Eyring’s expertise of falconry and wanton to share and teach about nature brought the Birds of Prey program to Pace in 1981. The Nature Center never considered animals like the birds of prey before Eyring was hired, according to the Nature Center’s Director Angelo Spillo, because no one could handle them. Years later, I became a master falconer.”Įyring mastered how to falcon and much like the bird feeder taught him, Eyring-like any naturalist-wanted to teach and share this with everyone. ![]() “He was my sponsor for my two-year apprenticeship and from there I became a general falconer after I guess three or four people wrote letters saying I was doing good things, I was educating people. “He wasn’t willing to do that, well he was, but he wasn’t willing to do it unless I really hounded him, and I did,” said Eyring, who Pace hired in 1980. Kupchok wasn’t willing to sponsor Eyring, however, which is required to become a falconer in New York. He failed, but discovered a man named Paul Kupchok, who was in a town five miles away, was the falconer. He came across a red-tailed hawk one day when he was younger with jesses-leather straps signifying ownership-around its ankles, used a retrieving dummy from his father’s basement, and tried to catch the falcon. If it were not for his father, the 5-foot-8-inch naturalist would have never been thrust into rural North Salem, NY or discover his chance to falcon birds of prey. The inability to differentiate 15 from 51 but effortlessly identify birds such as a male downy woodpecker by the length of its beak or the red patch on the back of its neck perplexed his parents and often frustrated his father, Allan, especially.Īllan Eyring, a harsh-voiced NYC firefighter, played as much of a role as the bird feeder did in precipitating Eyring’s passion for birds and nature, however. They’ve been kind of my totem for as long as I can really remember.”īirds and nature became a totem because he wasn’t a gifted student, but Eyring was always looking at any nature-related books despite this impediment. “That bird feeder is probably as instrumental as anything in making me who and what I am today because it was something I enjoyed-the birds coming to the feeder-and learning about the birds,” said Eyring, who graduated from SUNY Morrisville in 1979. It sparked his inner naturalist at seven-years-old. He couldn’t read at an efficient level because of his dyslexia, so he would just look at the pictures while his mother or father would point out which bird was which. ![]() James Eyring’s dyslexia made academics difficult growing up, but the bird feeder that hung outside his kitchen window made him the naturalist he is today.Įyring, Pace’s Nature Center’s assistant director, would watch a plethora of birds that flew into a black bird feeder, which hung a foot outside his six-over-six pane kitchen window while looking at pictures of them in a 1934 leather-bound copy of the Audubon Field Guide to the Birds that sat right next to the sugar on the kitchen table.
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