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    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned
    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned
    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned
    Ebook134 pages1 hour

    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned

    By Kennon McLendon, Kaky McLendon and Anna McLendon

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    About this ebook

    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned is a book detailing one falconer's attempts at keeping ospreys healthy and flying them as successful falconry birds. After experience with several birds, the authors describe husbandry and falconry training techniques which are tailored specifically for ospreys--a bird with a reputation for being difficult to

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKennon McLendon
    Release dateSep 14, 2020
    ISBN9781735575124
    Ospreys in Falconry: Lessons Learned

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      Book preview

      Ospreys in Falconry - Kennon McLendon

      © 2020

      Kennon McLendon

      Ospreys in Falconry

      Cover photo: Christina Paz

      Cover design: Christina Paz

      Multiple interior photos: Christina Paz & Kennon McLendon

      Book design: Daniel McLendon

      Translation: Daniel McLendon

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of any license permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

      A CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      ISBN-13: 978-1-7355751-0-0

      ISBN: 978-1-7355751-2-4 (e-book)

      Photo by Christina Paz

      Contents

      Prologue

      Introduction: Falconry with Ospreys

      Part I: Challenges

      1. The Cautious Raptor

      Part II: The Birds

      2. Bird One: Oscar

      3. Bird Two: Opie

      4. Bird Three: Ozzie

      Part III: Keeping Ospreys

      5. Ideas for Keeping Ospreys

      6. By the Numbers

      7. Handling

      Conclusion

      Appendices

      I: Equipment

      II: Interesting Little Falconry Episodes

      III: Story of Neptune

      PROLOGUE

      The young osprey extends her neck, eyes fixed on the water. Her head bobs from side to side, performing a complicated calculus involving distance, light refraction, and prey size. Amber eyes glare at something invisible beneath the surface.

      Suddenly her wings—black feathers trimmed in tan—pull up tight, prepared. With a final head-bob, she leans forward, launching downwards at a shallow angle, aiming straight for the water. Her eyes stay on target; her wings pump hard. At the last moment, she swings her legs forward, opens her talons wide, stretches her wings backwards, and plunges feet-first into the water. Eyes straight ahead, just behind her talons. She disappears in a tremendous splash.

      Soon, a disheveled head pops up. She looks around, mouth agape, maneuvering to face the wind, then she flaps downward and pushes her tail into the water. Beads of water roll off her wings. She becomes airborne, barely, dragging a catfish in one foot. With the fish skipping on the surface and struggling to gain airspeed, she makes it off, flying straight ahead in ground effect. She pumps with effort and climbs.

      At fifty feet above the surface, she shakes vigorously, losing a few meters altitude and shedding more water in her feathers; the lake beneath her shimmers with the miniature rain shower. She repositions the fish with her feet so it faces forward and she flaps steadily, trying to stay aloft long enough to find an updraft. The flapping stops as she noses into rising air. She circles slightly higher, wings aquiver as she banks or dips or floats, but soon she balloons upwards in victory, using lift against trees or thermals or bubbling puffs of wind.

      At two hundred feet up, in a controlled soar, she looks back. She circles downward, makes two approaches in gusty conditions, then comes in fast, flaring with several forceful flaps at the last second. She lands upwind on her perch.

      Right next to her admiring falconer.

      He gives her a piece of fish to eat in exchange for her prey, which he secures. The osprey steps to his glove to finish the meal, one pair of talons half encircling his gloved wrist, the other deftly holding the catfish she eats—bones, spines and skin. She is breathless, panting between bites, wet and proud. The falconer walks her back to her mews.

      The above scenario is the reason I’m writing this book. I’ve played my part in this scene many times, a scene many say is impossible. But it is possible; and I want to share my experiences with these magnificent birds as falconry partners. I have by no means perfected the art, and I expect others to improve on my methods. But I have proved that an osprey can belong on the arm of a falconer. What follows is an account of my journey.

      One of 25 bream in a three-acre pond caught by this bird in stoops from various perches

      INTRODUCTION:

      Falconry with Ospreys?

      The first time my osprey caught a fish was a day to celebrate. I had been working with him for weeks—weeks I spent sitting next to a blue plastic kiddie pool in the backyard. His perch sat on the lip of this pool, which I had filled with murky pond water, while a bream swam in circles. He had snagged fish with this setup before, but that didn’t count in my book. My goal was a successful dive on a free-swimming fish in the lake itself.

      On this scorching July day, I passed over his pool perch and coaxed him onto his lakeside pole—a ten-foot PVC pipe with a perch on top. Once he’d adjusted, he began scanning the nearly opaque water of the pond. The pole leaned and swayed underneath him, but he didn’t seem to mind.

      I tossed a handful of floating fish food across the water. We had done this before, many a time, and he had tried to catch the slippery fish that bobbed below the surface. But so far, he had come up empty.

      Suddenly, the pole swayed wildly as the osprey launched into the air. He splashed into the lake a few feet from the shore, into the soggy remains of the fish food. His feet went under and, for a second, his body rested on the surface; then he flapped his wings hard and lifted off the water.

      I squinted, straining to see if he clasped a fish in his talons, not expecting much.

      And there it was! His first fish!

      I held my breath as he placed one foot in front of the other, streamlining the bream in his talons, holding it headfirst while he gained altitude. After circling back, his wings flared, and he landed with his prize on his home perch.

      That was a good day. There are other days. This book describes both.

      What is Real Falconry?

      The less celebratory days remind me that ospreys and falconry are incompatible in many ways. Before I even got started, a host of commenters on social media warned me of the difficulties to come. Here are examples of a few comments :

      • Ospreys do poorly in captivity.

      • They are stupid.

      • They’re untrainable.

      • How could you get them back?

      • How can you catch one?

      • They will migrate!

      Since I started, I’ve discovered even more reasons not to try it.

      The naysayers have reasonable points, many being at least half-true. Ospreys are not easy birds to handle.

      But even after I found an osprey, taught it to fish and return to my hand, and reported my results online, many questioned whether hunting with ospreys is real falconry.

      The definition of real falconry varies, and no matter what your opinion of it, someone is always ready to criticize your activities. Carhawking for starlings with a kestrel, squirrel hawking with a red-tail, and catching ducks with a hybrid gyrfalcon are different enough from each other to generate group rivalry. The unkind folks may denigrate others as not being true falconers. As for me, I just use a dictionary. Here’s a simple definition:

      Falconry is the taking of wild quarry in its natural state with birds of prey.

      The quarry varies by raptor and geography. Furthermore, not all falconry quarry must be naturally occurring; introduced quarry is also valid. For example, natural prey includes Chukkar partridges under point by dogs in the western U.S. These birds are introduced and, under duress from the dogs, are not truly in their natural state. Even so, a

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