This is a series of catch-up blogs, of a trip to Senegal, Guinea and Mali in search of a small (180 gram) falcon that we hoped to bring back to the States for a scientific breeding project. I'll post a few places and pictures, recounting the 2-month adventure, to get y'all caught up, before moving on to the current one that begins on Christmas Day, 2007. We'll start off the tale in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has been a cold, wet, dreary winter, and I'm very much feeling the longing pangs; Africa is callling me back again. But I've given up all [View Full Entry]

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Note: The pictures do not correlate with the story, as it's lengthly and I was too absorbed in those situations to take photos. Each photo has its own caption. Preface: As I gather thoughts for this, it's from a year and a half later, after all the roughest parts of the journey are long since past and the emotional memories are all pleasant ones. But I'd be doing you a disservice not to touch on some of the ugly parts, if only so that you will be able to avoid those pitfalls and have nothing but wonderful memories of your own [View Full Entry]

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Mali was rich in its own way. Villagers weren't quite as warm and hospitable in some places, but they held to their integrity. In a place where people earn $400 a year, I wasn't able to purchase a pup for $100 USD, because they follow the traditions of the Bedouin who brought Islam to them. "You seem like a very nice man, and if you could stay a day or two in the village, I'm sure someone would gift one to you." Translating that into a US Economy, we're talking about at least $5000. Know of anybody with that kind of [View Full Entry]

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The trip went on to KanKan, and then back west again. Something just wasn't making sense about what the "trapper" was saying and the way he was guiding me By all accounts, these birds were from lowlands, so why was he sending me up into the mountains? I decided I'd do a bit more scouting, before returning to the original gameplan we'd hatched while scouring West Africa via GoogleEarth before I arrived. Again, the pictures will tell the tale. [View Full Entry]

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I remained with the "trapper" and his posse for a short while longer, but the promises of arriving before dawn always went unfulfilled. Africa is on a "whenever" timeclock, but the western world does not sync with that. Back in the the States, the May 1st - 10th deadline was coming up fast, and I still hadn't seen even one of these birds. I had to find out where they had gone to. Then I had to trap them, and then I had to acclimate them, get them used to people, etc., so that they'd ship well. Once the first were [View Full Entry]

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To this point, things have been pretty tense. Remember, this wasn't a leisure trip, this was a live safari, an expedition to find, trap and return with 10 falcons. There was a very limited window afforded by having to please 3 separate governments as well as all of the international laws involved, and the date to have the birds in Quarantine back in the States was also set and narrow. While it was still quite an adventure, I didn't have the luxury of wasting time. This was business, and had taken many many months of preparation and bureaucracy, years of planning. [View Full Entry]

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Where were we at? Oh, yeah, the overpriced airplane trip to Conakry. Dakar is just barely sub-Saharan, and relatively dry. Guinea is at the beginning of the rainforests, and the city itself is a finger jutting out into the ocean. I'm sure it keeps a few people cooler that way... 3 or 4 of them, if they turn the air conditioning on. I was greeted by an online acquaintance of the team - supposedly a trapper, a the only person who hadn't tried to get them to send money. He was accompanied by the airport veterinarian and some other fellow. I [View Full Entry]

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