A night with Falcon's, Eagles and Hawks

The second Friday of each month is our camera club's program night. We usually have a professional photographer come and speak with credentials such as working for Time/Life magazine, Sports Illustrated, National Geographic, etc.  We are quite lucky that we don't have to pay for these seminars.  Sometimes we have one of our own club members give a seminar in his particular specialty and then there are other speakers of a completely different background that provide great photo opportunities.  Last Friday was such a night.  We had Martin Tyner as our guest speaker and it was incredible.  Martin Tyner is the first man in North America licensed to train a wild golden eagle in the ancient art of falconry.  He is also the founder and CEO of Southwest Wildlife Rescue in Cedar City, Utah and Author of Healer of Angels.  He is a fascinating speaker with funny stories and sad stories as well.  He brought Three birds with him for us to see.  Two falcons and one Eagle.  We were fortunate to be able to snap photos of the birds at the end of the program.  It was a little difficult to get great pictures because our club is a large venue.  We usually have about a hundred people in attendance every meeting and so getting up close and getting really good pictures was quite a challenge but I do have a few to share.  Not the greatest, but it is what it is.

The little guy above gets stressed out around a lot of noise and strange environments so he had to wear this helmut looking contraption to help keep him relaxed.  It's similar to horses having to wear blinders when walking near a paved road.  Martin Tyner makes all his blinders/helmuts himself.  I thought the bird looked quite sporty in his little head cover.

Does he look stressed to you?  Maybe a little nervous.

The Eagle.  He weighs seven pounds.  Quite a big bird.

He loves his owner.  There was a very funny story about this bird.

I believe it's in the book so if you want to hear about it you'll just have to get a copy here.  You'll also learn more about Martin and the his Wildlife Rescue Center.  It's quite fascinating and I'm not even into birds.