Can you imagine being that bird? You see a big falling dot off in the distance, so you go to investigate. And it’s a human. Just, like, hanging out, in the middle of the sky. Plumbing toward earth at terminal velocity.
“Huh, that’s weird” you think to yourself.
You land on them. They seem nonplussed by their predicament.
But you’re a busy bird, you’ve got places to be. So you just fly off. Good luck, crazy human. Hope you make it.
For my followers who don’t follow bird things- that is not a wild bird, they’re not free falling, and if you haven’t heard of parahawking before ITS YOUR LUCKY DAY because you now have some beautiful videos in your immediate future.
The bird is a vulture (hooded vulture?) trained to fly with paragliders and occasionally fly to the glove for a food reward. Note the anklets on its legs and how it pokes at her hand looking for a reward. She doesn’t look like she’s wearing a falconry glove tho, so it could be someone else’s bird approached her, and that would be a bit of a surprise.
Numerous groups have trained up falconry birds to fly with them, and if you’re looking for good videos The Parahawking Project has a lot of them and does good work for conservation in general and vulture pr. in specific.
If you’re interested in a bird actually flying to a free falling human, falconers have tried that, too, because they’re out to do us all proud. A search on ‘peregrine skydiving’ should get you the BBC clip. I don’t think she ever actually makes it to his hand, but it definitely takes a full stoop to keep up with a skydiver.
Izzie’s tumblr archive 