Mario Benassi has had a lifelong passion for birds of prey. 'It would be a beautiful day in the fall,' he says. 'And I’d be looking out the window thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what I am I doing in this school. I have a hawk waiting at home for me.’”
A Haines falconer has acquired and trained the bird of his dreams – a gyrfalcon. The large falcons have traditionally been flown by royalty, but recent breeding programs have made them more accessible to the common falconer.“I remember the very first time I thought of being a falconer,” Benassi said. “I saw a guy — I never saw the guy, but I saw his hawk tied on a perch in the backyard. I would go sneak and look, and I wasn’t even supposed to go down the alley. I was 4 years old.
As an adult, Benassi continues to bring birds into schools. He leads a program at the Haines school called Chilkat Forest Investigators, where he teaches a few students about falconry and the natural world. “The first year that she was trapped, she was successful as a trained falconry bird,” Benassi said. “And then the guy for some reason his circumstances didn’t allow him to keep her. And he transferred her to a captive breeding program. And she was in the captive breeding program for almost four years. She didn’t like any of the males that were presented to her.”
He goes out with her and lets her fly away. But she is tied to a leash. The leash is light and won’t allow her to fly more than 300 feet away from him.
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