"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.

Further adventures of Lauren

Mostly photo- blogging this week- it'd amazing how much time maintaining some level of competence takes when you have ANYTHING else to do. But I have been sent lots of good photos and stuff from Mongolia, England, and closer to home...

Lauren has been visiting nests:

"This was the nest we visited in April when the mother was incubating. There were 5 eggs then, now 4 fledgelings. They were feisty and very loud! With little hypodermic needle talons."

Then eagles:

"This nest was only about 150 feet high, nestled in a rock face, and easy enough to scramble up to...getting down was the hard part!

"There were two eaglets in this one - one significantly bigger than the other - I'd assume a clear male and female. There were all sorts of odd stuff in this nest -- fox bits, goat heads and hooves, raven remains! For nesting material there was also the blue prayer flags."

"One of the adults was nearby - we only noticed as we were driving away from the nest. It looked like the male to me - I snapped a photo just as he flushed!"

"By the way, I had an awesome time at the Asian Raptor Conference. A ball. I've got leads now for doing all sorts of research. I'm really becoming interested in the Eurasian population of Golden Eagles, and found some researchers in Siberia and Kazakhstan who are, too! Its generally believed that these eagles are non-migratory, but the local knowledge says otherwise - as well as the telemetry work done on Golden Eagles in Alaska, that shows them undertaking a long migration south. I think one could find out all sorts of fascinating things about their movement patterns in Russia, if studies were done."

Looking forward to seeing you and hearing about it, Lauren!

Lauren: Further Adventures

Lauren is winding up her "Apprentice Berkutchi" Fulbright in Mongolia by studying Cinereous vultures (Aegypius monachus) in the Gobi (these huge birds, which we saw in the Altai, are rivaled in size only by Lammergeiers in Asia). Meanwhile her young eagle shocked everyone by building a nest and laying (infertile of course) eggs. She has also been riding camels, which she enjoys, and seeing nesting Sakers and breeding argali sheep. We hope to see her in August; meanwhile a short note from the field.

"Hah - love the workout plan. Excellent ideas. I don't see any reason why you couldn't make it work. You come to Asia for dogs, hawks, eagles, or falcons, and I will see you on horseback there!
"I've not seen any real dark sakers yet. But lots of very light colored ones. We banded four fledglings at a nest last week, I'll be sure to send pictures as soon as I can download them. I also climbed into my first-ever Golden Eagle nest. It was wonderful - two 3-4 week old eaglets, a clear male and female. You better believe I've got a picture of that! We also saw, in Dundgobi aimag, a clear-as-day Houbara bustard. I don't think they've ever been noted this far east before - we were astonished. The purpose of my last stint in the Gobi was to help but satellite transmitters on five Cinereous Vulture adults, to mark exactly where they migrate to (they've been spotted in South Korea). I thought eagles were big - these are 22lb birds, though surprisingly laid-back once captured. Although they are prone to regurgitate - I now know what it is like to get a splat of fermented goat innards on me!

"I'm just back in Olgii now, ready to head to the countryside to visit Alema [Her eagle-- SB] . I can't recall if I told you, but she started nest building by the perch, and laid eggs! She has spent the last month on her "nest" instead of the perch. I could not believe it - for a two year old (I'm pretty sure) eagle trapped in October!

"Re: Canat's offer for your pickup - that's great! [He once told me he would trade a camel, a horse and saddle, an eagle, and a negotiable amount of sheep for my King-Cab 4 X4 F-150 pickup-- catch being I would pay all costs shipping both ways across the Bering Straits!-SB] I can picture him saying that too. I had a herder offer to give me his horse for my binoculars (just run-off-the-mill Bushnells). He said, "I can always get another horse, but those are one-of-a-kind".

"Thank you for the update and all the details. I really like hearing how you both are doing. When you wrote, "I am beginning to think that giving up on the life of adventure is premature" I smiled really big. Damn straight."








All photos by Lauren but the last, by Andrey Kovalenko.

Falconry Goddesses

Ourc regnant falconry goddesses, Helen Maconald and Lauren McGough, do a podcast TOGETHER at the BBC.More please!
https://mobile.twitter.com/HelenJMacdonald/status/909753333317095424?p=v

Full of good sense and unexpected insights-; as Helen says., only Lauren would fly an eagle because it is so SERENE.

