Our kids were visiting friends in Seattle, leaving us free for a week and a half. We decided to visit the Utah Shakespeare Festival for a weekend in July. There were several good plays (Shakespeare or not) to see this year. We decided on an evening performance on Henry IV, Part 1 in the outdoor theater. The play is pretty heavy, but it was well done. The comedy relief, keeping the play from being too ponderous, involved Sir Henry Falstaff and his henchmen. All parties did very well; the play was well performed and well received. The preliminary time on the green was fun too. Maybe the worst part of the trip was our choice of motels.
Instead of sleeping in, we chose to rise early to go on the falconry tour. We had seen the falconer on a previous visit. He does several presentations a week at the greenshow. His stories of how he became licensed to capture a golden eagle to train to hunting with humans is hilarious. The eagle swoops by the crowd after its lure during the performance. He also has a Harris hawk and a prairie falcon he hunts and competes with. He is a very good speaker.
You meet at the fountain in front of the theaters early in the morning and board a Southern Utah University van for the trip out to the field. He has a portable roost that the bird sits on during the drive. This time he had a 3 month old prairie falcon. It was very loud, crying continually. He keeps the falcons for two years or less before releasing them. Since the Harris hawk is not native to Utah, he keeps this bird permanently. He is keeping the eagle until it decides that it does not want to come back to him. We went out past the city. We slowed near a stand of cottonwoods where bald eagles roost in the winter. Finally, we reached the turnoff for the Parowan Gap road (a dirt road).
We all left the car and watched the falcon do a few training runs. It was just learning and didn't do very well, but it got better over time. The falconer regaled us with stories of previous birds and compared this bird with them. Then we continued up the gap road. We stopped just before the gap, got out, and looked at a golden eagle's nest through binoculars and a spotting scope.
From there we continued to the gap. There are a number of panels of petroglyphs in the gap, as well as markings by members of the Escalante expedition in the 1600's. It has been determined that one of the petroglyphs, the one shaped like a harp, was an astronomical observatory. The shadow and light pattern hits the edges of the "harp wings" at the ends at the equinoxes. There are also tick marks counting the days between the equinoxes. This is apparently unique for Anasazi observatories. No other one has the tick marks. On the other side of the road we spotted a large hawk's nest and red tailed hawk (not in the nest).
We crossed back into the valley, going after other hawks nest. After a 15 minute, bouncy drive, we got out and found a red tailed hawk's nest. It covered almost half of the top of a juniper tree. Apparently, a man could stand on it and it would not break. The nest was empty. On the way back into town, we stopped near a farmhouse surrounded by cottonwood trees. High in the tree was a Swainson's hawk nest. The parents were busy feeding the chicks.
After a quick lunch, we went back to the theater (indoors this time) for a rousing performance of Comedy of Errors. The actors all did very well & the music (created for this version of the play) was pretty funny. Since we had responsibilities (a 70th birthday party) back in Las Vegas that evening, we had to cut short the time and Cedar City, which didn't give us much time to unwind. Next year's plays are good and the trip will not be as short. But we will see the falconer again!
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