Catching the Prize

by Judi Dressler

Title

Catching the Prize

Artist

Judi Dressler

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

A good friend of mine is a falconer, and acquired this young beautiful dark morph chocolate gyrfalcon only three weeks before this photo was taken. It took most of those three weeks for the bird to get well enough used to him so that he could finally start to fly her in a field a few miles from his house. In this image taken of one of her very first flights, she flew about 25 feet to grab some food from the "lure", a type of leather glove specifically used by falconers to train their falcons. She had no trouble grabbing the prize in flight!

Although the classic image of a Gyrfalcon is a regal white bird with black spotting, the birds occur in shades of white, gray, and dark brown. In North America, gray birds are more numerous than the other two morphs. Adults are heavily barred on the back, wings, and tail, with spotted underparts. Juveniles are heavily streaked; the flight feathers of dark juveniles are lighter and contrast with the rest of the wing.

The largest falcon in the world, the ghostly Gyrfalcon is a fierce predator in the High Arctic, where it chases down ptarmigans in flight or plummets from the sky at breathtaking speeds to strike prey to the ground. Nesting on remote cliffs in the far reaches of Canada and Alaska, Gyrfalcons in North America are safe from most human disturbance but face challenges from a warming climate. They are rare winter visitors to open habitats in the northern United States.

Photo taken on July 22, 2021, near Longmont, Colorado.

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Tied for 3rd Place in FAA's Bird Photography contest on 8/25/2021

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Descriptive keywords and tags for this image include falcons, gyrfalcons, flying, landing, catching, hunting, young, dark morph, black, chocolate, brown, female, falconer, falco rusticolus, falco, falconidae, raptors, birds of prey, predators, bird of prey, captive, lure, training, practice, captive gyrfalcon, colorado, birds, dressler, and judi dressler.

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July 23rd, 2021

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