As it turned out, it was a bobcat that took her permanently from the sky.
Here was a bird unlike any I know of. She was a falconry bird who caught a few ducks. She flew vigorously to the lure and caught a few of my homing pigeons in tremendous flights. She perched before audiences (mostly kids) totaling 75,000 people over a period of 14 years while they heard the story of the peregrine falcon population recovery–her first audience was a group of school kids in the spring of 2000. She stood willingly for copulation, incubated eggs, and hatched her own babies that she raised to fledging. I have a son and daughter from her plus a third falcon that she served as a foster parent to this year.
Each year I moved her from falconry permit, to special purpose education permit, to propagation permit. She even spent a little time in the agricultural fields defending wine grapes against starlings. She led a full life.
On Monday morning (while on the falconry permit) I released her to the sky. She flew around a bit and landed on the tailgate of the Jeep to preen. I waited patiently in the middle of the field until she finished so that we could begin her daily exercise of stooping to the lure. But she left her perch suddenly and at full speed to stoop behind a fence row.
When she did not come back up I ran as fast as I could and found a bobcat standing on top of her. Apparently, she was trying to drive it from her “territory” by raking it with her talons. She picked on the wrong bobcat.
She has been in intensive care at Dr. Fern Van Sant’s “For the Birds” veterinary hospital since the incident and I spent hours there each day trying to get some food in to her. She was my first human-imprinted peregrine falcon and will be my last.
Over the past few weeks she has flown big above the hills and meadows near Davenport almost every morning. On one recent day she rode the strong wind diving and shooting up into the sky in what appeared to be joyful flight. It is how I will remember her.
stewartfalcon 