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A peregrine falcon
swoops past fall
foliage on a late
October day.
WATCHING
THE WANDERER
BY LISA BARIL
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Discovering Peregrines
I was a teenager when I read a National Geographic
article about falconry by John and Frank Craighead,
says Jay.
The article inspired Jay to begin his own search for
peregrines and in 1961, while a senior in high school,
M O N TA N A Q U A R T E R LY
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Even speed demons need a break. This peregrine falcon perches on a fencepost along the Rocky Mountain Front near Choteau.
about the art of falconry. He recalls trapping and skinning skunks as a teenager to save $25 to purchase King
Frederick the IIs classic book, The Art of Falconry,
published in 1250. We stunk up the entire west side of
Livingston for weeks, says Jay. He also learned much
about falconry from John and became an expert himself.
Hes had numerous falcons over the years and now flies
a young female named Ki. Together they hunt pheasants,
ducks, grouse and partridge.
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after more than three decades of use on crops and forests. But
the damage had already been done. Peregrines continued to
decline as the effects of DDT lingered in the environment.
By 1975, the North American population of peregrine
falcons had reached an all-time low. Jay was then teaching high school science in Arlee and, with summers off, he
searched Montanas cliffs for any remaining peregrines. He
says the last pair in Montana bred in the Mission Mountains
in 1979 and, By the early 1980s, I didnt know of a single
active peregrine site in the state. The wanderer was rapidly
soaring towards extinction, but that was a fate biologists, and
falconers like Jay, were unwilling to accept.
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Intrinsic Magnetism
Wild peregrines in Montana began breeding again in
1984. The first pair to nest fledged three young in the
Centennial Valley near the release site Ralph and his
family tended. Jay continued to search for new release
sites, but was thrilled at finding new breeding pairs.
By 1999 all recovery goals established by the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service had been exceeded and the
peregrine was removed from the endangered species list.
The goal for Montana was to establish 20 breeding pairs,
and by 1999 there were 27. The decades of struggle and
effort by Jay, Ralph, and others had finally paid off. Today
there are an estimated 3,000 pairs in North America.
That same year, the site that Jay found as a teenager
in 1961 near Livingston became active again, with peregrines choosing to nest on the very same ledge theyd used
nearly 40 years earlier.
Theres something about those ledges that peregrines
key in on, says Jay. He calls it an intrinsic magnetism.
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