Lauren is currently in S Africa chasing drunken  monkeys with  a "little" male Crowned eagle. We hope to see her here soon.

Black and White

Lauren, in Scotland working on her book (no pressure there!) seemed to be in a black and white mood last week, appropriate to her weather if not ours (hot, we hope gathering moisture for a desperately-  needed monsoon). First one of her "on the hill."

 

Second, an unusual photo she found of the late gadfly and contrarian Christopher Hitchens-- young, handsome, almost sweet, carrying pheasants and, of course, smoking.

Lauren wrote: "... found (when going down the Internet rabbit hole) this old picture of Hitch that I love, which greatly reminds of an old picture of yourself! With gun and quail maybe?"

I think she means woodcock, ca. 1976. That was probably contemporary to Hitch, actually...

 

 Then I thought, maybe she DOES mean quail. But this one is pretty western...

Lauren?

Lauren In Kazakhstan

Lauren McGough is in Kazakhstan now, studying, handling birds, shooting a VEPR (thanks Darrell) at marmots and eating them, running hounds bred by Kostya (who bred our Taika) and of course drinking vodka (it's mandatory). She is in the Alatau in the southwest, where the mountains end and run down to the Caspian Basin; fascinating country where I have not yet been, hundreds of kilometers from civilzed Almaty. Pix now, (click to make bigger); stories soon I hope, though you can imagine your own...

Update: Lauren reassures us older worrywarts: "My God, Steve - there was so much alcohol involved in the marmot hunt! Even after my reluctant several-shots, I was very cognizant of proper gun safety! Those mountains are about 500km from Almaty. I took a bus - left about 6pm and arrived around 3am. We piled in an old landcruiser and arrived at the lodge around sunrise. Plastic two liter bottles of beer were immediately procured to wake us up. Lunchtime saw the vodka. And then dinner...gah!

"Although I will say, I seem to have a pretty good tolerance for vodka (nothing else really) these days, after all these years of practice!"

Sporting Miscellany

As the Peculiars are here with grandbaby Eli I shall continue my slackerish blog- sloth for a bit more, but I have harvested a number of cool images to share. So with no further ado:

Colonel Charles Askins was a more ambiguous character than the other Golden Age gunwriters; he once described himself as a "sociopath". Charlie Waterman once told me that he was the only evil person he ever met, and his darker side shows in the character based on him in Stephen Hunter's Pale Horse Coming. On the other hand, he was endlessly kind to a friend of mine who grew up in San Antone (where he spent his retirement), when Mark was a child.

And he had great taste in guns. I have coveted this baroque monster of a ten- bore, best- quality AyA since I first read of it in the Seventies and now it is up for sale, unfortunately with an estimate of over $20,000! Somewhere there also exists its companion, a sidelock over- and- under that may be the only one ever built in ten...




We have seen blog- friend and all- 'round sportsman (pointers, falcons, fine guns, even Spanish pouters!) Daniel's dogs and hawks here before. Here he is (on the big gray) at a field trail with pointer Ferd-- and I think that is fellow blogger Mike Spies on the ground...


Berkutchi Lauren McGough*, who we are proposing as a Fellow for the Explorers Club, is going for her PhD in Central Asia. Meanwhile she has added deerstalking in Scotland to her skill set. Here she is with her first quarry and a very "Euro" setup-- a suppressed Tikka .25- 06 with a Swarovski scope (Jonathan Hanson: "Why do Americans consider suppressors 'evil' rather than polite?")

You can vote for her in a "Hunt of a Lifetime" competition here.



Finally, also courtesy of Lauren, the "Eternal Team" in Turkmenistan:


* Lauren can make me feel older than being a grandfather does-- she is 24, born several months after Betsy Huntington died!

Maggie 1999 - 2012 RIP

Maggie, our Lab-Dalmatian mix, was diagnosed with terminal cancer back in October. After a couple of early emergencies, she seemed to stabilize and was able to spend time with us through the New Year in reasonable comfort. That gave her a chance to say good-bye to our children who came to visit over the holidays. We were able to arrange things with a vet so her last time was here at home with us and her Aussie “sister” Sadie.

