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LAURENTIAN PORTRAIT
At St. Lawrence, Mary Ellen “Reg-
gie” iele Rooney ’56 was a singer and
a writer. ose lifelong passions have
guided her toward an equally ancient art.
“Seven years ago I took up falconry,
which involves training and caring for
various birds of prey as well as taking
them out hunting,” Rooney says. “It is
the oldest sport there is – it dates back
4,000 years or more. In all that time,
very little has changed in the way you
train and fly a bird and the equipment
that you use.”
A career journalist, Rooney says that
after her friends began to retire, she
decided to keep her language skills sharp
by teaching English as a second lan-
guage in the former Soviet Union. “My
first job was in the Czech Republic,”
she says. “From there I began to get
assignments in Central Asia, working
for the UN, teaching managers of power
companies technical English.”
A former St. Lawrence Singing Sinner,
she says that while she was teaching in
Kyrgyzstan, a nomadic family would
invite her to sing with them. is led
to her discovery of falconry. “One day,
while singing, I saw a man come up
over a hill on horseback with a big eagle
on his arm, and he let it fly,” she says.
“I said to myself, ‘I’m going to do that
someday.’ It was quite magnificent.”
Obtaining the training and licensing
required to house and hunt with raptors
was arduous for Rooney. She needed to
learn a tremendous amount of material
about birds of prey, from husbandry,
health and
behavior to
regulations and
laws.
“I think it
was equivalent
to getting a
Ph.D., but you
can’t just go
to a univer-
sity and take a
course in fal-
conry,” Rooney
says. “It’s quite
hard to find
knowledgeable
people to teach
you the skills.”
She studied assiduously, and eventually a
licensed falconer in New York State took
Rooney under her wing. She also found
a breeder in Quebec who continued to
teach her.
Today, Rooney is a licensed general
falconer. e New York City resident
owns one bird, a Harris hawk named
Butch Cassidy, who lives in Quebec.
ere are 4,000 falconers in the
United States, she says. Just 400 are
women. “I find it interesting that there
are so few women falconers because
it does not require strength,” Rooney
says. “A falcon weighs only a couple of
pounds. Women have traits that make
them good falconers – a lot of patience,
and the nurturing aspect.”
In 2009, she traveled to the second
International Festival of Falconry in
Berkshire, England, where she reunited
with the nomadic falconers she met
in Kyrgyzstan. Keeping her hand in
journalism, she participated in the ird
International Falconry Festival in Abu
Dhabi last winter and wrote an article
about it for the in-flight magazine of
Etihad Air, the national airline of the
host country.
Rooney says she loves falconry
because it provides a personal pathway
back to deep nature. “It’s a combina-
tion of precision, adventure and nature,
which are three important parts of who
I am,” she says. “I have always been
driven to learn how to do new things,
and I think it had to do with going to
St. Lawrence. After all, it was the Sing-
ing Sinners that got me out with the
nomads in Kyrgyzstan.”
MARY ELLEN ROONEY ’56
FALCONER
by Pete Harrison ’12
Mary Ellen Thiele Rooney ’56, left, holds a European eagle owl with her teacher,
Master Falconer Lorrie Schumacher.
photo provided
Pete Harrison ’12 of Cambridge, Mass.,
a writing intern in University commu-
nications in spring 2012, says he knew
nothing about falconry before being
assigned this article.