Bird man of KC

In the last month or so, I’ve gotten an earful of successful turkey hunts.
You know the routine – tales of double beards, albino jakes, inch-and-half spurs, 25-pounders, bearded hens.
But although fewer birds have been killed than in the last two seasons, more than 35,000 have been taken – and that’s without this weekend’s take recorded yet.
That’s a lot of drumsticks.
Rightfully so, many of my friends have been doing an iStrut of late.
Joe DeBold, the quintessential young outdoorsman who has the office next to mine at the Discovery Center, bagged his trophy early. Of course.
And although he wasn’t specific, my suspicion is that his kill would not only have fed his family, but the surrounding neighbors in his hometown. Joe D hunts big.
But no, it hasn’t been this year’s tom that DeBold has been braggin’ up. In fact, it’s nothing that he has killed to put up on his mantle, but something he’s been helping live and thrive.
Joe has not been stopping me in the halls to show me the photos of his turkey kill, but his new peregrine families.
At 29, single and strapping, Joe is one of the most eligible bachelors in western Missouri, but you’d think he was a brand new papa showing off snapshots of his first born when he gushes over his falcon chicks.
As an urban wildlife biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation in the Kansas City Region, one of Joe’s assignments is keeping watch on the cosmopolitan bird of prey – sometimes known as the “Duck Hawk.”
Hopefully, you are aware of the noteworthy comeback of this raptor, the fastest animal on earth when it goes into a dive in search of lunch. Over the last two decades, its return to our area has been well documented and celebrated. Falcons have set up shop on the Plaza, Commerce Towers downtown and the Hawthorn power plant on the Missouri River.
And they’re back this spring hatching new chicks. Joe’s got the pictures to prove it, although, I’m sorry to say, is not passing out any cigars.
But he and the biologists, who came before him along with the corporate sponsors like Commerce, KCPL and the Stowers family should take a well-deserved bow for what is now an obvious, established population.
“The female was on the eggs when I checked (at Commerce Towers) on April 4th, and the eggs were hatching yesterday – May 5 at 11:45 A.M.,” he told me early this week.
A couple days later he recorded the fuzzy, little birdbrains in their nest. Then later that day he got a spectacular shot of mom perched above her eggs at the Hawthorn site.
So what’s so special about this bird, generally no bigger than the size of a crow? Plenty.
The peregrine became an endangered species because of the common use of pesticides in the 1950s. DDT interfered with reproduction, thinning eggshells and reducing the number of eggs that survived to hatching. In several spots, the eastern U.S. and Belgium, the falcons actually became extinct and, in turn, creating a black market for the eggs.
Peregrines have a poetic heritage as well as a modern-day usefulness. For more than 3,000 years they have been the grand component of falconry because of their ability to dive at high speeds. Today, cities and airports especially welcome them because they do such a great job of scaring or reducing the population of other birds, namely the messy pigeon.
By the way, the peregrine was removed from the endangered list on August 25, 1999.
And, of course, the really good news is that it’s not just the Midwest where these noble birds are thriving, but throughout the world. Today, they’re spotted in London, Brisbane and wherever there is a cathedral, skyscraper or window ledge. In the Big Apple, for instance, biologists recorded 18 pairs nested in the concrete canyons.
Now that’s something to gobble about, Joe D.