Maggie was kind of an accidental dog for us. When we lived in Tehachapi, daughter Lauren brought home this cute puppy she picked up at a horse show in Bakersfield and we didn’t have the heart to send her back, though we hadn’t planned on another dog. She made two moves with us from Tehachapi to Santa Barbara and from there to Colorado.

She spent her early years working on a reputation as an escape artist and we had to bail her out of the Santa Barbara pound a couple of times. I definitely got the impression she really wanted to go back to Tehachapi. Later, she seemed to prefer our semi-rural setting here in Colorado to suburban life.

With age, she settled down and became a devoted pet. She particularly attached herself to me. She also became a stern but affectionate older sister to Sadie when she joined us in Santa Barbara. Sadie even re-taught Maggie how to play, something she had seldom done when she was a pup.

An amusing aspect of Maggie’s middle and older years was the enormous affection she had for Lauren’s dog Monty, a five-pound Yorkie. There were best pals and Maggie would lie on the floor so Monty could reach her muzzle without jumping.

What can you say? We were her life. She was a loved member of our family. We miss her.

Here Maggie and I are hiking at St. Mary's Glacier in Colorado.

In Santa Barbara, Lauren loads Maggie with friends Monty and Sadie for a trip to Maggie's all-time favorite place, Hendry's Beach.

Beginnings and Endings in Mongolia

Lauren is coming home next week, visiting us soon, and will doubtless be blogging for herself.

In addition to training her eagle, she has done a lot of research,and to my envy got to meet the chronicler of the Gyrfalcon, Eugene Potapov, author of my favorite ornithological monograph (see link two posts down):

" I saw on the blog your discussion on Sakers. I just thought I'd mention that I ran into Eugene Potapov at this Asian Raptor conference. He is undoubtedly, one of the coolest people I've ever met. I really enjoyed talking Goldens and Steller's with him, and the hazards of field work in Siberia. He is also hilarious. After I told him what University I went to, he says, totally deadpan, "Lauren, I propose a study, where we go to this Oak-luh-homa, and measure the redness of the necks."

Speaking of "redness of neck" she also went out to Olgii to say farewell to our old friend and drinking buddy Aralbai, the hardest- core of eaglers, and also to pick up a new baby for him to train and release his ten year old to breed, as is Kazakh custom. (The birds live thirty or forty years). That's him with the Mongol cowboy hat.



Lauren again:

"Aralbai looks like a total cowboy out there, on his horse scouting for eagle nests - I didn't feel that far from home!

"Here is one more photo, when we released a 10 year old female back into the wild. She was trapped as a turnik, a two-year old, and subsequently flown for eight seasons, taking many foxes. I felt privileged to wave goodbye to her, as she went back out into the wild. That's falconry!"

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!

Lauren's first fox

Lauren reports from Mongolia:

I'm amazed at how fast training progresses here! I’m about 150 km south of Olgii, outside a town called Daluun near the Chinese border. The falconers in this area only fly passage eagles, and luckily, its been a great year for fox. You won’t believe, but I’ve already seen eleven fox caught by eagles! When entering new eagles, they often use a make-eagle. The make-eagle system works well, I think. The slips are often so distant, the flights so big, that it helps focus a new eagle on that object scooting along the horizon, and what the game is, when another eagle is pumping hard after it. There hasn't been any crabbing at all - the first one grabs the head and then the second takes the body. Interestingly, when my eagle was first flown with the make eagle, she would mirror the other eagles movments, pitching up high and coming crashing down. Now she’s flying on her own and is developing her own style. In general, the fox is killed, the eagle fed the tongue, and then traded for a hare leg.

Training was very simple – riding the horse was a form of manning in the beginning. The eagle was so focused on keeping its balance that it didn’t worry about other things, like bating. We called to the fist, then to the lure, then to the fist on horseback, and finally used a bagged fox that another eagle had caught to gauge her attitude toward foxes. She took it easily. The first week of hunting we used the make eagle – they took three foxes together, my eagle always coming in second but I think learning a great deal. The second week we flew her alone. She had some close calls right off the bat – knocking the stuffing out of a fox but failing to hold it.

