A raptor is no love bird, but falconer Mike Bodary finds joy in care and training

The falconer's life may not be as picturesque as it once was. Mike Bodary doesn't ride out on a princely steed and uncloak his exotic bird of prey. Instead, he drives a pickup into scrub land and unleashes Gonzo, the chicken hawk.

Bodary walks the brush scaring up prey and Gonzo, more properly called a red-tailed hawk, zooms in on whatever lizards, snakes, rats, mice or squirrels emerge.

"I'm not hunting," said Bodary. "She's hunting."

He calls his part "participatory bird watching."

Bodary, 38, is a licensed master-class falconer who has had 10 raptors in about 11 years, including American kestrels, which are small falcons. But he likes hawks better. They're bigger, hardier, don't hunt so far off and don't fly so fast, he said, so they're easier to watch.

They're not a bit friendlier, as evidenced by some of the names he has given them: Mr. Bitey, Mr. Nibbles, The Boogieman, Pandora, etc.

Gonzo cleaning her bloody beak on his glove after a meal is about as warm as the relationship gets. "I'm a napkin," he said.

There are typically only 30 to 40 licensed falconers listed in Tennessee at any given time, said Richard Kirk, nongame and endangered species coordinator with the Nashville office of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. Usually they are outdoorsmen, such as hunters and fishermen.

They may hunt with a variety of raptors they catch from the wild, but the TWRA does not allow them to take peregrine falcons from the wild because they are still listed as endangered in Tennessee, he said.

Peregrine falcons were nearly exterminated from eastern North America by pesticide poisoning in the middle 20th century, but restoration efforts have helped them recover.

Bodary traps his own hawks from the wild with a "bal chatri" trap, an ancient trap created by East Indian falconers that snares a raptor's feet with nooses. He also traps their food, European house sparrows with a sparrow trap, and he orders frozen quail. His bird eats about a quail a day or four to five sparrows or mice a day.

It may take him three weeks to two months to train a hawk to ride on his glove and come back to him after hunting. His bird lives in a large cage he built called a mews and all aspects of the life of each bird, including capture, care and training, must be reported to state and federal agencies. It's estimated a falconer spends 100 hours caring for and training a bird for every hour spent in the field.

Bodary repeats a joke told among falconers: "One bird, one wife; two birds, no wife."

Bodary is single and lives with his spotted pointer, Abigail, in the University of Memphis area. He was born in Toledo, Ohio, and moved to Memphis in 1994 to attend the U of M.

He taught technical writing at the U of M for three years and later became a vice president of manufacturing for a local biotechnical company until he was laid off recently.

He is now working on his doctorate in technical writing and is enjoying his free time flying his bird two or three times a week.

It was shyness that led him into falconry.

While a graduate student, he entered the docent program at the Memphis Zoo as a way to learn to be comfortable talking to crowds. There he worked with owls and kites and grew fascinated with raptors, he said.

He apprenticed under falconer Blake Soule, 53, of Germantown, owner of a furniture restoration business and a one-time breeder of Harris's hawks, which hunt in groups. Bodary is the only apprentice he ever had who actually took game with birds.

"Some people just want to carry them around to show off," Soule said.

Soule described the thrill of hunting with three hawks at a time or with another falconer and his hawks. It wasn't only seeing their amazing aerial acrobatics but being so close that "hawks would brush my head with their wings as they flew by. You just don't get that (another way) watching birds in the wild."

The hawks accepted him as part of the hunt, he said.

Soule and Bodary consider themselves conservationists, and Knox Martin of the Mid-South Raptor Center heartily agrees.

The whole concept of breeding birds of prey and reintroducing them into the wild was developed by falconers, said Martin, founder and director of the raptor rehabilitation center on the grounds of Agricenter International. He credits falconers with helping bring back not only peregrine falcons but also bald eagles, osprey and California condors. Raptors are important in keeping down the rodent population, he said.

Falconers typically capture immature birds, which are easier to train, and thereby spare them a hazardous first year in the wild, Bodary said. He keeps a bird about a year, then releases it back into the breeding population, where it very quickly reverts to being completely wild.

One day recently, Bodary carried Gonzo to an open field near the University of Memphis. The bird was perched on a heavy glove and secured with a leather leash on her feet. Bodary removed the leash, counted aloud, called "G'yup," (get up) and lifted his arm.

Gonzo soared high into the trees surrounding the field and began slowly laddering up branches to get a better view. Other birds put up a considerable squawk at her presence.

To demonstrate her hunting abilities, Bodary blew a whistle, then twirled a lure, a leather pouch he has taught Gonzo to associate with food. Like a silent torpedo, Gonzo glided from the tree, a fury of wings and talons, and snatched the lure in midair.

Bodary then tossed real food, a dead sparrow, to reward her and distract her from the lure. They repeated this maneuver several times, though at least once she dug her talons into the lure and refused to give it back. Hawks aren't prone to sharing, he said.

Bodary seemed to take pleasure in every small thing about Gonzo, including the way she shook her tail as she perched in a tree. That's a sign of contentment, he said.

But the fascination between man and hawk is a one-way street.

"They're not pets," he said. "She tolerates me is all."

-- Barbara Bradley: 529-2370