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We drove down to San Diego and are staying with Andrea, a fellow falconer. So here are all the birds perched out in Andrea’s yard. |
| Registration on Sunday at the Manchester Hyatt in San Diego. I did an on-site registration for Diane, and it took over an hour of standing in line. The picture shows the advance registration counter. |
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Don Carder and Ann Bowles at the icebreaker event at Sea World. |
| A killer whale slides out as it would for medical exam, sample collection, or artificial insemination. |
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There’s a killer whale performing a behavior, having taken the behavior cue from the image on the display screen. Note the woman in the lower part of the frame. It’s her image on the display screen. |
| A trainer slides off a killer whale moving into the slide-out area. |
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A trainer and killer whale perform an acrobatic maneuver in front of the display screen. |
When I was a child I wanted to be a Falconer so very badly. I was very avid when it came to creating paper airplanes and I read a lot about birds while at the depths of that obsession. When I started to learn about falcons, my airplanes improved and I fell in love. Probably for the best that my parents felt that falcons might take a lot more responsability than I was exhibiting at that point and they were just too expensive, but I do occasionaly wonder what it would have been like to become so very close to such a noble creature.
An aside, when my 3yr old son and I met Shamu at Sea World we were down front before the show and when Shamu popped her head out of the tank withing inches of our faces – my son said “hi” and waved – Shamu replied by spitting water into our faces. My greatest joy is that no camera caught it – I have the look on his face etched into my memory, for me alone. . .