Falconer Brian Davies has been working with Echo Valley Ranch for over 14 years and one of the things he does is raise Gyr and Peregrine falcons. Brian is a falconer from way back and we will be writing more about him in later blogs; Frank L. Beebe, who is very well known in the falconry world and had a book published “The Compleat Falconer”, rates Brian amongst the top best natural falconers in the world – coming from Frank, that means a lot.

We will be blogging the raising of Gyr falcons at Echo Valley Ranch, from the time the falcon makes its nest in our falcon mews through to having young falcons ready for delivery to other falconer’s  who will use them to hunt.

 We will also be posting some pictures of Brian flying the falcons to the lure, which our guests love to watch; Brian releases and flies falcons to the lure every day at the ranch at 1:30PM.

We do have a short video showing Brian flying the falcons www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAiiv40n1xU

The two pictures that come with this blog show what needs to be done when, on very rare occasions, the lure is not moved away from the diving falcon in time to avoid a strike. The pictures show the strike which is immediately followed by Brian dropping the lure to ensure that when the falcon turns to strike again that it will not hurt its talons. The second picture shows the falcon returning to strike again.

The lure is not accellerated away from the swooping falcon in time to prevent a strike

Brian had immediately dropped the lure on the first strike and now the falcon returns to strike yet again!

Close up of the strike

Related posts:

1. Gyrfalcon eggs
2. Falcon babies at Echo Valley Ranch
3. Just 10 days out of the shell!
4. Signs of Spring
5. EVR Drop In

Tags: "Echo Valley Ranch", Falcon, falconer

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 11:08 pm and is filed under Falcons, The Ranch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.