Falconry is probably the world’s oldest sport - older than chariot racing, older than the Olympics. There is evidence of its practice 4,200 years ago. Tom Stephan, a longtime resident of Ramona, is one of only a few people of our time quietly keeping the ancient art alive.
To his knowledge, Stephan owns one of only five falconry businesses in the country. He calls his Air Superiority Falconry Services, a fledgling venture he bills as a low-tech, nontoxic and highly effective means of pest control. Falconry is the art of training and hunting with hawks, falcons other birds of prey. It is usually thought of as a living relic of an age past, one that ended with the advent of gunpowder and guns. “Within a hundred years after the invention of guns, falcons went from being a revered bird to vermin,” the 45-year-old Stephan said, because they became competitors for the same game the hunters wanted. There are, however, some things falcons do better than guns; namely, instilling in other birds deep-seated terror. Birds immediately recognize the falcon’s heart-shaped silhouette as it dives.
Discussing some of his customers, Stephan said he has flown his birds for the Air Force, scaring other birds from runways to reduce the potentially deadly “bird airstrike hazard,” or BASH. And for starling-infested vineyards in San Luis Obispo, his falcons were employed for a successful please-don’t-eat-the grapes campaign. “The falcon doesn’t actually kill the birds,“ Stephan said. All that is needed is for the birds to see the dive-bombing, swooping falcons, and the birds scatter. If the birds are not fast enough, they get raked by formidable talons.
Sometimes birds are even terrified watching falcons train. Like a matador, Stephan brandishes a bird effigy on a long tether. The falcon-in-training then “stoops to the lure,” scaring the bejesus out of every bird in sight. (The idiom “How could you stoop so low?” is a falconry term that refers to those slovenly falconers who failed to train their birds to swoop down on their targets from high in the sky, he said.)
Stephan takes this training project to work sites, such as runways, and it is often enough to chase birds away. Seagulls even flee landfills at the sight of them. If the visuals don’t work, Stephan releases the falcons, and they do deal deadly blows. “We hired his falcons to scare the coots,” said a spokesman at the Vineyard at Escondido Golf Club. “The falcon would single out and then attack a member of the flock. The rest were rattled for a couple of days,” he said, but not enough to fly to a nearby lake, the ideal goal.
Stephan explained his 30-year passion for the sport and his encyclopedic knowledge of the folklore surrounding it as ansing from his admiration for the birds. “Falcons are beautiful in everything they do,” he said. “The way they fly. The way they hunt. In everything they do.” Their physical features are a long list of superlatives, awesome adaptations and exquisite details. The peregrine or “wandering” falcon is native to every continent but Antarctica. “It is probably the most widespread of all the falcons,” said Dave Bittner, executive director of Wildlife Research Institute in Ramona. “Their migratory powers are as good as any bird in the world as far as their ability to sustain uninterrupted long-distance flight,” Bittner said. The animals feel the Earth’s magnetic field and use it to navigate.
Americans’ interest in the sport - there are some 3,200 members of the national falconry association - has been inherited from the medieval European tradition, which in turn had its roots in Asia and the Middle East. American Indians, people believe, did not participate in falconry but keep birds for religious ceremonies. The oldest known evidence of the sport dates back some 4,200 years to an ancient Chinese emperor, making the sport older than the Olympics or chariot races. And likely nomadic, desert people hunted for their subsistence with birds of prey much earlier. Today, the Arabian Peninsula is the last stronghold of falconry.
Thomas N. Stephan, Field Operations Air Superiority Falconry Services 346 Oak St Ramona, Ca. 92065 Office,(760)789-1493 Cell #(760)801-2207 http://www.air-superiority.com