An hour out of Boise, the canyon of the Snake River is a wild, windy escarpment of volcanic basalts, with fast moving clouds creating ever-changing shadow patterns over the distant Owyhee Mountains.
Clouds are not the only rapidly moving objects in the sky. Two red-tailed hawks perform a courtship sky dance, doing aerial loops and on occasion locking talons.A prairie falcon circles lazily above the canyon rim, then shoots to earth. An estimated 200 pairs nest in the canyon each spring and can divebomb prey at a hundred miles an hour to make a kill and feed their ravenous young.
Welcome to Dedication Point, many visitors' first stop in Idaho's 482,000-acre Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area. The sanctuary, run by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, boasts a concentration of falcons, hawks, eagles, owls and vultures more dense than anyplace else in the world.
The peak season for viewing predatory birds is over the next few months. The birds arrive from as far distant as Argentina. They mate, lay eggs, raise their young. With the onset of summer heat, the raptors sensibly fly off to cooler, higher hunting areas.
The hawks, falcons and eagles spend their time hunting, to feed themselves and their young. "From the day a prairie falcon hatches until it is gone is 45 days," said Larry Ridenhour, park ranger with the Bureau of Land Management. "They reach a full size in that time span, so you can appreciate the parents' job."
The raptor sanctuary was originally an idea of Morley Nelson, a retired Bureau of Land Management guide. On a windy spring day, more than a quarter-century ago, he stood on the canyon rim with Idaho's then-Gov. Cecil Andrus and tossed a China pheasant into the air. A peregrine falcon shot out of the sky and killed the pheasant in a milisecond, retracting one foot while extending the other to break the neck of its prey.
Andrus never forgot the experience. He enlisted actor Robert Redford to raft on the Snake River to draw media attention to the birds. The Nixon administration was cajoled into creating a narrow, 27,000-acre sanctuary along 81 miles of the Snake River south and east of Boise.
"OK, you've protected the bedroom. What are you going to do to preserve the pantry?" Andrus asked Interior Secretary Rogers Morton, when Morton came to dedicate the small sanctuary.
Andrus was able to answer his own question when he served as Interior secretary in the Carter administration. In 1980, weeks before the Reagan administration took office, he withdrew more than 450,000 acres of federal land, on both sides of the canyon, from agricultural development. The new Interior secretary, James Watt, tried in federal court to overturn the action of his predecessor. Watt lost.
The land can still be used for grazing, and National Guard training exercises are still held there each summer, after many of the birds have departed. It just cannot be plowed under, because that would break the food chain that sustains the raptors.
The "pantry" supports winterfar (white-sage), a plant that provides food and cover for the Townsend ground squirrel. The squirrels, which give birth to their young in mid-March, are prime food for prairie falcons.
Sagebrush near the canyon is the favored habitat of jack rabbits. The rabbits breed in the late winter and spring, exactly when golden eagles need food for their young. About 30 pairs of eagles inhabit rocky cliffs of the canyon. One nesting site is directly across the river from Dedication Point.
A visitor to Birds of Prey should come armed with binoculars and spotting scopes, as well as the best telephoto lenses in the camera kit.
The environment of the canyon is High Desert, although one of the Northwest's master rivers flows through it. Bring sunglasses, sun hats and water bottles along with a jacket to ward off stiff, cool winds. Wear long pants and boots, since another of the raptors' favorite foods - the western rattlesnake - makes its home here.
The opportunities to break out lenses begin soon after visitors head south on Swan Falls Road out of the town of Kuna. The count during a four-hour visit last week was 23 birds.
A trio of northern harriers flew low over a field of cheatgrass, their wings held in a distinctive V-pattern. A male kestrel sat on a perch atop a telephone pole, scanning fields for mice with eyesight an estimated three times as powerful as that of humans. High overhead soared a golden eagle, an extraordinary sight with its 7-foot-wide wingspan.
Dedication Point is about 15 miles south of Kuna along a paved road. A graveled path leads past exhibits to the canyon rim. A great deal of roaming is possible here. The red tailed hawks' nest is in cliffs north of the overlook. Prairie falcons nest to the south.
