THE OUTDOORS : A RUSH OF WINGS : Feathers Fly Whenever Falconers See Themselves as Being the Prey of Overzealous Wildlife Officials

Pheasant season for falconers opened last weekend in California, not that many were aware of it--least of all the pheasants.

There are fewer than 700 people licensed by the state to practice falconry, in which raptors, birds of prey, are used to catch other birds or small game, depending on the season.

“And the kill rate is not very high,” says Scott Francis, a master falconer from Escondido. “About 50 to 60% for an adult bird, maybe 25% for a young bird near the end of a season.”

Those 700 represent about one-fourth of the national total, and, according to Brian Walton, who breeds falcons at UC Santa Cruz, “probably half don’t have birds--and some have birds that shouldn’t.”

Walton’s last comment hints at a commotion in the sport that seems far out of proportion to the number of activists and the hunting harvest. They say their sport has far less impact on the environment than most modes of hunting, and that falconers understand it a lot more than the people who criticize it or try to regulate it.

One of the latter, Celeste Cushman, the Department of Fish and Game warden who is coordinator of the falconry program, is being moved to a different position.

Falconers say good riddance.

Her boss says good job.

The difference of opinion may be explained by the attitudes involved when one of God’s creatures is unleashed to kill another.

Cushman, for one, characterizes falconers as a sort of independent sub-culture that resists authority. Sherry Teresa finds herself in the center of the three-sided controversy among authorities, falconers and bird lovers. She is a DFG biologist based in Ventura and also a licensed falconer who works with the National Audubon Society.

“It’s real unfortunate there are such problems between falconers and Fish and Game,” she said. “Part of it is that a lot of falconers are kind of loners, rebels.

“It’s hard, too, because we have wardens who are in charge of inspecting and licensing who don’t have one-tenth the knowledge that the falconers do. They’re law-enforcement people.”

Falconers have no trouble reconciling the beauty of the sport to its ultimate purpose: the destruction of the prey. They rhapsodize about the spectacular dive, or stoop, of a peregrine falcon in pursuit of its quarry.

“They’ll go up so high and just wait there and then drop out of the sky like a bullet,” Teresa said. “It’s very exciting.”

Gary Boberg, like Francis a master falconer, said: “We’re not out to rack up a bunch of numbers as far as hunting success but go for a stylish flight. You try to teach the bird to fly for 15 or 20 minutes while it mounts a thousand feet into the sky, and then, at just the right time, you flush the ducks and they come off the pond, and you watch the falcon dropping at 200 m.p.h., shifting and spinning around.

“It’s a pretty simple machine. It hunts and eats. It’s doing something it does naturally.”

The bird doesn’t give an owl’s hoot about style. All it cares about is food. That’s why in training, the falconer will not flush or release prey until the bird is satisfactorily high.

It must be taught to hunt efficiently. In the 1970s, DDT and other pesticides all but destroyed the natural peregrine population, causing thin-shelled eggs that would break in the nest.

Captive breeding programs, such as Walton’s Predatory Bird Research Group at UC Santa Cruz and the Snake River Birds of Prey program near Boise, Ida., are restoring some of the endangered species, including peregrines. But, lacking parents, if released in the wild a young bird has only a 10% chance of survival his first year, so those facilities lend young birds to qualified falconers for a couple of years of training.

Falconers refer to their birds as “hunting companions,” but it’s clear that the roles are reversed from that of man and dog. In falconry, it is the man who flushes the game and the creature that kills it--and, in most cases, keeps it for itself.

“I don’t know any falconers that ever eat what their birds catch,” Boberg said.

Added Francis: “They don’t have much affection, but they do recognize individuals.”

Francis’ bird is a female, which is one-third larger than a male. Some falconers don’t even name their birds. It’s just “the bird.” But a responsible falconer will try to spend time every day flying, weighing, feeding and otherwise caring for his bird to keep it in top shape.

“It’s more than a sport,” Francis said. “It’s a life style.”

Francis, 33, is a carpenter by trade and single--not unusual for a falconer. Boberg, 33, is married and a sales representative for a heating-air conditioning firm.

Early on a recent morning they took Francis’ bird to an open field east of the San Diego Wild Animal Park where distractions would be minimal.

First, Francis removed the leather strap restraints, or jesses, from the birds’ legs and put a little bell on one leg, so he could track the bird if he lost sight of it in the air or if it pursued downed game in the brush. Then he donned a heavy glove, or gauntlet, and removed the little leather hood with the traditional plume on top.

The bird remained calm, although, Francis said, “When the hood comes off, they know they’re going to fly.”

Falcons, distinguishable by their pointed wings, hunt from the sky, circling and “waiting on,” as falconers say, until time to strike. Hawks, which have rounded wing tips, stay on the fist until the game is flushed.

Francis’ bird hopped onto his gloved left fist, then swooped away in a blast of his 3-foot wingspan. Immediately, two flocks of blackbirds nearby flushed into the air, reaching for altitude.

