A Man and his Mews – an afternoon with the Frugal Falconer and his feathered quartet

The closest thing I’ve known to god was a falcon
adrift in a wind’s hammock, high
above the power lines

Singular, beautiful, ever majestic – even in its playful grace
it circled a crown of buildings
holy in its apathy

And I, no less than a prophet
there among all the unaware, moving aimlessly
listless, about

Upon returning to that site, each time
I curl my eyes skywards
hands clasped in childlike anticipation
hoping

This falcon was no god as told by those who seek him
but rather served as a reminder; a message
a new epicenter for all the world’s pressures
in a universe that all too often seems to press against
me

-Anonymous

ATLANTA – The story of Alan Colussy begins some thirty-five years ago in the Atlanta neighborhood now known as Morningside. Originally inhabited by the Creek Indian Nation, the area was surrendered to Georgia settlers in 1821. The network of fields, farms and mills that once studded the banks of the rivers and streams is now a quiet neighborhood shaded by wise old oaks and laced with winding streets that loosely drape about the hills above Piedmont Park.

Heading north on Monroe Drive, the scattered businesses and latticed power lines make way for arboreal promenades that beckon motorists to turn off and onto any of the tree-columned side streets. Amidst craftsman bungalows, tudors dripping with ivy and English-style cottages built by wealthy Atlantans of yesteryear sits a rusted camper-trailer beneath the fuchsia bouquets of a braided crape myrtle. But this is no ordinary trailer – this is a mews, or birdhouse for raptors. The door swings and slams shut with a rusty squeak, and out comes Colussy. No stranger to the Atlanta heat, Colussy is soaked to the bone in sweat and in a singular motion waves and invites Tim Song and me to escape the sun while he changes out of his chore attire. Now, I must admit – I half expected to enter a home, warm with wood paneled walls, striped with fingers of light swimming with dust particles and the sort of air reserved for trophy rooms and old smoke parlors. Instead we entered a home brightly lit with some floral upholstery, family photos framed on end tables, a breakfast nook, screened in three season room with patio furniture and an old Springer spaniel – Tobey – whom Colussy affectionately refers to as Wonder Dog. Colussy offers us both a drink and then retreats to change, calling out from a back room: “you guys can wait in the guest room if you want to have a look at the birds.”

One of my favorite things about living in Atlanta is the proximity and presence of nature. Besides the abundance of trees and nearby lakes and rivers, there is a feeling… a sense that wilderness has not yet let slide her foothold on the turf within our city limits. Born and raised in New York City, I still get a kick out of seeing a possum run across a Cabbagetown alley or finding an Eastern Garter snake in my yard. But there is perhaps nothing that thrills me more than the sight of raptors soaring overhead, perched upon a lamp post, or best of all, the shrill kree-eee-ar that sends the squirrels on my street racing to their treetop nests in a frenzied panic.

Song and I practically push past each other towards the white lace-curtained window and gingerly part the drapery. Remember that scene in the opening of A Christmas Story – all the kids gape in awe through the storefront window as the tinker toys parade before them? I imagine we looked something like that only more elated and visibly stunned. Standing some forty feet before us were four feathered sentinels perched upon their blocks. Bombay – the newbie amongst the quartet – rears up and stretches his wings as if to assure us that he is in fact real. We stand unconvinced. At this point it’s all we can do to tear ourselves away from the window in the hopes that we may soon be standing out there. We do our best to assume an air of professionalism in order to commence our interview and suppress our childlike glee.

We sit down in what used to be Colussy’s bedroom as he describes to us the changes he has made to his childhood home over the years. Like many of the Atlantans who grew up in the neighborhood, Colussy attended Grady High School and spent afternoons in Piedmont park across the street. But while most kids scrambled on playgrounds, kicked balls or threw frisbees, Colussy could be found donning his gauntlet, his neck craned skywards and eyes squinted to surveil the cerulean fields above. “I guess it all started for me when I read My Side of the Mountain,” Colussy recalls. The Jean Craighead George novel tells the tale of a young man who sets off into the Catskill Mountains. After hand-rearing a Peregrine eyass (the term applied to young raptors taken from their nest), the boy lives amongst the flora and fauna in the stump of an old Hemlock tree. “This could never have worked,” Colussy assures us, “I mean they both would have been dead within a matter of days.” Nevertheless, from that point on Colussy read everything he could get his hands on that related to raptors and falconry, thus spawning the beginning of a lifelong passion. At the age of fourteen, Colussy passed the US Federal Falconry exam and soon thereafter trapped and began training his first Red Tail Hawk. “I would drive to school with my hawk in the back of my station wagon, and during lunch I would fly him across the street in the park. Sometimes I would make it back to school after lunch,” he quips. We can only assume that for the young falconer, hawking took precedent over home economics and afternoon math.

While flying hawks may seem an odd pastime for a city-borne teen, this was the whole point for Colussy. “My older sister and I attended all the same schools,” he explains, “and she was an amazing student. I guess you could say I was living in her shadow… so that no matter how well I did in school, I was constantly compared to how incredibly she had done.” Rather than resent his sister – whom he is close to even today – Colussy decided instead to pursue, in his own words “as much other crazy shit as I could possibly get into.” So naturally, when Colussy’s grandmother insisted he join the army, he instead enlisted in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces playing the bagpipe for the 78th Fraser Highland Regiment, right here in Atlanta.

