Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West

by Rachel Dickinson

Rachel Dickinson profiles falconer Steve Chindgren, a man willing to make extreme sacrifices to continue practicing the sport that has ruled his life. Dickinson arrives at a sense of falconry’s the unpredictable nature of the hunt and the soaring exhilaration of success.

Further exploration unveils the enormous emotional cost to a falconer who establishes an extraordinary tie to his birds. When, in the space of two days, Chindgren loses two birds that he’d been training for years, he is plunged into a profound depression that is only deepened when Jomo, his best bird, slows down because of old age.

In addition to this challenge, Chindgren faces the danger to falconry that the modern world presents. Grouse habitat is being degraded by mining, agriculture, and gas industry interests. And the number of falconers is dwindling—the corps is graying and has few acolytes.

Falconry is a sport that requires persistence, stoicism, and sacrifice; in this captivating account, Dickinson illuminates a fascinating subculture and one of its most hard core personalities.

Genres: Nonfiction, Nature, Birds

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

An intriguing book - more a look at the personality of a top-notch falconer than any sort of exploration of the world of falconry. But the author provides a fascinating (sometimes even unsettling) look at the undeniable drive that brings together two disparate elements - man and bird of prey - in the shrinking wilderness of the American west. In many ways, she presents an image of the falconer that is a reflection of the cowboy, or even the knight in shining armor - a relic of a bygone (or at least rapidly disappearing) era, clinging to both a lifestyle and a code of honor that are things of the past. In that way, the book provides both a touching and melancholy look at falconry as a way of life that may be on the verge of vanishing forever.

[Grrlscientist · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like most married people, Rachel Dickinson thought she knew her husband quite well after years of marriage. But one evening, he surprised her by unexpectedly bringing home a small brown paper bag containing an injured kestrel. You see, Dickinson’s husband, Living Bird magazine editor Tim Gallagher, was a lapsed falconer without any birds, until this kestrel, Strawberry, reawakened his latent passion. As the bond between her husband and his tiny falcon grew and deepened, Dickinson was amused and fascinated and wished to learn more about her husband’s hobby. But there isn’t much modern literature on this topic, so she decided to research and write a book about it herself. The result is her biographical sketch, Falconer on the Edge (NYC: Houghton Mifflin; 2009).

Falconry is an ancient sport where humans go hunting with birds of prey instead of guns or bows and arrows. Traditionally, the birds of prey were removed from nests as downy chicks and doted upon and trained so they viewed their handlers as their source of food. After these birds fledged, they were trained to hunt for prey, either medium-sized mammals or game birds, which the falconer then shared with his hunting birds. (I write “his” deliberately because women were almost never permitted to participate in falconry).

In her quest to understand the appeal of falconry on its devotees and to gain a deeper understanding of her spouse, Dickinson spends one season following master falconer, Steve Chindgren, as he hunted Sage Grouse with his hybrid gyrfalcon-peregrine falcons in southwestern Wyoming. There’s Jomo, who has been an excellent hunting partner to Steve for a remarkable 20 years; Jahanna, a talented but still relatively inexperienced bird that is being groomed as the replacement for the aging Jomo; Tava, a young bird who is developing into an effective hunter; and Zaduke, a sweet-mannered first-year bird that Steve is training.

Steve was just eight years old when he first became involved with falconry. After paying for a newspaper ad seeking to reunite a lost red-tailed hawk with her owner (who never claimed her), Steve went home with his first bird. For years, Steve and “Shoulders” — named in honor of her favorite perch — were inseparable. Unfortunately, Steve’s progression from a “beginner’s bird”, a red-tailed hawk, to the epitome of falconry, artificially created hybrids between gyrfalcons and peregrine falcons, remains mysterious. But by the time Dickinson meets him as a man in his fifties, Steve is an independent master falconer who regularly abandons his wife and kids for six months out of every year to live in a small cabin that he purchased on a large plot of empty acreage in Eden, Wyoming. It is here in the heart of an arid wilderness that he trains and works with his small group of hybrid falcons.

In this book, we are given an outline to the history of falconry and its unique terminology, which is first explained and then used throughout the book. Since Steve’s family is Mormon, the author uses this to segue into a brief history of the Mormons’ arduous journey by wagon train from Nauvoo, Illinois to Utah, where they founded Salt Lake City in 1846. We also also are introduced to the myriad threats to the fragile arid interior of North America from agriculture and ranching, mining, and the natural gas and oil industries. Taken together, these topics would appear to make for compelling reading, for me at least.

I did not like this book for two reasons. First, I did not like the writing. Dickinson’s repetitiveness made me experience “déjà vu all over again” as I wondered if I had accidentally lost my place. The exquisitely adapted sage grouse, whose numbers are declining, are only discussed briefly, and mostly as targets for Steve’s “killing machines,” as his falcons are referred to several times in the book. The author introduced the many threats to the arid regions in Wyoming in an awkward way, almost as an afterthought. Further, Dickinson never really warmed up to her subject because her writing often wandered aimlessly, almost as if she was working hard to expand a magazine article into a book. As it was, this 220-page book would have been much better condensed into a magazine article.

Second, I developed a surprisingly strong dislike for the main character, falconer Steve Chindgren. He struck me as tremendously arrogant and selfish because of his casual relationship with the law, his dismissive rationalization of his illegal behaviors, and his famously short temper that is apparently rivalled only by his poor impulse control — traits that ultimately resulted in the unnecessary deaths of several of his precious falcons for the same reason within mere days of each other.

By the end of the book, I was not convinced that the author had developed much insight into falconry or its devotees, and I was angry at Steve for being so inexcusably careless with his precious birds’ lives.


NOTE: Originally published at scienceblogs.com on 13 June 2009.

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesomeness!

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was pretty disappointed by this book. I believed it would be far more about the sport of falconry, its history, and the animals themselves far more than it was. The content in the book jumped back and forth far too much between the falconer, the birds, tiny rural towns, environmental concerns, the prey of the falcons, etc. The author should have chosen one or two subjects- there was far too much talked about with far too little content per each subject, and as a result the whole book just became uninteresting.

I would not pick this book up if you are strictly looking to learn about falconry or birds of prey- this book is a far more generalized overview of several different topics.

[Megan K · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonderful exploration into the world of falconers. Much more about the falconer than the birds or the art itself--more of an ethnography of falconers. Steve Chindgren is quite a fascinating character and an inspiring figure for anyone interested in the art. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, finished it in only a couple of sittings. Also, as a side-note the book talks a great deal about the impact of natural-gas extraction and exploration on falconry and the environment falconers have been hunting in for years, a pertinent issue for these times.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great story. Rachel Dickinson's vivid descriptions of scenes, birds, and people make this an enjoyable read, along with it being an education. I learned so much about the nature of falcons and the people who keep and train them; the history of the sport; and the tensions and controversies surrounding it. Most of all, I was entertained by a compelling main character and his majestic birds of prey.

[Angie]

The NPR interview was more interesting.

[Kevin Morse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed everything about the falconer and his birds. It did bog down here and there with other stuff, but still well worth it.