Her first kill happened like this: The fox was running in a straight line maybe two hundred yards off. She left the glove (we had a bit of height, maybe 50ft off the ground, not much) and tried for a straight-grab. The fox dodged to the side at the last second but she didn't hit the ground and was able get back her speed and try again. This repeated itself and then the fox ran around a gigantic stone that was on the ground. It was an oddly placed stone on the steppe, and was maybe thirty feet tall and fifteen feet wide. At this point my eagle pitched upward, looked down over her shoulder as the fox circled, and then dove and collided with it as it made it around the stone. It was particularly fun because this land was fairly flat, so it was easy for me to spur my horse to a gallop and race over there. I felt really intrepid! Usually its steep hillsides and I'm just plodding along downhill to try and reach the eagle.

The second kill was the opposite - we were on a precarious mountainside named "difficult stones". The eagle jerked like it saw something so I released her (I prefer out of the hood, but you get many more flights if you don't) - she flew quite far, pumping and serious, out of sight to another side of the mountain. We chased and found her halfway the mountainside down on a fox. It was incredibly steep though, and not real ground - all loose stones and sand. I was terrified! I had to get off my horse and walk it down - I fell constantly and was absolutely exhausted by the time I reached my eagle. She had killed the fox by then and so I quickly traded. I wish I'd seen the flight, though!

She's been lucky and has only had minor bite marks (by a big fox she grabbed that broke loose) but my teacher's eagle really got some nasty bites. It hasn't affected her enthusiasm for killing foxes, but it looks very bad and I'm hoping they don't get infected.

 How’s New Mexico this time of year? I really miss you guys and, certainly at times, the comforts of home. It can be quite tough out here, sometimes depressing, but I do love it and feel like I'm learning worlds.
PS - Canat talked with Mongolian officials, and I can export my eagle if I'd like!! Well, at least the paperwork is possible on this end.

--Lauren

Next, photos!

Back Again... (and Guests)

Only this time I have never left-- just been ridiculously busy. To reassure-- my health is the best it has been in a year, though my vigorous and always expanding exercise routine takes up a surprising amount of time, and neglecting it brings on a slide if I do it very long.

Add guests to the mix and one runs out of hours in the day (and sleep is also important for controlling PD).

I think the Russophile "motif" and the Asiaphile one (is that a word?) has reached critical mass in my life, work, and the environs of Casa Q. About two weeks ago we knew that two of the people we term "The Russians", Australian- born, Ukrainian- derived Denverite Peter Reshetniak and his associate, merliner Anne Price, were on the way. Russians? Both, who also run the Raptor Education Foundation , are Russian speakers who brought our friend Vadim Gorbatov to the US, including Casa Querencia and the Golden Spur, a few years ago.

We also knew that Lauren, subject of innumerable posts here and now the official first female Berkutchi, was coming to tell us of her Fulbright year in Bayan Olgii Mongolia, and brainstorm on travel writing before she was off to a remote cottage in Scotland to fly a slightly smaller (big male) eagle and work on her book.

What we didn't anticipate were an email from another young American off on a Fulbright to study eagle-ry in post- Soviet Asia, this time in Kyrgizstan! Dennis was in Santa Fe and was leaving California for Bishkek, Kyrgizstan, about as far from our beloved Almaty as, well, Santa Fe is from here. He was leaving in a week and had been inspired in part by Eagle Dreams; could he come by and pick my brain? He did, and I attempted to fill it with info and contacts for about three hours. Dennis is not a falconer (yet) but has Russian and some Turkic and has read at least one anthropological Russian work on birds of prey in Inner Asian culture that I want but that is beyond my feeble Russian. (He was a high school exchange student in Almaty--!-- has kept up with his "family" there, and went to Olgii to see eagles off season). My network has responded and we hope for dispatches from Bishkek.

And just to bring the whole situation to the edge of absurdity, we walked into the Spur after one group left and a local rancher in his forties came up to introduce his new girlfriend who he said had a special reason to meet us. Her first words were "I speak fluent Russian and I'd love to go to Mongolia." She was not exaggerating-- had worked in Moscow for two years-- and also turned out to be a mathematician and a pilot. "Bodio's law" is "everybody knows everybody", meaning closer than six degrees-- you just have to dig. Its corollary is "All roads lead to Magdalena/ The Golden Spur Bar". (That one is so true nothing shocks us-- in addition to "Names" I have talked to someone there in from Beijing less than 48 hours after the Tien An Min Square massacre, who lost a friend there; a guy who had just worked in a village targeted by the Sendero Luminoso; and less ominously, a rich Ugandan who kept a Mercedes up on blocks in his garage, was obsessed with goats ("Do you have GOATS in America?") and who lost a bet to the Beijing guy that I wouldn't know Kampala). That all said, things were as they put it in cowboy land "real Russian" here this week.

