furtech: (frogs)
furtech ([personal profile] furtech) wrote2008-08-04 01:48 pm

Two neat sites! Falconry and Typesetting

Two totally unrelated things I thought I'd share:

I found this neat site on falconry while googling something totally unrelated. It's a falconry/hawking blog. Fantastic photos of birds of prey! I love his Harris' hawks!
[EDIT: FYI, the link goes to a particularly falconry-heavy month of blogging...most of the recent blogs are reporting about the anti-evolutionary movement (they're against it) The second link is a nice site about falconry, with a good gallery]

The Austringer

Falconry


I forget who linked to this, but I find it fascinating and hilarious, in a typesetting-geek kind of way. What -does- the handwriting of people who design type fonts look like?

Font designers' handwriting

[identity profile] okojosan.livejournal.com 2008-08-04 10:05 pm (UTC)(link)
Neat falconry sites! I bookmarked those. I have a book on falconry (in case I ever want to write about it) but I think if I were ever going to devote massive amounts of time to an animal it would probably be a horse instead of a bird of prey. Or, I need someone to hire me to live on their estate and do falconry from horseback. Voila!

[identity profile] furtech.livejournal.com 2008-08-05 07:10 am (UTC)(link)
Before I went to college I was apprenticed to a Master Falconer for two years. I never did get my "starter" bird (apprentices are limited to a kestrel or a redtail), but it was neat working with him (he bred peregrines). I even had an allergy serum made from hawk feathers to take care of my allergies.

The best thing about apprenticing is that you find out where the annual California Falconry Club has its annual meet! Always held on the first day of dove hunting season!

[identity profile] mognetcentral.livejournal.com 2008-08-04 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
The typography link is cool, thanks!

Passed the falconry links onto my bird-watching friend.

[identity profile] nesting.livejournal.com 2008-08-04 11:46 pm (UTC)(link)
What a cool blog! one of my best buddies up here is a falconer. He has one of the only peruvian harris hawks in the country. His name is Agave!

[identity profile] furtech.livejournal.com 2008-08-05 07:12 am (UTC)(link)
I love Harris hawks! They're almost like dogs-- the "wolves" of the sky. Watching them do cooperative hunting is just amazing.

Are there any visible differences between Peruvian Harris hawks and the ones typically found in the SW US?

[identity profile] nesting.livejournal.com 2008-08-05 09:10 am (UTC)(link)
I honestly don't know the birds well enough to be able to tell the difference.
Here's a video of Agave I just remembered - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIxbZdEmnCE

[identity profile] furtech.livejournal.com 2008-08-06 06:32 pm (UTC)(link)
Wow-- I'm stunned! The Peruvian Harris' hawk looks -very- different from their SW-US cousins! The Harris' here and in Mexico are very dark-- a nearly solid chocolate-colored back with bright rust shoulders. The Peruvian version looks more like a Coopers hawk with a lot of barring and a lighter brown. Thanks!