Youngsters delighted by feathered friends
By: Hilary Parker
It’s not unusual for children to fall in love with Jean Craighead George’s "My Side of the Mountain" the tale of Sam Gribley, a runaway who lives in the Catskill Mountains with his peregrine falcon.
Some of them even think Sam’s life would be a dream come true.
For Jonathan Wood, it is.
Now the director of the Raptor Project, Mr. Wood and his family (both human and avian) rolled into the Princeton Junior School parking lot in their custom motor home on Tuesday night in time to deliver a fast-paced, high-flying program to students, teachers and parents at the school on Wednesday morning.
"Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for take-off," Mr. Wood told the children, who stared wide-eyed as he retrieved "Uncle Sam," a bald eagle, from an American flag-draped crate and settled "King David," a prairie falcon who has more than earned his name by fighting off hawks many times his size on numerous occasions. Like "King David," the majority of the eagles, hawks, falcons and owls in Mr. Wood’s educational programs have survived injury or disability, and many of them can no longer survive in the wild. "Uncle Sam" himself was hit by a truck while feasting on roadkill, an accident that left him unable to fly and missing a large portion of his left wing.
"He’s very conservative," Mr. Wood said, with a wink and a smile, "A right-winger, of course."
As dedicated as he is humorous after showing how placing a leather cap over a hawk’s head could trick, or "hoodwink," him into calming down, he told parents and teachers the hoods come in kids’ sizes, too Mr. Wood is serious about his mission and the information he shares in the nearly 1,000 programs he offers each year.
The history of falconry, an explanation of the etymology of "bald eagle" (from the Old English "balde," meaning "white") and a discussion of DDT’s devastating effects on the peregrine falcon population were just part of the captivating presentation, offered in portion-sized allotments to the audience alongside the bits of ground meat Mr. Wood tossed to the birds. Children and adults alike exclaimed in awe as the birds of prey flew from perch to Mr. Wood’s raised arm. From the intense expressions on their faces, it was obvious that a dedication to protecting the giant predators was taking wing along with the raptors themselves.
Mr. Wood, a federally licensed master falconer, has been working with birds since reading "My Side of the Mountain" at age 12, and even convinced his high school teachers in Long Island, N.Y., to allow him to graduate a year early to build a house in the Catskills, by hand.
He and Ms. Craighead George are now good friends, and he appears in one of her later books. When he’s not traveling the country offering programs or spending time on movie sets with his birds, he still lives in that same house, along with his wife, Susan, and their daughter, Rachel.
Dressed in a camouflage skirt and vest, her arm protected by a leather gauntlet, 6-year-old Rachel carried "Safari," an African Lanner falcon that grew up alongside the little girl, through the audience. She wasn’t the only child to get up close and personal with the birds. Sarah, a fifth-grader, volunteered to feed "Uncle Sam" a chicken drumstick (he went for a small piece of steak instead) and one hawk landed right in the middle of the audience. An owl that made for the rafters overhead added even more excitement.
While many of his birds hail from faraway lands, Mr. Wood got the children excited about birds close to home, too. Pointing out that peregrine falcons are now found nesting in Jersey City and Atlantic City, and that not-too-distant Cape May is "the No. 1 birding hot spot in the United States," Mr. Wood told them that the forests and skies of central New Jersey are filled with treasures for budding ornithologists (and they knew what that meant he managed to slip in a vocabulary lesson).
"You live in a wonderful place to study birds," he said.