A few miles to the south, the road makes a steep descent to 95-year-old Swan Falls Dam, oldest on the Snake River. The visitor can walk across the top of the dam, or (preferably) hike along the marshes below.
An exhibit near the dam explains how Idaho Power has redesigned its power poles (with advice from Morley Nelson) in order to provide perches for predatory birds and to prevent their electrocution.
A second route into the Birds of Prey area is a few miles to the west, reached by going west on Kuna Road, and then south on Robinson and CanAda roads. The route isn't completely paved, but bumps will be forgotten upon reaching Celebration Park by the river.
It is a spectacular place for eagle watching; four nests used by the big birds sit in cliffs above the river, and another is found nearby on Walters Butte. An historic, 100-year-old railroad bridge has been converted to pedestrian use.
Of greatest interest, however, is the fascinating array of Indian petroglyphs, some more than 10,000 years old. The rock art is presided over by an enthusiastic, vastly knowledgeable Canyon County parks official named Tom Bicak, who has educated thousands of Idaho schoolchildren on the aboriginal inhabitants who once fished and hunted in the canyon.
Nobody has been able to interpret the petroglyphs. The most common drawings are hooks with dots. Many lizards are drawn on the rocks but, curiously, only a single bird.
The most interesting petroglyph is a chair-shaped rock decorated with multiple hooks and dots. It is, as well, an appropriate setting for Bicak to say a few words about respecting and not defacing Indian art. The rock is chipped in one place, where a modern-day human being attached a chain and tried to lift it into a truck.
Before visiting the conservation area, there is a mandatory stop to make just outside of Boise. It is the World Center for Birds of Prey, run by a private non-profit international organization - The Peregrine Fund - that propagates predatory birds in captivity and then releases them in the wild.
The fund has released more than 4,000 peregrine falcons in 28 states since the mid-1970s, re-establishing a once-imperiled species from one end of the United States to the other.
The reintroduction of peregrines is nearly completed. The center is, however, also propagating California condors as well as aplomado falcons and harpy eagles. The harpy, which inhabits tropical forests of Central and South America, is the most powerful bird of prey in the Western Hemisphere.
The center features extraordinary exhibits. It is a particularly rewarding place to take nature-curious young people. Visitors can look close up at California condors and harpy eagles through one-way glass. Tour guides lift a well-trained peregrine falcon and explain her hunting features. Exhibits map the birds' continent-spanning migration patterns, and match various species of owls with the sounds they make.
It is an exhilarating experience. When you consider why some of the birds are there - and can never again be released into the wild - it can also be sobering.
One of the harpy eagles had wings damaged when the tree in which it was perching was chopped down. A bald eagle, on exhibit outside, was nearly electrocuted. An ornate hawk-eagle had one eye shot out. A golden eagle was stolen as a chick and later rescued by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents.
Great predatory birds deserve appreciation and protection as growing human populations infringe on their habitats. Their survival does not require a great deal, just a modest use of human intelligence.
If you're wondering what the payoff is, just stand at Dedication Point with your eyes skyward and your face in the wind.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
If you go
To plan a visit to the Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area, contact Larry Ridenhour at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 3948 Development Ave., Boise ID 83705. Or call him at (208) 384-3334.
The bureau publishes a visitor guide to the conservation area, along with a raptor identification leaflet. A few copies of a larger color booklet are still available.
The World Center for Birds of Prey, run by The Peregrine Fund, is at 5666 West Flying Hawk Lane, Boise, ID 83709; (208) 362-8687. Its Web site, worth a visit, is at: http//www.peregrinefund.org
The center is open 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Tuesday-Sunday. Tours are continuous. The center is reached by taking Exit 50A off Interstate 84 and heading six miles down South Cole Road.
The conservation area is reached by driving west out of Boise to the Meridian-Kuna exit, going south 7.2 miles to Kuna, and turning south another 15.5 miles to Dedication Point. The route is well-marked.
To reach Celebration Park, continue west on Kuna Road, then south on Robinson Road, right on Dickman and then left on CanAda Road. One more right turn is required, 2.1 miles north of the park, with a sign that is not easy to spot. The last few miles are down a bumpy gravel road that is not dangerous but requires patient driving.
The optimum feeding time for raptors, particularly in warm weather, is early in the morning and in the cool of the evening.