Falconry and things

I am typically a one-outing a day kind of a person, but today we had three outings that had us out and about the whole entire day. 

We spent the morning chatting with Rachel while getting ready to head out. She was up late, having been out late with friends. She remarked that since she's been living with my parents over the summer she hasn't had many late nights (which kind of made her miss her roommates and all the fun they'd have together), instead going to bed by 10 PM most nights and then getting up and going to work...and, honestly, while I'm glad she had a fun time out with her friends, she's going to be adhering to a missionary schedule pretty soon so it's not terrible that she's already in the habit of going to bed by 10 PM and getting up early to get the day started. 

It was wonderful to get to speak with Rachel for a bit, even if it was during our own morning rush. I can't believe she'll be starting her mission so soon (just a couple of days now)! But I'm definitely looking forward to only being 4 hours different from her instead of 9. Surely that will make arranging phone calls a little easier. 

Anyway, our first outing this morning was to brunch at the apartment of some people in our ward. They live in the same area that we'll be moving to and they have three little girls all right around Phoebe's age (3, 4, 6). It was fun to get to know them, even if the kids got a little rambunctious—many little bodies running around squealing and laughing in a small apartment with marble floors can be a bit of a recipe for disaster. I was glad when our hosts asked if they should pull out some LEGO (that seemed to calm the kids down significantly).

From brunch, we made our way to Katara for another visit to the S'hail Falcon Exhibition, this time with some friends. Here are Andrew, Phoebe, and Zoë walking towards an art installation by Lorenzo Quinn called "Building Bridges":

It was only unveiled in February of this year, so it's still pretty new! Here's everyone (except for me) posing with a set of hands:

And here's a view looking towards the venue:

Inside, we found a pen of houbara that we hadn't seen when we came earlier. The kids got to take turns offering the houbaras mealworms, lucky ducks!

...or houbaras...

...or kids... 

Someone was lucky, that's all I know!

Here is Phoebe starting on a worksheet about preserving national heritage sites:

All they had to colour with was highlighters, which happens to be one of Phoebe's favourite mediums to work with! She is always stealing highlighters and colouring with them—they're so bright and cheerful! 

We'll have to work through the worksheet tomorrow (it's all in Arabic), but it has different things that you should and should not do to help maintain preservation sites. Taking photographs (yes), graffiti (no) walking on paths (yes), taking rocks (no), throwing away trash (yes), climbing on artifacts (no).

This booth was actually pretty confusing for us because they had these tables with artifacts that looked like they might be for touching but then the signs seemed to say no touching allowed.

When we were here earlier in the week, Andrew started to take Phoebe over to this station and then was like, "Oh, never mind. You can't touch anything." I don't think he was even close enough to read the signs—he just assumed from the hand and the big NO sign that touching wouldn't be allowed.

I mean, we're fine with no touching and understand that not everything can be touched...but when you have a table accessible to a four-year-old that the four-year-old isn't supposed to touch we're going to steer clear of the table because not touching becomes easier with decreased proximity. 

However, today the people at the booth were like, "Come, come!" and let the children mess with everything.

Turns out the signs were just general advice for visiting historical preservation areas and not rules for that particular exhibit (Benjamin was like, "Why 'no guns'? Who here has a gun?!" And that's a fair question...except that we were kind of at a gun show...and a knife show...and a falcon show...but the sign really just asks you to not shoot at the signs and has little to do with the actual booth beyond educating you about expectations at historic preserves).

These artifacts, however, were meant for children to explore with all their senses, though the informational signs left a bit to be desired. It just said, "We can learn a lot about life in the stone age..." but doesn't actually tell us anything to learn about the stone age. But it was neat to see the artifacts anyway.

In addition to guns and knives and falcons (and cars and campers and things like that), there were a lot of artists at work. Getting portraits made with yourself and your falcon seems to be a common thing here, at least amongst falcon enthusiasts. So we could see artists at work on various portraits of falcons or people with falcons (using photos as a reference, I assume, because there weren't a bunch of people standings around posing for these pictures). Most were ultra realistic, such as the eagle with the yellow background (below), but we also enjoyed spotting this more cartoon-style painting with the reddish background (below):

For an example of a portrait, here is a life-sized portrait of a man with a hawk that adorns our bedroom wall (children for size reference) for your viewing pleasure:

Entering the vendor's tent (I don't know if that's what it was truly, but it seems to be the case), we saw a number of falcons for sale (rather than the super valuable falcons up for auction in the first tent). This falcon, below, kept trying to fly away and then falling when its foot strap yanked it back down to earth, the poor thing. 

Other falcons would stretch their wings and flap, occasionally, but we only saw that one falcon repeatedly try to fly. 

The falcons all wear these hoods to dull their senses and help keep them calm, but I don't think that always works. 



