Petaluma Profile: Danielle Dube, apprentice falconer

For this apprentice falconer, training birds of prey is a lifestyle, not a hobby|

To say college student Danielle Dube has a lot of interests is an understatement. The Petaluma resident and UC Santa Cruz sophomore is majoring in psychology but studying many more subjects - like art, zoology, oceanography and ichthyology, the study of fish.

A scuba diver since she was 16, Dube says her favorite fish is the garibaldi, which also happens to be California’s state fish.

“I love their personality,” she said. “I was scuba diving when I saw them the first time. They’re tiny little things and they’re all territorial.”

On a recent hot Saturday afternoon, Dube was sitting on a sofa in her family’s Petaluma home, a large Harris hawk named Gambit perched on her left forearm. At 19 years old, Dube is a full-fledged falconer, having put in two years as an apprentice with her mentor, Petaluma master falconer Morgan Campbell.

“I’m a huge bird nerd,” she says. “I think I was born interested in birds. I’ve been drawing dragons and phoenixes and things with wings since I could hold a pencil.”

When she was a student at Marin School of the Arts, her parents took her to a “falconry experience” in Marysville and she was instantly enthralled. She asked how someone could get involved in falconry and was told, “there’s a master falconer in Petaluma, but he’s very selective in who he takes on as students.”

She was crestfallen and briefly gave up hope. But a year later, while driving home from school, her mother spotted a man on the side of the road with a falcon on his fist. She booted her daughter out of the car, saying - go talk to him!

Dube ran down the man, who turned out to be Morgan Campbell. Coincidentally, he lived four blocks away. She says she did whatever she could to hang around him and his birds until eventually he said, “OK, you’re dedicated. I’ll take you on.”

This was a big deal for Dube. In order to become a licensed falconer, the California Department of Fish and Game requires you need to serve as an apprentice to a master falconer for two years and finding a master falconer is no easy feat.

Her senior year in high school, she officially became Campbell’s apprentice, working with him whenever she had free time. A local falconer found a red tailed hawk tangled in a tree and it became Dube’s first bird. She named the bird “Tachi.”

Campbell told her, “You want to name your bird something you can yell under a tree for a few hours and not feel weird,” she recalled.

She forged a very special bond with Tachi.

“She was my first bird,” Dube said. “You can’t have a second first bird. I could do anything with her. When you have an animal that you’ve been working with for so long and they do what you ask them to, it’s amazing.”

When she went to college, she released her beloved first bird in a field near Dylan Beach.

“I still have dreams of her,” she said. “I miss her a lot.”

Campbell says he’s had 18 apprentices, four of them teenagers. His apprentices do much more than work with birds – they do everything involved in falconry including build their own mews.

“Any skill I’ve collected in my life that is remotely connected to falconry, I try to pass on to them,” he says. “I only look for dedication. I’ve reached the stage of my life where I love passing on the skills I’ve learned. I get to borrow their enthusiasm and energy.”

As the afternoon sun streams through the glass door, Gambit sits still and regal.

“Falconry is a lifestyle. It’s not a hobby. It becomes the center of your universe,” Dube said. “It’s hard to get out of falconry and I wouldn’t want to get out of falconry. There’s always something new to learn. Every species of bird is different and every bird is different.”

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