Missing falcon prompts calls of sightings

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Dec 29, 2005 | by CARY LEIDER VOGRIN THE GAZETTE

Could it be Liberty, weeks after the Air Force Academy has accepted her death?

Numerous people across El Paso County are reporting possible sightings of the military school's missing falcon, a top show bird at academy football games.

Birds resembling the prairie falcon were spotted on a fence in Old Colorado City, on a building at Fort Carson, in a tree in Rockrimmon, on a bird feeder near Palmer Park.

An official in the academy's falconry program is doubtful any of them was Liberty but said Wednesday that each tip will be checked out.

More than 20 calls and e-mails came in to The Gazette on Wednesday, the day Liberty's disappearance was reported, and the academy also received calls, said Lt. Col. Bill Muldoon, the assistant officer in charge of falconry.

Liberty disappeared earlier this month during a performance in Beaver Creek, where she was last seen riding an updraft at the Birds of Prey World Cup skiing event.

It's possible she became confused when she went up and over a mountain and could no longer see her handlers. Muldoon and others at the academy fear she succumbed to another raptor or to a blizzard that blew in that night. A search party launched the next day tracked a weak signal in a stand of trees, but Muldoon and five cadets could not find the falcon, which was wearing a transmitter.

Muldoon said it's unlikely Liberty would have been able to fly all the way back to El Paso County, about 100 miles as the crow flies -- or in this case, perhaps, the falcon.

"We drove Liberty from Colorado Springs to Vail in a car, and she was hooded and wasn't able to see outside, so she wouldn't have had any reference points," he said. "So it's really unlikely she would be able to find her way back."

She also did not know how to hunt, having come to the falconry program in 2001 when she was just a few weeks old.

Muldoon said it's more likely that tipsters have seen other prairie falcons, which are fairly common in the area.

He also said some may have seen a Cooper's hawk, which can look similar to a prairie falcon. That was the case in one tip Muldoon followed up on that came from a Black Forest resident who took a photo of a Liberty look-alike.

"It was very easy to identify that the bird wasn't Liberty and it was probably a Cooper's hawk," he said.

Muldoon said there's a good chance Liberty still would be wearing 3-inch jesses -- leather straps attached just above her feet.

"And there's also a bell on her feet. When she flies, you can hear the bell ring," Muldoon said.

Liberty also wouldn't be very afraid of people. "People have always been her source of food -- that's why in all likelihood she would go where people are," Muldoon said.

And although he's not holding out much hope, Muldoon said he hasn't given up entirely.

"We'll still follow up with the phone calls just to make sure, because there is that one-in-a-million chance that she made her way back," he said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0236 or cary@gazette.com