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A FALCONER’S MEMOIR
It’s a hard country, this grassland at the foot of Bear Butte, just north of the Black Hills of South Dakota.
There’s enough rain to support a vast sea of grass. Some years, there’s enough to support farming. And, for a while, that kept hope alive for the homesteaders whose wheat fields once dotted this prairie. But eventually, most gave up and moved away - leaving the prairie to cattle, the grasses, the wildlife - and Dan O’Brien and his falcons.
South Dakota Public Television presents an extraordinary story - A FALCONER’S MEMOIR. The program is produced by H2O Productions and presented by South Dakota Public Television.
Author, environmentalist and falconer O’Brien and friend and fellow falconer Erney Hersman live on a ranch at the foot of the Bear Butte, a volcanic dome that dominates the southeastern skyline.
Once, peregrine falcons hunted these skies, nesting high on Bear Butte, feasting on songbirds, ducks and other fowl. Peregrines take their prey in flight, diving in on the birds at fantastic speeds - they have been clocked at more than 200 mph. But the inadvertant side-effects of agricultural chemicals, especially DDT, left many peregrines unable to reproduce and caused the eggs that were produced to have such thin shells they broke when the parents sat on the nests.
Eventually, like the homesteaders, the peregrines were gone.
O’Brien’s goal is to restore peregrine falcons to the Bear Butte countryside. A FALCONER’S MEMOIR is the story of his efforts; of Thelma Louise, the falcon he is training; of the Northern Plains; and of the people who have called this land home.