For Goodness Saker, Pull Up!

Saker Falcon, originally uploaded by http://andrewskelton.net.

Once again, and I don’t know why by now, I’m amazed at what you can buy and, with the aid of the Internet, how readily you can buy it. When trying to corroborate some facts about the Saker Falcon, pictured today, entering the term into google, one of the suggested search terms that it suggested as “Saker Falcon for sale UK” when I had only entered “Saker Falcon”. Google Instant suggests terms that have been frequently entered into the search field, so there must be enough people entering the first term into the search engine to then produce it as a suggestion. I’m also amazed at the price of these birds, I’ve just seen a Gyr/Saker cross for £425 which doesn’t seem much to me – it’s comparable to buying a dog which doesn’t seem right, though I’m not sure why.

The Saker, as you can probably tell by looking at it, is a true falcon and is probably closer to the Lanner falcon than it is to the more recognisable Peregrine which it also resembles. The Saker is, however, a much more clever bird than it’s more famous relative; I remember talking to a bird handler once who said that Peregrines were quite dim, and easily distracted, so much so that they can sometimes forget to come out of a stoop until.. thump… it’s an ex-falcon. Sakers either don’t get distracted as easily, either that or they are intelligent enough to realise that the fact that the ground is getting larger and larger should be of concern enough to change direction.

Have you heard of the term “Peregrination”? It means “To journey or travel from place to place” or “To travel through or over; traverse” – I’m no etymologist but can usually work out the derivation of words.. but there are far better birds that would be used to describe this term – Peregrines tend to stay within a fixed location (thought some do migrate), well the ones in the UK do. Perhaps Ospreytion would be a better term!