Urban wildlife

"William Claspy" wrote in

One reason I like the leaf-less seasons. It seems especially in late fall
and late winter/early spring the roadways become hawk sighting places. On
a
drive to eastern Iowa last February, I lost count of the various species
of
raptors that I saw along the way on light posts, fences, etc.



A number of years ago I found a falcon in my driveway. As I drove in, it
flew a few feet and was dangling something long and skinny. My first
thought was that is was that it was badly injured and dragging it's
intestines. I immediately went into internal debate mode about breaking
the law and shooting the bird to stop it's suffering, letting Nature handle
the situation, etc. I took my binoculars out and it was dragging a
leather thong and was, obviously, someone's trained hunting bird.

I grabbed a dead pigeon ( I'm a hunting dog trainer, having a dead bird in
the truck wasn't really that odd :-) and waved it around and soon I had a
falcon sitting on my wrist :-) I called DFG and was soon on a four hour
round trip journey to take the rare, very valuable, highly regulated, bird
to them, so they could track down the owner.

A couple days later, I got a call from the owner, a lawyer from Stockton.
He thanked me and offered a reward, and told me how lucky he was that the
bird was found by a dog trainer carrying dead pigeons, as he had had another
very valuable bird die from the hotdog that the finder had used to lure the
bird ( think about that one next time you buy Ball Park Franks ).

I declined the offer of $$$ BUT suggested that I'd love to see his birds
work ( it was still falconry pheasant season ). Now, that worthless,
****ing, slimeball, ****head lawyer ( I never believed the stuff about them
being scum until this happened ) told me that he couldn't do that because he
" hunts in very special, , private, places and he couldn't trust me to take
me there because I might come back and trespass to poach them"
..... this after I spent most a full day rescuing and returning a bird
probably worth thousands of dollars.

You know why New York has so many lawyers, and New Jersey has some much
toxic waste? ?? ...........
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New Jersey got first pick