“They want to stay above her,” Boberg said. “As you flush game, the bird will come down with a tremendous amount of speed and knock down its prey with its feet.”

The peregrine, its bell ringing, ignored the blackbirds and, gaining altitude, headed instead for a nearby dairy, where pigeons tended to loiter. Finding none, it circled back, and Francis released a pigeon he carried in a leather pouch on his hip.

The pigeon and the falcon saw each other at the same instant. The pigeon flew low, toward brush cover, and the falcon, starting at about 500 feet, came zooming down from behind, like a fighter plane. Just before contact, though, the pigeon veered to one side and the falcon missed.

By the time the falcon returned for another pass, the pigeon was in the brush, where falcons are at a disadvantage with their big wings and feet.

Boberg said, “It’s an everyday process. You get a young bird and you’re teaching it like its parents would teach it in the wild, how to be a big, noble peregrine falcon. You’re releasing game for it to chase, and it almost always gets away because the bird is young and hasn’t developed yet.

“But you watch the bird progress and grow until it’s strong and learns how to maneuver and stoop (until) . . . it really commands the sky.”

Sometimes falconers feel that although their birds are the predators, they are the prey--of the bird-loving public.

“It’s wrong for somebody to say that all killing is wrong,” Francis said. “It’s hard to deal with these people. The birds would be killing in the wild, anyway.”

When people say falconry is uncivilized, advocates ask if it is more civilized to shoot game with a gun.

Francis said, “I am pro-hunting, but I prefer to do it with a bird.”

Battling adverse attitudes over the years has driven a lot of falconers underground to practice their sport in seclusion.

Boberg said: “The people who practice it are very elusive. It’s very hard to find anybody in the field.”

And when you find a falconer, he may not want to talk about it. Others realize they must win public acceptance for their sport to survive.

Francis said: “It is a blood sport. It’s something you’d like to keep to yourself. But too many people have an interest in birds of prey, so it has to be presented to the public in a positive way.”

A California falconry license costs $35, and an applicant must have a licensed falconer as a sponsor to get one. The falconers are careful whom they sponsor.

“In 20 years, I’ve sponsored only one person, and I’ve been asked by many,” Boberg said.

An applicant must pass a written test, then serve an apprenticeship under his sponsor’s wing for two years, when he receives a general license. Five years later he can be licensed as a master falconer.

Meanwhile, he also must purchase hunting licenses for the particular game he seeks.

In California, no raptor can be taken from the wild and sold, and only certain species can be kept by trappers. It’s illegal to trap or sell peregrines in the state.

All of this is why, the falconers complain, the system gets bogged down.

Boberg spoke of “people applying for permits to get a bird and having to wait several months for the paper work to come back, and by that time it’s too late to get the bird.”

Cushman said it now takes five working days.

She said: “There’s an element within the falconry community that’s not very cooperative with the department.”

Certainly, the California Hawking Club was out to get Celeste Cushman. President Larry Baines, in a letter dated Jan. 21, 1987, urged his membership to document their complaints against Cushman and demand her removal. “I for one am tired of being subjected to the wrath of Warden Cushman,” he wrote.

Francis said: “There’s a need for someone in (Cushman’s) position, but it’s got to be a workable arrangement.”

Two years ago, a petition against Cushman was circulated and sent to DeWayne Johnston, chief of the DFG’s wildlife protection division. She is now being moved to the animal welfare department of the DFG.

“Every year it’s been a campaign to get rid of Celeste,” she said. “It looks like they’ve finally succeeded.”

Not so, Johnston said.

“She has done such a fine job in falconry that we have another program for her to straighten out,” he said. “Before she took on the program it had a total lack of accountability.”

Accountability is exactly the problem, Walton said.

“Celeste has an accountant’s mentality. If Celeste worked for the IRS, every single citizen would be audited,” he said. “She’s usually right, but . . . they should be spending their time protecting wildlife, when 90% of their time is spent on paper work and enforcement.”

According to the DFG, the falconry program runs at an annual deficit of about $100,000, and now that she’s leaving, Cushman is concerned that pending federal legislation may deregulate the sport.

“There would be no more inspectors,” she said. “So we have raptors sitting in, what--parrot cages? Chicken coops?”

On a larger scale, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, acting under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, several years ago launched a massive sting operation to catch people willing to buy illegally acquired falcons. There were about 30 arrests.

Falconers say there were only a half-dozen “serious arrests,” and that the feds themselves violated laws to obtain the birds they proposed to sell.

Walton thinks the authorities should “lighten up.”

Maybe they will when the species are no longer endangered. His program is helping.

“There were two pair of peregrines in the wild in 1970,” Walton said. “Today there are more than 80.”

Teresa is encouraged by that but is less optimistic about the future of falconry.

“There are some awfully good falconers who are doing it right and they’re (suffering) because so many others are doing it wrong,” she said.