. That much I know.

Congratulations Lauren!

Steve here. Lauren first came to us with a request to go to Mongolia when she was seventeen. She was a falconer, self- assured, and her father was confident. I knew Canat in Mongolia would treat her as his own daughter, so we "sent" her into the wilds of western Mongolia in deep winter to spend a month with the eagle hunters. She loved it. You have seen some of her photos.

After she was back she was staying with us. She was too young to go to the Golden Spur so I asked her if she took wine with dinner. She replied "I don't know-- I only drank vodka with the eagle hunters." A baptism of fire!

She later attended the eagle meets at Opocno in the Czech Republic, and spent a whole season flying eagles at blue hares in the hills of Scotland. She has also visited hunting cheetahs in Spain.

There are a lot of egos involved with eagles in the west, but Lauren is the real thing, plus a lady and a scholar. She will now become the first female berkutchi. And who knows what next?

We are proud of you, Lauren!

PS: Lauren's Blog here and at left in the rolls for future reference.

Spring pronghorn

It seems like spring is a month early this year. The geese arrived the last weekend of February, and the prairie dogs are even peeking out, chattering at me and the dogs.

As you can see from this photo, by last weekend, the snowcover was gone from the sagebrush, and the pronghorn were looking great enjoying the weather. It’s an embarrassment of riches, but all the photos in this post were taken while I was standing in my front doorway.


When I’m in the house writing, I spend a lot of time glancing out the window, and I have cameras at the ready. The pronghorn antelope have been getting so close to the house, approaching Rant the Aziat and snorting at him. He knows he’s not allowed to chase, but he tries to keep them from coming to the yard. It’s a silly truce, because the antelope tease the dog, knowing full well their flight would keep them out of danger.

Now for the sniveling and whining. I spent most of last week in meetings in various towns in the county, driving my son to another town for a necessary trip to a shopping mall (gag, gag), attending social functions, etc. It was a week where I did nothing creative, and my cameras gathered dust. All week was spent with perfectly nice people, but being perfectly nice generally isn’t part of my nature, so of course by Monday morning, I was sick, headache, cold, crud. As I whined to my family from the couch in my flannel PJs yesterday, “See, people just make me sick.” A snowstorm arrived in a swirl, and I vowed to do nothing but read all day.

I felt better today, but had fallen behind on work, so today was spent at the computer all day. That is, until I heard Rena the Akbash raising hell, trying to jump over the yard fence to get out. I put her in the house so I could attempt to photograph the commotion. Someone had killed an antelope buck on the highway in front of the house, and four bald eagles and a few ravens had arrived for the feast.

Somehow, for some reason, two of the eagles went after the antelope herd that had taken up residency here by the house. The herd all bunched together and ran. I didn’t capture it well with my frantic scrambling, but it was pretty flipping cool to watch. The balds were not very serious about trying to take an antelope, and instead continued to play and interact, making their way back to the carcass.