8 February 12 - 18, 2026 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents T hrough clear winter skies, the pere- grine falcon dances above the blackland prairies, 3,000 feet above the ground, arabesquing through the frigid air, waiting on her cue as she circles high over a pond decorated with vibrant green mallards sporting their win- ter plumage. With a sharp yelp from her partner, a well-trained bird dog, the game begins. In seconds, startled by the noise, the flock of ducks makes a slow ascent into the sky, but the falcon, without a sound, rips through the air like a bullet, reaching 200-mph dive speeds in a few blinks and striking a bird mid-air with a talon. The hunt is over. The duck plummets to the ground, land- ing without a squawk, only a hard, lifeless thunk. In the perfect hunt, a fatal blow de- livered to the vertebrae causes instanta- neous death. The falcon gracefully swoops to the ground, ready to feast on the fresh meat. The bird dog will near, and soon after, so will the falconer. When the falconer — the hunter who has trained the bird and the dog to collaborate — lifts a double-lined leather- gloved hand in the air like a perch, the falcon willingly hops onto its owner’s arm. The three, working as a hunting team, will col- lect the kill and return to their suburban North Texas home, ready to serve duck for dinner. It’s a job well done. This process will repeat nearly every day, far outside the city limits, as they visit pond after pond in search of a flock to hunt. It could take hours to find the perfect condi- tions for just minutes of hunting. Some days, the falcon, still wild and undomesticated, will refuse to hunt, simply not hungry enough; other days, there will be no prey. Still, the three trek to the ponds before nightfall, hoping for magic but accepting frequent disappointment. Time is one of the great sacrifices a falconer will make. Hunting is a divisive sport, and falconry involves bloodshed. An animal will die. But falconers, who are first and foremost hunt- ers, consider themselves conservationists too, and place the livelihood of the birds above almost all else. To them, flying a bird of prey (hawk, falcon or eagle) is a privilege, and it’s one that takes years to earn through an arduous process overseen by the state and federal governments and, most sternly, the master falconers who want to keep their sport alive as long as possible. For the few hundred falconers in Texas – with the highest concentration in the state being the Dallas-Fort Worth area – who have gained their wings, falconry is not a hobby; it’s a lifestyle. But it’s worth it to the few and far between who are willing to make the sacrifices required to go hunting with a bird as their weapon. Longwinged Weapons “T hat’s the smallest falcon in the United States – little kestrel,” Mel- ody Thompson said while pointing at a diminutive, blueish bird sitting on the power lines in the countryside far northeast of Dallas in Hunt County. Thompson, her husband, Tony, their bird dog Lima and their peregrine falcon Katniss (named after the expert hunter in the Hun- ger Games series) were scouring the black- land prairie for a good pond with ducks to hunt. Tony is a master falconer, and Melody is one year shy of the final level. They go hunting almost every day. They began falconry together, a saving grace for the couple, as the activity and its hefty time commitment have been known to split up couples, especially among retired men, who are the most common demo- graphic group of new recruits. But for Mel- ody and Tony, neither of whom is retired, falconry keeps them closer, allowing them to bond over their shared lifestyle. “Oh, a red-tail,” Tony says, as a large bird with a fire-colored tail swoops through the sky. Raptors, another word for “birds of prey,” are common, and the Thompsons can iden- tify most of them. The Thompsons captured Katniss in 2021. She’s their 12th bird since they became falconers in 2017, and the only one they’ll hunt with this duck season. Soon enough, they’ll release her back into the wild, as is common practice for modern falconers, or one day, she just won’t return. As unleashed wild animals, hunting birds always have the choice to fly away and never return, and many do. It’s a reality ethical fal- coners accept and don’t try to fight, cutting their losses on the lightweight GPS equip- ment, usually painlessly attached to a fal- con’s ankle. “Most of these birds, if it’s good, can just be released back into the wild, and they will fully acclimate,” Melody says. “The supple- ment treatments or any replacement food do nothing. They can hunt and sustain them- selves fully. But they’ve had medical care. They’ve been treated for parasites. We’ve given them a West Nile vaccine. Someday, eventually, we may be able to vaccinate them for bird flu.” Raptors are not domesticatable, and state laws that require falconers to capture their birds at a specific age (when they’re out of the nest but under a year old) prevent the birds from developing dependencies on their tem- porary owners. Often, birds are released when they reach sexual maturity, as they be- come less compliant and more focused on finding a mate during hunting trips. “The whole purpose is that when we re- turn them to the wild, they’re in better con- dition than when we got them,” Melody says. Baby raptors, on their own, have a high in- fant mortality rate, with 80% dying in the first year of life. Birds that spend time working with a falconer can easily live up to 10 years. But falconers’ only contribution to conserva- tion isn’t bolstering the mating pool; they have been instrumental in the preservation of raptors. In 1999, partnerships with the gov- ernment, biologists and conservationists re- sulted in successfully removing the peregrine, one of the more popular hunting species, from the endangered species list. “There were falconers breeding them,” Melody says. “They were protecting [ba- bies]. They were out counting migration numbers. This wasn’t wildlife rehab groups; it was truly falconers.” Even now, Melody says that commitment to conservation has endured as the crux of the practice. “The whole point of falconry is that we teach the birds new techniques for hunting [and] safer areas to hunt. It’s conservation, and how we can contribute to conservation efforts.” A Century of Bird Laws F alconry wasn’t always so regulated. For a long time, it wasn’t regulated at all. The birds were often mistreated – stolen from their nests far too young, made dependent on humans for food and starved to ensure their return. They were trained to be devoid of their natural instincts and caged in tiny en- closures for their entire lives. Falconers of the past all but clipped their birds’ wings. In the past century, a number of laws and treaties have finely regulated avian posses- sion, ownership, and hunting, and the world of falconry has changed significantly under these laws. The first, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, passed in 1918, banned the pos- session and mass killing of migratory birds without a permit. The move protected 1,100 bird species that migrate between Canada and Mexico during the seasons and intro- duced the first form of registration for fal- coners by accident. Then, in 1976, the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife required each state to im- plement a rigorous process for becoming a falconer, the first law of its kind. Melody jokes that there are more laws concerning birds than human beings; it’s a hyperbolic saying in the falconry community, but it’s not terribly far from the truth. “With falconry being so heavily regu- lated, and there are so few of us, if ▼ Culture Mike Brooks Winging It North Texas falconers keep an ancient tradition and several bird species thriving. BY ALYSSA FIELDS >> p10 Blackland Prairie Raptor manager Cheryl Circo holds an American kestrel named Wilbur.
