Speaking for the wild

Monteen McCord and Artemis, an African red-tailed hawk.

Name: Monteen McCord
Age: 51
Home: Holly Springs, Ga.
Career: Raptor rehabilitator, educator and falconer. Founder and executive director of HawkTalk.org -- Speaking for the Wild

It's daybreak -- rise and shine! Time to cut up some thawed mice and tend to the American kestrel in the living room. A new patient, he has a broken wing but seems to be eating well.

Meanwhile, a dawn chorus of hoots, clicks and screams are a gentle reminder that, outside in the enclosures, eleven more hawks and owls need food and varying degrees of attention.

Back in the house, there's barely time to wash the mouse tails down the disposal when the phone rings: another raptor needs help. This one, a red-tailed hawk, was struck by a car and left to die on the roadside, wrapped in a T-shirt. Drive time is two hours each way, assuming the bird can be found. Maybe a local vet can intervene. More phone calls.

There's always another bird in need, and time, money and support are often in short supply. This is the life Monteen McCord would not trade for anything.

Monteen McCord is a federally licensed raptor rehabilitator and falconer. She takes in injured birds, treats them medically, and returns them to the wild if possible. As the executive director of the nonprofit HawkTalk.org -- Speaking for the Wild (HawkTalk.org ), she's also a full-time educator, traveling (mostly to schools) with a collection of non-releasable raptors to present programs on birds of prey, how they live, and how humans impact their world.

McCord spoke with Eons in a recent interview.

How did you first connect with birds of prey?

I was trained as a scrub nurse and worked for a while for a plastic surgeon. His patients were mostly middle-aged women who weren't happy with themselves -- and I was pretty miserable working there, too. I decided I wanted to work with animals and used my clinical skills to get a job with a veterinarian who (unbeknownst to me) had a rehab permit. This was in 1983. One day I walked in and there was this great horned owl in our surgery. It was an immediate epiphany -- like a light from heaven! And I knew beyond doubt this was something I was meant to do.

I've never looked back. I apprenticed with that vet for about two years years until I qualified for my own raptor rehabilitation permit. Then I went on to get a falconry license because those skills are so helpful in the rehab process. For example, if I'm rehabilitating a first-year bird that is suitable for falconry work, I can train and fly it to actually see that it can maneuver and take game before releasing it back to the wild.

Please say a bit more about your falconry training.

There are three levels of falconry training. You spend the first two years at the "apprentice" level with a general or master class sponsor. You then spend five more years at the "general" level. At the end of that period you can apply for a "master" level license, which I have. As you progress through the seven years of training from apprentice up to master, you are permitted to acquire more birds and to hunt with different and/or more challenging species. A red-tailed hawk is considered easier to work with than a northern goshawk, for example.

What's your relationship with the birds like?

There are really two aspects to it: the falconry and the educational work. Being an intimate part of that predator/prey relationship has a magical quality for me as a falconer. It's very spiritual. Falconry is the most ancient of sports and I believe it's the last "true" sport. When you walk into the woods to hunt with a red-tailed hawk, the squirrels have as much chance of getting away as the hawk does of catching them. It's a level playing field, a question of who's faster, smarter, more determined. Does a deer have that same chance against a hunter sitting in a tree stand with a high-powered rifle? If a deer hunter could chase that deer down with a knife and stab it to death, now that would be sporting!

With the birds I use for my programs, there's a bond of trust that comes from working together. Each bird has a different 'personality" and I relate to them as individuals. They're not pets by any means, but I do let a few of them hang out with me in the house and watch TV sometimes. Like horses, they pick up on peoples' emotions. They're very sensitive and aware, but their psychology is nothing like ours.

How do your birds come to you?

Some come from veterinarians or other rehabbers. For example, I just took in a red-tailed hawk the other day that forgot to look both ways before crossing the street and was hit by a car. A vet at the University of Georgia patched him up -- literally. They used epoxy to reconstruct his cracked beak, but the tip broke off, so now he can't tear food and can't be returned to the wild, at least for a few months. If it doesn't grow back correctly, we'll see whether he has a future as one of my business partners.

But most of my birds come from Good Samaritans who have found an injured or orphaned hawk or owl. Either they've heard of me through my HawkTalk.org programs, or they Googled "raptor rehabilitation" and located me on the Internet. I get calls like that all the time, you just never know.

A lot of my birds are hit by cars. People throw food out car windows, which attracts rodents, which attract raptors. Others get shot or trapped, which is illegal but still happens. Some have lead poisoning from ingesting lead shot, or some other kind of chemical poisoning. In the spring, I get youngsters abandoned by their parents when somebody starts demolishing an old farm building or clearing land for development. I just released a barn owl the other day that came to me that way. The human-dominated world is not an easy place for raptors to live.

What's it like being among the few women who are falconers?

Sometimes I wonder whether it's possible for an attractive, outspoken woman to be taken seriously in any profession in this country. But actually my gender is less of an issue for me than you might think, because I'm not involved in the social intercourse of my profession very much. I'm a strong person and also a loner in many ways: I've been mostly on my own since I was 13. I don't hang out socially with other falconers or wildlife professionals, so their opinions or prejudices don't affect me directly most of the time.

It's interesting, though, for me to be standing at a festival with a hawk on my fist talking to some guy, and another guy will walk up and ask the other man about the bird. Situations like that give me a chance to speak my mind, if I'm in the mood. At the local hardware store they used to call me Rambo because of a couple of verbal altercations I got into with people who I felt were ignorant and disrespectful in their attitudes towards wildlife.

What do you love most about your work?

I have the unique privilege of living and working with incredible animals that most people don't get within 100 feet of their entire lives. Being with the birds, that's what I truly love.