“She might be wherever from 100 to 1,000 toes up within the air, away from me and I get to assist her be a profitable hunter,” Dana Green mentioned.
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Trust constructed over time has led to a particular relationship between a neighborhood falconer and her peregrine falcon.
“To her, I was a scary potential threat,” Dana Green mentioned in an interview on the Christmas Bird Count for Kids occasion on Saturday.
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“It just took hours of holding her and giving her little tidbits of food and working with her to put equipment off and on to know that it was a safe process for her to go through.”
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Eos is a free-flying fowl throughout the searching season, which takes place from September to March.
“She can be anywhere from 100 to 1,000 feet up in the air, away from me and I get to help her be a successful hunter,” she mentioned.
“My role in the relationship is to flush the game for her, whether it’s ducks on a pond or it’s partridge and grouse out of grasses. I more or less scare them up, out of the ground for her and she comes down as death from above.”
Green is a PhD candidate on the University of Regina who’s getting her diploma in biology. Self-described as a “nerd-birder,” she enjoys being exterior and loves wildlife. Her curiosity in falconry started when she took a job at a fowl watching fanatic retailer.
“The manager I was working for was a falconer, so the first day that I walked in I looked over and there was her Harris’s hawk hanging out in the back room,” she mentioned.
“I was really drawn to falconry because it’s being able to work with wildlife in a really interesting context where you’re a part of the predator-prey relationship. You are part of the process of a raptor hunting.”
Eos — who lives in her personal aviary — was a fully-grown juvenile falcon when Green first obtained her from Manitoba in 2021.
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Green mentioned meals was the most important motivator when it got here to coaching her, as the primary objective of predators and wild animals usually is survival.
“I have a lure that I swing for her and there’s always a guaranteed jackpot meal on that lure, so she knows if she comes to me she’s going to be getting that.”
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While they make a great crew, she mentioned it’s not simply her and Eos. They get assist from her springer spaniel, a fowl canine that helps by operating into the bushes, flushing the sport.
“Rather than training my bird dog to be good with rifles, I have trained him to be good with raptors.”
Green introduced Eos to Christmas Bird Counts for Kids at Wascana Centre for the second yr in a row, to teach youngsters and adults alike with a presentation on the peregrine falcon.
During the fowl rely, totally different teams go on a walk the place they determine and rely the birds they encounter.
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Sarah Romuld, ecologist with Provincial Capital Commission, mentioned the occasion is vital because it collects knowledge for Birds Canada, and permits the general public to get conversant in Wascana Centre and wildlife in Regina.
“They can use that data to assess ranges of birds, how far they go, their migratory patterns, you can even go as far as — depending on what data you’re gathering — behavioural patterns, or mating patterns. All of those different things come from birding data like this,” Ramould mentioned.
According to Bird Canada, this fowl census started in 1900 and is North America’s longest-running citizen science venture.
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