While I write my next excerpt from my recent trip to Costa Rica I couldn’t help but post this photo of a male Gyrfalcon. I was able to sit with this bird today, on my fist. As I looked at the way his feathers overlapped perfectly, the small notch in his beak for dispatching prey and the cone in his nostrils to slow air flow as he stoops, I wondered if he was not the pinnacle of evolution of his kind.

What will his species look like in 1,000, 2,0000, 10,000 years? I do not know but today I felt honored to be in the presence of such a being.