Many can even tell a turkey vulture from a black vulture in flight. But few have seen a vulture running on the ground in their half-skip, half-hop fashion all puffed up like a tom turkey. 
That is just what S.O.A.R.’s black vulture, Cayce, treated the audience to in their birds of prey show at the Sandhill Crane Festival in Birchwood, TN on Saturday. 
Personality plus is a good way to sum up this bird. Imprinted on humans at a very young age after falling out of the nest, she stole the show on Saturday with her amusing antics, as she hissed, hopped, bobbed her head in a dance-like fashion and followed Dale around the floor.
Below you can see the intrique on a few children's faces and her wingspan next to the size of her handler, Dale, as Cayce is about to demonstrate her flight skills. And she does, handsomely, skimming the heads of viewers with her long dangling toes.
Vultures are our scavengers, the birds that help clean up our world. They are intelligent and curious, and as you can see, have personality. I even have a naturalist friend, author Stephen Lyn Bales of Nature Calling, who muses about being a vulture in another life so he can sleep late, ride thermals and play in the wind. 
But there are others who think vultures are unattractive, even ugly. What do you think?Submitted to Bird Photography Weekly #12 at Birdfreak.com to promote the conservation of our world's birds.
This year’s event added greater focus on interactive activities for kids. Along with art projects and face painting, activities included dissecting regurgitated owl pellets! Not so messy as it sounds, the pellets were dry and contain hidden animal bones and skulls that the kids could find like hidden treasure. The activity went over so well, organizers are planning to expand on this theme next year by adding a virtual interactive program.
Dale shows the crowd an American Kestrel.
In his second flying demonstration, the kestrel steals his prey and puts the viewers on edge by landing in the rafters. 
Then he peers down at everyone from his high perch! 
Coaxed down with another treat and signal, he rejoins his handlers and mantels the next food he captures from John's hand. 
Below, John shows the crowd a 
Within 30 minutes, he accomplished his first flight and was out of sight of viewers who waited a short distance away. The day prior to his release, he was fitted with leg bands which will aid in future identification and with a tail-mounted radio transmitter for tracking.
A fledged peregrine falcon remains with his parents for as long as two months, while he learns to hunt. High speed flyers, peregrines primarily feed on birds that they catch in flight or from a perch. But both the strategy and precision of this hunt must be learned.
The radio transmitter allows Dale and John Stokes to monitor Rocky’s progress for the next few weeks so they can assist if something goes wrong. Dale and John obtained Rocky from a falconer in Minnesota for a fee of $600 in order to release him in a process called hacking. The hacking box (see previous post) serves as an artificial nest and fledging home. Raptors are known to imprint on their fledging area and will generally return to that area when it is time to nest and raise their own young. 
Peregrines nest on high bluffs and it is hoped that after adolescent wandering for the next two years, Rocky will return to nest in the Lookout Mountain area.
It was falconers like Dale and John Stokes who alerted the world to the effects of DDT on our raptors and subsequently saved many species from extinction. Peregrine falcon populations plummeted from 1950 to 1970 due to DDT poisoning, but the hacking re-introductions that began in 1970 have restored species numbers. Peregrines were removed from the national endangered list in 1999 but remain on the state endangered list in Georgia and TN.
This is Rocky, a young male peregrine falcon, released this morning on the bluffs of Rock City, near Chattanooga, TN. The door to his hacking box, high on Lookout Mountain, was covered with a sheet and opened before dawn today. The sheet, carefully drawn open as daylight emerged, allows a gentle release so that the falcon can consider his freedom and his first attempts to fly. John and Dale then quietly await his fledging and monitor with telemetry.
Here Dale and John remove Rocky from his hacking box to secure leg bands and telemetry the day before release. More about Rocky and his stewards next post.
