Ed Pitcher joins me to announce that he and Ricardo Velarde have given me permission to read and publish "The Flying of Falcons" as part of the Fat Bird, Ugly Dog Podcast. We begin the episode discussing Ed's use of mantras to guide the way he develops and flies his birds.  We then focus of two mantras that Ed used in the book, and now regrets to some degree - the first is “being touched by the Angel of Death”, a metaphor he used in the chapter about a female prairie falcon called “Amos".  The second is "a sharp hawk is a smart hawk", which Ed used in his chapter on "weight Management".  We conclude the episode talking about two people with whom Ed trained and flew falcons - Terry Heath and Steve Sanders - and we talk about the way the three friends influenced one another.  Thanks for listening, I hope you enjoy this prelude to the reading of "The Flying of Falcons".