Here are the little kids taking a turn holding a falcon again:

Here's Nomas, who was captured as a juvenile in Egypt in 1997. Falcons are typically taken from the wild after they've learned to fly, but are still within their first year of life—their plumage will tell a discerning falconer whether they are a mature bird or whether they are still a juvenile. This is preferred because many juvenile falcons die in the wild within their first year of life anyway (30 to 70%, depending on whose estimate), so "taking of juvenile hawks by falconers has no noticeable effect on raptor populations." Mature birds (haggards—I'm feeling that label) are harder to train and remove breeding birds from the population, so they are typically left in the wild. 

So is it a harmless industry? I don't know. The wikipedia article sounds rather apologetic (there are regulations in place regarding the capture of falcons so not too many are removed from the wild! it saves many birds from otherwise near certain death!), but the demand for these birds is huge and the desperation to fulfill this demand (and other demands associated with the industry) can sometimes lead to...issues (such as British peregrine falcon nests being raided or falcon trapping in reserve lands or the smuggling of endangered Houbara birds or illegal trafficking of birds of prey or not having proper licensing or overhunting or...any number of things). Clearly there are still many concerns surrounding the industry. 

But can I just say, this opening line from an article really shook me: "Some 74 falcons were taken from a member of the Qatari royal family this week..." (this was from 2011). 74 falcons owned by a single person! Not only is that just...a lot of birds...do you know how much these birds go for? Here's an auction form for Falcon #32 (taken by my friend Nandini). The top bid for this bird was 250,000 QAR (which is over 68,000 USD) at the time this picture was taken (I do not know what the top bid ended up being).

If we assume this royal spent, say $65,000 for each bird in their...mew (I don't know what a group of falcons is called, but I do know that they're kept in mews)...that racks up a grand total of $4,875,000! 

Five million dollar's worth of falcons!!?!

I don't have five million dollar's worth of anything...

All this to say...the falconry industry in the Gulf is huge. 

Anyway, here are the kids gathered around the sweetest, most patient little hunting dog:

And here's Phoebe admiring this squirming mound of puppies that Phoebe adored—"they're in a literal doggy pile!"

We watched some pretty wild footage of some hunting dogs taking down a gazelle of sorts, so as sweet as these puppies look...they can also absolutely take down a gazelle. 

Let's see...here's a falcon showing off its wingspan:

And here's this falcon going sort of wild while being fed:

This man was literally stuffing bits of raw meat down this falcon's throat (which felt incredibly brave to me because I'm pretty sure that beak is sharp...but evidently would lack the force needed to, say, bite off a finger. Now, could it take a chunk out of your finger, absolutely, but it wouldn't likely be able to crunch through your bones—isn't that comforting?). Oh, also, did you know that falcons are more closely related to parrots than they are to hawks or eagles?

Anyway, while this man was stuffing chunks of chicken down this falcon's throat, the falcon kept seemingly throwing itself backwards and then was unable to right itself on its own. I'm not sure what was happening, but it sure looked like fun...

Phoebe decided to give it a try!

I can't remember why she was pouting here. I think she was telling us that she was feeling cold. The air conditioning in this venue was...arctic. I don't know whether that was for the people or for the birds, but it was intense. Phoebe probably would have been more comfortable in pants, but she wore shorts (she's a little kid so she can still get away with that—they did ask at registration whether anyone was wearing shorts, and no one was...except for Phoebe...but they said that "babies are okay" so we Phoebe still got to come inside).

Right before we left, we found this owl standing outside a veterinary booth (the first time we came we saw an active surgery at a veterinary booth)! Alexander wasn't with us at the moment (he was off looking at the $500,000 komodo dragon piece with his friends), but we texted them and asked them to come over because we knew Alexander would want to see it!

The veterinarian said that the kids could pet it, but that sure was making me nervous because the owl was occasionally snapping at kids. But...Alexander did get to stroke it a few times, which he was rather excited about.

Here's a rather blurry picture of something Zoë wrote and wanted me to share (so she sent me the picture from her phone):

It says:

PHOEBE ATA HIS

FCRE ME
SO FOLIS

ME

FOT SOT NOT A P

OPE

ME MT TO iKEA

Or, roughly translated (and keeping in mind that she's currently confusing W and M, and apparently she was worried the dogs/puppies wouldn't be there...but they were!):

Phoebe Alta Heiss
Falconry we

saw falcons

We thought there was not a p

uppy

We went to IKEA

And that's true. From the falconry festival we split up a bit, sending Benjamin, Zoë, and Alexander home with our friends, while Miriam, Phoebe, Andrew and I went to IKEA to take a look at a few things we've been thinking of getting for the apartment we need to furnish. 

There are some good deals on used furniture online...but we don't quite yet have the means of getting that used furniture, unfortunately. IKEA will deliver...ya ken? But we can't go pick up furniture without a car (and Uber's not going to want to do that either). 

So we went to look at a few things. 

Unfortunately many things are out of stock right now. While life is more or less normal, supply chains are a little...sluggish...with The Straight being...the way that it is. But we'll...figure things out.