CASPER — By the time Jim Osborne reached the courtyard at Banner Wyoming Medical Center, his missing peregrine falcon had been gone a full week, lost 4 ounces of weight and had attracted an audience at the cafeteria windows.
When it saw Osborne, the young falcon ran and hopped straight to the Casper man's outstretched arm, a reunion that prompted quiet cheers from people watching inside and brought tears to one worker’s eyes.
“It was like the end of 'Homeward Bound' when Shadow comes over the hill,” said Veronica Bates, who works at the hospital, referencing the 1993 Disney movie about a trio of pets on an epic journey to get home.
For Osborne, a master falconer who has been working with birds of prey since childhood, this was an ending he hadn’t expected.
“My dad, he was practically in tears because he did not expect to ever find that bird again,” said his daughter, Jaime Wilkison.
The falcon, Kevin, was about four months old when a training outing behind the Casper airport became a seven-day disappearance. He was chasing a group of blackbirds, and the transmitter Osborne used to track him died, Wilkison said.
Osborne had dealt with missing birds, his daughter said. In those cases, however, the equipment was working.
The family feared the inexperienced hunter wouldn’t survive long enough to come home.
Then Bates happened to walk past a crowd at the hospital on Saturday and recognized the bird from online posts.
Hunting Pigeons
About 10 people had gathered outside, and others were watching through a window, staring at Kevin.
“I was just going to walk by, but the crowd moved, and I saw him,” Bates recalled.
Bates knew Wilkison through their daughters, who had been friends in grade school. She messaged her, and Osborne called back to ask for a favor: Keep people back so they wouldn’t frighten the falcon.
A woman told Bates the bird had struck a window, but when the family arrived they found no apparent injuries and his feathers were intact.
They suspect he had gone there to hunt pigeons.
Whatever brought him there, he stayed long enough for Osborne to show up.
“As soon as he walked up, it was the most relieved I’ve ever seen a bird,” Bates said
Kevin rushed to Osborne and the hospital staff cheered.
“It was very sweet talking to him,” Bates said. “He was so worried about the falcon.”
Lifetime With Raptors
Wilkison grew up around red-tailed hawks, gyrfalcons and other birds of prey. She said her father’s involvement in falconry began when he was about 8.
These days, he has two peregrines: Kevin and a female, which they might name Karen.
Osborne makes falconry equipment, including the hoods handlers use to keep their birds calm. His hood-making has earned him an international reputation within the falconry community, his daughter said.
His connections with breeders sometimes help him get a better price on a bird, she said. Even so, falconry can involve a substantial investment.
Wilkison said prices can run from roughly $3,000 to $30,000, depending on the kind of bird, with some gyrfalcons commanding higher amounts.
“It just depends on what kind of bird it is,” she said. “But yeah, they’re not cheap.”
A current listing offers one comparison for Kevin’s species: Spokane, Washington, breeder Brad Wood advertised young peregrines for $2,000 apiece in a June 24 listing.
“All are $2,000 each,” Wood wrote. “These are the last young Peregrines I will have until next year.”
For Osborne, the birds are hunting partners. His daughter emphasized that he trains them primarily to hunt ducks.
Gordon Crawford of Glenrock, founder of the Wyoming Falconers Association, described that relationship in an earlier Cowboy State Daily story about falconry.
“They’re not really affectionate,” Crawford said. “It’s not like bonding with a dog.”
Crawford said hunting opportunities and food rewards help persuade a bird to keep working with its handler.
Seven Days Gone
Kevin was still developing his flying and hunting skills, Wilkison said.
“We figured he probably starved to death or a wild animal behind the airport had killed him,” she said.
As the search spread online, people began sending possibilities.
Someone supplied footage from a Ring camera showing a bird on a roof. Wilkison thought it resembled her father’s falcon but couldn’t be certain.
Another woman spent an hour following a bird in a field, trying to get photographs the family could use to identify it.
That one turned out to be a prairie falcon.
There are many look-alikes to sort through in Wyoming skies among peregrines, merlins and American kestrels, too.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology describes prairie falcons as roughly peregrine-sized, making a distant sighting hard to distinguish from Kevin.
Wilkison appreciated the effort even when the leads led nowhere.
“There’s a lot of people that are just really great in the community that really, really helped us out,” she said.
One promising sighting placed him near the river off F Street. Someone photographed the bird and contacted the family, but by the time Osborne arrived it had flown away.
The hospital sighting finally ended the search, several miles from where the young falcon had disappeared.
Lucky Didn’t Stick
Kevin came home thin, exhausted and hungry.
Wilkison said he had lost four ounces during his week away. Osborne kept him on a perch in the basement where he could watch him closely, using a falconry hood to keep him calm and feeding him quail mixed with Pedialyte.
By the interview, his strength was starting to return.
“I mean, he was really weak,” Wilkison said.
She doubted he could have lasted another day on his own.
The ordeal also earned the bird his new name. At first, the family wanted to call him Lucky, but Osborne wasn’t sold.
They started tossing around goofy names and settled on one.
“We just thought naming a falcon Kevin just was just so funny,” Wilkison said.
For now, the priority is getting Kevin strong enough to resume training. Osborne hopes to start again in about a month.
Before the next outing, she said, he would make certain the tracking battery is working.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
