Tag: master falconer

American Kestrel Eating “Grit”

I don’t have any beautiful photos today but I do have some interesting behavior. Yesterday morning, I came across this female American Kestrel sitting in the middle of a large, isolated, gravel parking lot/camping area on Antelope Island.  I thought it was an unusual resting place for a kestrel and as I approached her in my pickup I was even more intrigued when she didn’t immediately fly off, as this species typically does.   She repeatedly took a couple of wingbeats and flew a few feet, but never far.  She was, for some reason, reluctant to leave and at first I couldn’t figure out why.     I was eventually able to work my way close enough to her to see that she was swallowing small stones from the gravel parking lot.     This was a behavior that I’d never seen before in a raptor, though I’ve often seen it in other birds.  As a biologist, I’m aware of the general function of the gizzard in birds – that seed eating birds swallow “grit” to act as teeth (birds have no true teeth, presumably a weight saving adaptation for flight) within the grinding gizzard so they can physically break down their hard food and prepare it for chemical digestion.  And it had been my understanding that raptors don’t consume grit because they don’t eat seeds.  The flesh they consume is easily digested and doesn’t need to be physically broken down first. So why is this little falcon swallowing small stones?  I decided to ask Mark Runnels, an extremely knowledgeable master falconer from Oklahoma and…

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Falconry – A Detriment To The Birds?

As some of you will remember, I’ve recently made two posts calling into question some of the ethics of the “sport” (some don’t like that term) of falconry.   This was the bird that prompted my most recent post – an “escaped” female Peregrine Falcon that I photographed along the Antelope Island causeway a few weeks ago.  You’ll notice that she still has her leather falconry anklets above her feet (only one can be seen in this photo).     And last year, this escaped male American Kestrel was loose near Farmington Bay WMA and it still had not only its anklets but its jesses.  The extreme danger to the bird of having those long, dangling jesses engangle and kill the kestrel is obvious. In both posts I questioned the ethics of falconry in general, but admitting my relative ignorance of the subject I asked (on the second post) for more information from my readers to “enlighten” me on the subject. For those who haven’t seen those posts and have the interest, here’s the links: Escaped Falconry Bird – Peregrine Falcon Escaped Falconry Bird – Peregrine Falcon, Again   Mark Runnels, a master falconer from Oklahoma, responded to the second post with a series of very detailed, knowledgeable and thoughtful comments on falconry – responding to each of my concerns dispassionately and eloquently. However, that post was made on September 17 and Mark didn’t begin to comment until October 23, which means that his valuable information likely went under the radar for most of my readers (very few folks come back to a…

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