The list of titles and affiliations Colussy claims read like the resume of a modern-day polymath. Aside from being a Master-Falconer, Akbar started a chapter of SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice) in Asheville, NC in 1993, earned a degree in Anthropology from Georgia State University in 1999, bred Springer Spaniels, lived in Pakistan for three years, and is currently a Master Mason and member of Gate City Lodge No. 2 with the local Free & Accepted Masons. Of his time in Pakistan, Colussy explains, “Pakistan is to Falconry what Scotland is to golf.”

Sierra & Jerry Lee

Upon his return from the East, Colussy started the Frugal Falconer: a DIY pamphlet which he describes as, “showing people how they could make many of the things they’d need” for training and housing a raptor. Given the relative obscurity of the sport at the time, suppliers were far and few and charged an arm-and-a-leg for items that most people could improvise or make themselves. Today, however, the art is gaining in popularity. According to Colussy, “In 1990 there were twenty-seven falconry licenses active in Georgia… today there are roughly a hundred and eighty.”

In 2003, Akbar returned from Pakistan and began work at the McGuire AF Base. To this day the New Jersey-based airfield and others like it work in tandem with the World Bird Sanctuary to conduct bird abatement – the hiring of falconers to clear air ports, Air Force bases, and landfills of excessive or potentially hazardous bird populations. “I have the best job in the world,” Colussy exclaims as his smile lifts the curled ends of his rusty handlebar mustache, “I basically do drive-by’s on birds all day.” The process is not quite as gangster as it sounds. Colussy has serviced landfills in northern California, civilian airports in Pennsylvania, as well as March Air Force base in Riverside, California. While clearing runways of geese is fun, it’s only when he begins to describe his abatement work on landfills that Colussy’s eyes light up.

Bombay & Hamza

“The landfills are really cool!” Now, not many people would describe a landfill, let alone a day at work, as “really cool.” It’s only when he begins detailing the actual process that we start to understand Colussy’s apparent enthusiasm: “First of all there isn’t the politics and security issues you deal with working a military base… but really the landfill is a vast range of hills and valleys.” These conditions are ideal for falcons on the hunt and allow them to perform the aerial acrobatics they are so well-known and sought-after for. Colussy continues, “the wind currents in those big hills of garbage allow the falcons to do some really cool stuff.” Cool stuff like dwindling a population of some eighty-thousand seagulls on a ten square mile landfill down to a manageable two-thousand. “When I started there was literally a sea – an undulating mass – of seagulls that made everything look like it was moving,” Colussy recalls. “Besides the bacteria these gulls would take back on the beach each night on their feet, you run the risk of machinery operators getting vertigo and losing control of vehicles or running over the workers on foot.”

The falcons, however, do not work alone. Much like the art of falconry, Colussy’s work at the landfill is done in tandem with the birds. “Usually I start by flying kites, letting off pyro and fireworks, I get my butane cannon going, maybe shoot some lasers and paintballs, and then I’ll get the falcon up in the air.” The self-described “circus act” serves as a warning to the resident sea gulls. If the dogs, lasers, and pyrotechnics don’t do the trick, the falcon is the all-too-final warning for some of the birds. Once the gulls get the point, all that’s left to be done is to fly a kite and the gulls recognize the warning sign of impending feathered-doom.

But flying raptors is not all fun and games. Those considering the lifestyle – which it most certainly is – must pass exams, seek state and federal licensure and build or purchase all the necessary accoutrement before going out to catch their first Red Tail and beginning their two year apprenticeship. Owning a bird of prey is not a way to own an exotic bird, nor is it for the faint of heart. These birds are hunters and must fly and hunt daily to maintain soundness of mind and overall health. Training requires daily attention, and the bird’s well-being is paramount. For those people who are interested, there are plenty of books and local clubs and organizations available for perusal.

For Colussy falconry is a lifelong passion – a passion woven into a means to provide and exist in this world. Not all are so lucky to boast their job as the best in the world. But perhaps for us, the many, it is enough to know that while our day-to-day winds through this cementitious labyrinth of streets, alleys and highways – above and all around us a Wild permeates. Its breath hovers high above the smog blanket and din of the traffic. Its fingers reach upward and out in the whips of kudzu and umbrella-like canopies of mimosa that crack the endless gray. It is alive in the spirits of men like Alan Colussy – the hidden urbanites all around us who long for the simpler time – those who romanticize the vintage and glorify the antique.

Perhaps things will develop to a point where they can develop no further. The initiation of a retrograde… a return to a time when heirlooms were tangible, and work was more a labor of survival then a turn of the gears. This is maybe the greatest thing about living in a city like Atlanta: that even in a metropolis such as ours the natural and serene is within reach. It permeates and manifests in the lives of the falconer, the outdoorsman, the hobby-farmer, the backyard gardener, and those who stop from time to time and look up, close their eyes and breathe deep the jasmine carried on a cool spring breeze. It is by these so-called “little things” that we may hope to remember that beyond the iron and glass fence of the skyline there is a place and world still feral, heralded by the soaring hawk who remains in spite of his wilderness-turned-civil.

Photo Credit: Tim Song