I have planned a lot of blogging with links but at the moment links will not cut and paste. (I typed the ones above, and don't know if they will work yet). I am now going to try to put in photos.If THAT doesn't work I will post anyway and cry for help. If it does, I have more photo stuff for another (single) post, courtesy of Lauren. Wish me luck, and see you soon I hope.

Aaahh, photos work anyway. (All will "embiggen" if clicked on). Below, game dinner (rare grilled Canada goose breast slices, with a pomegranate marinade, and pheasants, brought by the "Russians", at cellist neighbor Joel Becktell's. Joel will be the subject of a post himself soon when I get the frackin' links working. From left: me, Anne, Peter, Libby, Joel.



The inhabitants of the living room: Ataika, Irbis in his crate, the redhead (who is now doing high jumps).



And, finally, a pic of Lauren HERE with us, rather on horseback on snow, eagle on glove; at rest for a fleeting moment:

Lauren checks in...

Adventuring on; she will be going out to Kazakhstan to learn serious Kazakh soon, then to several other Stans. The Explorers Club has provided some funds but I may just have to run a bleg here...

(Need I say more about my friend, protegee who long since surpassed her elder, first female berkutchi, first American ditto, eagler, writer, Fulbright fellow...?)

A short quote:
" On June 6th I am flying to Kazakhstan to spend two months intensively learning Kazakh. Amazingly, incredibly, this was fully funded! Then in September, I will run away again to that region to fly eagles, run dogs, and really learn how to manage horses and camels (for the sake of *ahem* cultural anthropology). I'm rearing to go - its one of those places that, once you been, all you can think of is how to get back (as you know), but I'm also fairly anxious and the harsh realities of it weigh on me. It will be very cold (I have some permanent damage from my frostbite) hard, and lonely. Also, finances will be difficult. The Explorer's Club gave me $2800 (!!) but no other money has come through as of yet. .. [re new pix] Some photos from the last little while. Man, there is so much to tell you. I included the lamb's eye one - as eating such things was old hat for me, but it was quite the "party trick" for all the visitors!"
Lauren with her eagle in Mongolia a couple of years ago:

Recent pix:

With our late friend and guide Aralbai:

The First Eagle Huntress?

However admirable Ashiolpan seems (and she is), and however fine the movie the Eagle Huntress is (and I suspect it is, and I want to see it), SHE IS NOT THE FIRST EAGLE HUNTRESS. This mistaken belief is particularly promulgated by American reviewers and I know I shouldn't expect much of them; I should only be happy they're saying a form of hunting is good.

But for the record, with leaving out dubious semi-contenders like Princess Nirgigma in the 20s, who I very much doubt trained her own eagles, or Frances Flint Hamerstrom, who as far as I know never hunted with her eagle or participated in Asian culture, the FIRST eagle huntress is Lauren McGough, originally of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who I originally helped achieve her dreams when she was 16, when she went over and hunted with the late Aralbai. She was so taken with this that she won a Fulbright Scholarship and spent a year in remotest Bayaan Olgii Aimag in the westernmost point of Mongolia learning both the Kazakh and Mongol languages while training her first eagle, Alema ("Milky Way") which she trapped herself. She subsequently caught 30-odd foxes with her, plus other game. She has not yet written up her experiences, but everyone who knows her knows that she is the real thing. She's hunting right now with her eagle...

Lauren at 16 with Aralbai

With Alema soon after capture

Great News!

Two days ago, Lauren defended her thesis and is now DOCTOR Lauren McGough.

Now some well deserved rest, with eagle...

Here she is on her first trip, st seventen (sixteen?) with the late Aralbai...

All our love and congratulations!

"Big Black Nemesis"; or, what is an Altai Falcon anyway?

A while ago, LabRat at Atomic Nerds started a series of posts on the evolution of sex among other things. The first was appropriately called "Shuffling Your Cards: Why Sex?"

