International Raptor & Falconry Center

05/14/2026

Happy Birthday to the best vulture ever! ❤️🖤
Druantia turns 3- years old. Kidnapped as a baby in Nebraska, and after the people realized they didn’t want a pet vulture (and it’s illegal) they turned her over to a rehabilitation facility. Once at the Raptor Conservation Alliance they determined she was imprinted and deemed nonreleasable.
She joined the IRFC Flying Team in April 2024 and has been an absolute superstar since. She has educated thousands about how vital vultures are and changed their perception. Generally the first thing people say when they see her up close is; “she’s beautiful!” She is beautiful! ❤️🖤

Happy Birthday to Druantia, Queen of the Druids!

05/12/2026

I was wondering when I would see one. I generally see 3-4 a summer on the property. I usually find them because I nearly step on it.
It’s great when they show up because I will have a ton of gophers tearing up stuff and creating sinkholes in the mews and eat up all my pea gravel. And then I don’t.

This is one of the main reasons my mews are built now to have floors; to preserve heat and prevent a route for gophers snakes to come in. Even though I have predator wire buried three feet out and up into the walls, it doesn’t stop gophers and the snakes that follow them. All my mews have buried wire across the entire flooring for the reason.
These are not venomous and I prefer to have them on the property, just not in with the birds.
This one seemed to be good sized but I’ve had a couple much bigger. And when I lived in Sedona, about 15 years ago there was one so big that for a split second I thought someone’s pet python had gotten loose. It was huge!

05/10/2026

I need to update everyone’s videos. So much has happened in 6 years. This is when I first started learning to make videos.

I miss the version of Coral in this video. West Nile Virus sucks!

Coral is not a real public member of the IRFC Flying Team but she does some events. She was actually the original team member when I started IRFC. She carrie...

05/02/2026

Last Saturday, we did the Stem Celebration for Flagstaff. It was extremely windy and cold, making it very difficult to do our usual outreach. However, I did manage to find a corner in the building to hold Moira out for a couple of hours. There were about 1000 people present.
She did awesome. I actually think she enjoyed it a bit from her usual routine.
🤎🦅 Very early on, a native man offered to do a prayer for her. For the next full five minutes, he chanted in his native language and became so moved by her mere presence that he began to sob. Being from Northern Arizona, this isn’t uncommon. Most of my birds have been blessed by the natives. However, I will say this is the first time one of my birds brought someone to sobbing tears. I just absolutely loved that for her; I love that her mere presence and doing nothing else, just present as herself would bring a person to sobbing tears. It was awesome.

These are the only four photos that documented that day because I am terrible about getting photos. So I am very grateful that Greg Vaughan, an astrogeologist from the USGS, who I also served on the board of Flagstaff Festival of Science, was there to take these photos. He was doing an activity using an infrared camera, and this is what Moira looks like in an infrared camera.
It just goes to show how effective feathers are at buffering/insulating heat. The only hotspots in these photos are where her skin is exposed; her feet and her face.

I was shocked at the number of people that asked to pet her. I usually get a few, but this was a lot of people asking to pet a Bald Eagle. My response was I don’t even pet her. That beak is made for shredding up fish and I need my finger.

Until next 2027!

05/01/2026

Happy Birthday to the OG of IRFC! Coral turns 15 years old today!
She is quite the Harris Hawk that has lived quite the life.
Born at ICBP in UK, failed miserably to join the flying team due to a severe personality disorder. Came home to her native land and was a slaying machine all over the USA. Squirrels in New England to jackrabbit in Colorado and cottontail in Arizona.
Was IRFC’s first Flying Team member until the other birds arrived. Still managed to educate thousands.
Heartbroken when she lost her beloved Kieran in 2018. She absolutely adores Bridger. Bridger seems indifferent.
Permanently retired 2023 due to after effects from her 2017 bout with West Nile Virus.

I really miss flying this beast. This week she will move into her retirement home and spend her remaining days being Coral.
Happy Birthday Coral!

04/28/2026

Here’s a three minute clip of the two hour program that we did in Sedona on Earth Day.
During this program, I connected the crossroads of the history of Earth Day, the creation of the Endangered Species Act and falconers’ role in saving a species from extinction.
This is the part of the program where I’m defining falconry. And I’m using a video of Bridger catching a jackrabbit to show the audience what Falconry really looks like I used to keep this part of our culture a bit more secretive in the past; however, things left in secret are left to ignorant interpretations. We need to be proud of falconers and our role in saving raptors then and today.

I brought a species that is an endangered species, in Enedina, Saker falcon. I brought a species that was submitted to listed twice, but rejected and, could possibly need protection either now or in the future, Quinn, Dark-morph Ferruginous Hawk. I brought a species that was recovered after being placed on the ESA, which was Moira a Bald Eagle. Of course, all three girls did great and everybody was very impressed with all three of them.

Looking forward to doing our next program on June 20 at the Sedona International Film Festival Theatres. By request, It will be all about Eagles not just our two species, but eagle species around the world.

04/28/2026

Aylen, our sweet, shy, female American Kestrel, laid an egg yesterday! At nine years old in the wild, she would’ve probably been long dead by age 9. The mortality for these little predators is very high. They generally don’t live past three or four years old. A six-year-old kestrel is pretty old in the wild. This little girl is nine!
Last year she laid six eggs. They are not fertile because she doesn’t have a husband. But listening to Lennox, be hormonal and trying to flirt with me put her into breeding condition and therefore, she lays eggs.

Fun facts.👇🏻

These tiny falcons don’t build nests.
They use holes in trees or nest boxes; they’re secondary cavity nesters.

They lay 3–7 eggs
Mom keeps them warm
Dad brings the food, (insects, small mammals, birds and reptiles)
Babies - from hatched to fledged = about 4-6 weeks.

Kestrels need old trees to nest. Keep that in mind when you want to “tidy up the forest”. Although they don’t live in forest; still keep it in mind when you cut down old growth, vegetation especially during nesting season.
When those trees are gone, they struggle.

Nest boxes can help them survive. If you live in kestrel habitat, which is wide-open grasslands and fields, consider putting up a nest box.