"A city in Spain plans to exile 5,000 pigeons. Will they stay away?" by Raphael Minder New York Times December 08, 2018
MADRID — The exile solution to pigeon overcrowding is being presented as a more animal-friendly approach than that taken in other places, where pigeons are treated like flying rats to be culled or fed contraceptive pills that may also be consumed by other species.
Horeca, a regional federation of hoteliers, argued that pigeon excrement presents a health risk for waiters and other employees who have to clean pigeon-occupied dining and drinking areas.
“Nobody here has anything against pigeons or other animals, but something must be done when they proliferate to the point of presenting a health risk,” said Antonio De María Ceballos, a restaurant owner and the president of Horeca.
“Of course,” he added, “we want to avoid losing some revenues from tourists, but this issue is really about whether we believe it is important to keep Cádiz’s image as a clean and healthy city.”
Álvaro de la Fuente, the city official in charge of environmental policy, argued in a statement that fighting pigeon overpopulation can also helped avoid the spread of “other plagues like rodents.”
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Related:
"Teenage hunter wields ancient, living weapon" by Hannah Reyes Morales New York Times December 22, 2018
BAYAN-OLGII, Mongolia —The training of the birds starts soon after an eaglet is captured from the nest, often after a hunter has made a rugged climb up a cliff. The resulting relationship between hunter and eagle is close and lasts years; some last more than a decade, with a few hunters even talking about the eagle as if it were their child.
Hunters will often sing to their eagles to get them used to their voice.
Female eagles, larger and stronger than males, are used almost exclusively in the hunt. Once grown to about 15 pounds, the eagles ride with their hunters on horseback into the mountains, where they are released to scan the landscape for prey, typically foxes and rabbits, but wolves are the true prize, even if the hunters fear for their birds’ safety when they go in for the dangerous, and brutal, kill.
Eagle hunting almost vanished in the last century. It was kept alive by the Altai Kazakhs in western Mongolia in Bayan-Olgii province, where at least 400 ethnic Kazakhs have formally registered as eagle hunters.
The province is the only one in Mongolia that is majority Kazakh, and majority Muslim.
Now, for perhaps for the first time in its history, the art, and its essential role in Altai Kazakh culture, is being shared with outsiders.
Hunters come together for the Golden Eagle Festival to compete in a two-day gathering open to tourists.
A popular 2016 documentary film about Aisholpan, a young eagle huntress who won the festival’s hunting competition in 2014, helped bring the Altai Kazakh culture to international attention.
Just gathering the hunters together is a logistical feat, since many are pastoral nomads, some without cellphones or a fixed mailing address. Many will arrive on horseback, clopping down dirt roads clad in wolfskin and fox fur.
During the festival, Soviet-era vehicles dot the steppe, with local vendors selling tapestries depicting Kazakh life, leather-bound books with Mongolian sayings and intricate bottles for Mongolian snuff. Children sit on the ground, playing games with shagai, sheep knuckle bones.
The number of foreign tourists coming to the festival is growing, with a record of more than 1,000 this year, according to government officials.
This year, 120 eagle hunters took part: From the top of a mountain, the eagle is released as its hunter waits on horseback in a makeshift arena set up at the mountain’s foot.
The goal is to have the bird meet its hunter within a targeted area some 20 yards wide. To prod the eagle, the hunter holds aloft a piece of meat, and makes a loud cry for the bird.
A reunion within the target area is no given: This year, just 18 eagles made it. For each successful convergence between hunter and eagle, gasps and cheers of awe erupted across the steppe.
The winning eagle is chosen after a second round, judged on how they hunt a mammal carcass tied to a galloping horse.
Some scholars worry that the festival presents eagle hunting as performance rather than showing it in its cultural context, as a search for fur and food, but many eagle hunters see the festival as a way to celebrate their heritage.
Asker, the father of another young hunter, said he welcomed outsiders and enjoyed the attention of photographers from around the world, but for Altai Kazakh youth, in a time of smartphones, photographs are just another fact of life, like wolfskin, eagles, and gers.....
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The eagle was let go.
