Parahawking is basically paragliding but with a unique twist, birds of prey actually fly along with the glider. Developed in Nepal in 2001 by Scott Mason, Adam Hill and Graham Sunders-Griffiths, paragliding has slowly grown into a commercial industry. They take rescue birds, the ones that can't be returned to the wild for one reason or another (most likely because they have become imprinted on humans) and train them to fly with the glider using food as a lure. The birds actually land on the arm of the person gliding to get the food. This makes it so the people basically get to interact with the birds in their own environment, something they could not otherwise do.There are quite a few benefit to this type of program, which is why I have chosen to blog about this (that and it's just a cool idea to be able to "fly" along with birds in the sky). Humans gain an interesting way to be entertained and experience nature. But it too benefit the birds. By helping them to return to the wild or have healthily lives even if they can't it could help to bring awareness to people about these birds in the future so they may help to protect them. I think that not all people may think about this when going to paraglide but its at least a start that might get them to think about nature in our now very technology based world.
Something else I found interesting about paragliding is the fact that, with the birds help in flight, paragliders are able to glide longer and go farther then without them. These birds are so adapted to gliding over long distances while saving energy that they have developed ways to see thermals (rising warm air) so they don't waste energy flapping their wings to stay aloft (what they are seeing might actually be rising dust or small particles but the point is that in this way they know where the thermals are and therefore where to fly).
If we could find more ways to get along with nature like this then it might just help to improve the state our world is in.
No comments:
Post a Comment