Teacher's pet in Sutter County

It was too great a temptation. Webster, a Lanner/Saker Falcon hybrid, had his keen eyes set on some clueless urban starlings. He ignored his owner's calls and soared past the main building at Gray Avenue Middle School.

"Dang. He's gone," said Javon Johnson, 12, looking on in amazement. "I wish I was a bird."

Javon, like his classmates on the field, has been sent to Sutter County Opportunity School for committing his own share of insubordinate acts.

He had never before seen a trained falcon — let alone one who misbehaves.

Falconry is an attention-getting tool that teacher Kathe Goria-Hendrickson uses to reach students at the alternative school. The seventh-through-12th graders in attendance for the demonstration Friday all had been expelled from a traditional school before being assigned here.

They are being given a second chance — an opportunity — to right themselves academically and finish high school.

Eventually, Webster returned to his owner. He made a couple passes, close enough to move hair on a couple of the kids' heads, and then took his familiar telemetry lure.

"You could see, in that little bit of space, just how fast he got going," said Goria-Hendrickson.

Mariah Stallcup, 13, was still excited about having held a falcon a half hour earlier. Kate Tigan — Webster's owner, and co-owner of West Coast Falconry — had sent a Harris Hawk named Diego into flight within the confines of a classroom.

The professional falconer allowed each student, including Mariah, to put on the heavy leather falconer's glove and act as his landing perch.

"It flied to us. It was so cool," Mariah said. "I was scared. It was the first time I ever had a bird land on my hand."

Mariah is in her first year at Opportunity School. She was expelled, she said, "for fighting with a teacher."

Tigan volunteered to teach this class about raptors and to show off her birds. She and her husband, Falconer Jim Tigan, run a falconry academy in Loma Rica, as well as a bird abatement business.

The students in the field, who had dragged their feet and looked sideways at one another just a few minutes earlier, were wide eyed once again at the sight of the mischievous Webster, back on Tigan's hand after his wayward flight.

He clamped his powerful beak down on a chunk of raw partridge meat that Tigan had given him.

After the feeding, Tigan placed the bird's delicate leather hood back over his head, and Webster let out several fierce shrieks of protest.

One student pointed out that he had seen wild hawks before on Live Oak Boulevard.

"But seeing them fly up close and personal," said his classmate Ashleon Gossett, 13, "that's a one-time thing."

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Nancy Pasternack at 749-4712 or at npasternack@appeal-democrat.com