Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The First Passage Falconry Peregrines Trapped in 35 years!!!!

What Great News!!!!!

Dear NAFA Members,

Sorry to report back so quickly, but as my longtime friend and NAFA's General Counsel, Frank Bond points out, "these are historic moments". After 35 years, it's time to savor this long fought for success and keep the info flowing a bit. I just received an update from Andrew Bullen on the trapping in Virginia. An excerpt from Andrew's message is below.

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Both Shoshana and I trapped tiercel peregrines on Friday September 24th on the Eastern Shore of Virginia ...It appears that Jim Seeger, long time falconer and NAFA member, trapped a falcon on Thursday September 23rd, which may well be the 1st falcon taken since “prohibition”. In any event, the Virginia season is now closed as their allocation of 4 peregrines has been filled. Shoshana and I are really thrilled to have the opportunity to work with such willing partners (they’re real gems!).
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Again, a real milestone in American falconry, and NAFA has been THE DRIVING FORCE behind this success, working diligently to for the past 35 years to allow it to happen.

Based on Andrew's message above, it sounds like congratulations are also in order for NAFA members Shoshana Datlow and Jim Seeger on their successes! I'm sure there is a lot more exciting information will be coming from NAFA members from numerous beaches and fields over the next couple of weeks. Personally I look forward to hearing more details and information about when and where the various passage tundra birds were trapped. To everyone who is out there enjoying this historic moment, whether it's the first or the 36th peregrine, I wish you the best of luck and every success in your quest. Keep those notices coming about your adventures and successes, I love to hear about this stuff!

My friend and NAFA's Central Director, Lance Christensen, told me many months ago that he hopes that we will be able to capture many of these experiences in a special NAFA publication, and I couldn't agree more--we need to celebrate our successes! Passage peregrine trappers, please keep some notes, take some photos and write an article for NAFA. Share your experience with fellow NAFA members.

With my announcement about the success with the passage peregrine take several hours ago, I'm already getting requests from some of our European members, who hope to be able to use NAFA's success in allowing a wild peregrine take of passage birds (as well as eyas birds) in the US as a model to present to their governments to follow. Days like this reinforce my belief that, as an American falconer in 2009, I'm enjoying falconry second to none in the world and perhaps in history!

To all of our NAFA members on six continents around the globe, thank you for your continuing support of NAFA.

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