We’re doing a new feature called Workman Nights and Weekends in which Workman employees reveal their hidden talents, secret hobbies, and other extracurricular pursuits. The first installment features a member of our Art Department, Jose Martin Vegas.
Jose and a colleague
Five mornings a week, Jose Martin Vegas is up with the birds. Actually, he wakes up before the birds—as a professional falconers at one of the city’s major airports, it’s important that he gets to work before the avian population starts its day. These feathered birds, some of them quite dainty, paradoxically pose a tremendous threat to the enormous steel birds taking off and landing on airport runways. Falcons are sent up in the air to keep the little guys away.
Jose’s love of falconry goes back to his childhood in Lima, Peru, and, fittingly, began with a book. Browsing in the library one day, he found a visual encyclopedia on birds of prey and was immediately hooked. His mother (who must be the soul of patience and fortitude) let Jose get a falcon of his own. He built a mew (an enclosed room for birds) in his backyard and soon, he was training up to five birds.
Falconry remained a hobby until his late teens when, seeing a business opportunity, he and a couple of fellow falconers hired out their services to the local vineyards and other companies needing to keep birds away. A few years after moving to New York in 2004 with his then girlfriend, now wife (and Page-a-Day designer) Cynthia Garcia, the opportunity arose to do the same work for the airport.
It’s remarkable to think that in an age where computers and technology make so many things possible, the best way to protect airplanes from bird strikes is to send up a bird that no other bird wants to mess with.
Thanks for sharing, Jose!
No Comments