Since in science we are both mad nerds obsessed with evolutionarily odd strategies like parthenogenesis in local lizards (and the hybridization that may have started it) we were soon engaged in the longest, most intense, and perhaps most digressive scientific correspondence of my life or at least the last ten years-- both fun and exhausting. Suffice to quote one late night two- liner from her to me that we did NOT follow up: "I know I am cat-vacuuming at this point but this post will be the death of me.  I just found your ZW parthenogenetic snakes." I had actually predicted their existence! There were more such, down to today.

We were both interested in the nature of species, and therefore such things as the ambiguous speciation of the genus Canis. I introduced her to the mysterious Four Corners of the Altai, where Gyrfalcons and Saker falcons, two species that according to their "monographer" Potapov were imperfectly separated at the end of the Ice Age, may still interbreed, and even more controversially may segregate into distinct types that are named and valued differently by Arab falconers when caught on migration.

Before I get into the mystery birds of the Altai let me show you the theoretical "parent" species. The Gyr, whether white, gray, or black, is a huge bulky bird, both fast and strong. Here is an example from John Burchard's years in Arabia, being dubiously contemplated by a little Barbary, a sort of desert Peregrine that is the smallest species flown there and that gets little respect from the Arabs, who prefer large quarry. All Gyrs flown in the Middle East are domestically bred.



For a look at typical Sakers, see the Mongolian young being banded by Lauren here. They will lighten up in adult plumage but "brown, streaky" is a fair description of either plumage.

LabRat has done an incredible synthesis of known and speculative biology and maybe a bit of anthropology here, so I'll confine myself to examples of big falcons in the Almaty breeding center in Kazakhstan, many looking like hybrids (and most utterly unlike Lauren's birds or the Sakers in western bird books), as well as one wild one near there described to me by the ornithologist who photo'd it as an "Altai falcon"; that is, a wild example of WHATEVER these mysterious birds are. The captive birds, in all their variety, are from Kazakhstan's diverse habitats too.

I should say before someone else brings it up that much (manufactured?) political controversy surrounds both the more common Sakers and these birds. "Altais" have at various times have been dismissed as human- influenced hybrids, while simultaneously being called nearly extinct; actually, they are probably a naturally- overlapping breeding population extending over a vast range. The admirers of "regular" Sakers (which contrary to wild claims do not command six- figure prices; I have bought a good one for $750!) are accused of being at the root of a vast and improbable conspiracy to smuggle them out of their homeland, and used as a fund- raising tool for at least one rather shady group. I think none of these statements are true. I am not denying some smuggling of the most desirable varieties of both "Altais" and other Sakers goes on, but I doubt that it is widespread or organized-- for one thing, most who make these accusations don't mention how vast, physically inaccessible, and politically divided their range is. Do not bother me with "Save the Falcons"; check out "Falco" or Middle East Falcon Research Group first to read about people engaged in actual work that helps the birds. I think Sakers face far greater threats when the Mongolian government broadcasts tons of poisoned seed from airplanes, in a futile, expensive attempt to eliminate gerbils. Meanwhile, at the other end of the line, Gulf Arabs are learning to train the vastly cheaper, legal domestic equivalents. Falconry is still, in the words of James I of England, "a great stirrer- up of passions".

Back to the birds, with a sigh of relief. First: a huge (high 40- ounce? more?) dark female, the size of a Gyr but with, perhaps, a bit of the Saker's slightly lankier build. In honor of Shriekback's song, with lyrics pertaining to several of our themes ("Big black Nemesis/ Parthenogenesis..") I think of her as Nemesis, one hell of a name for a hunting hawk. She is either what the Arabs call an "Adham" or the even larger and darker "Sinjari". Both can resemble dark Gyrs; some are built heavier, like the Gyr in the first photo, though the Arab falconers find them hardier than Gyrs.



Second: a wild bird photographed near Almaty by ornithologist Andrey Kovalenko and ID'd as an "Altai", also huge and even less determinate as to species.



These two are definitely Sakers but uncommonly pale, named "Ashgar" and described as "white" by the Arabs that love them.



If the black bird of this mixed pair doesn't have Gyr genes I will eat it uncooked. With its feathers on.



Despite appearances, this woman is NOT a Kazakh taxonomist after a long day of trying to classify the birds of the Altai.