Donors
Ronald Brown, Frank Ely, Bob Herrick, Walter Imfeld, Donald Inskeep, Charlie Kai-
ser, Maclovio Lopez, Bill Murphy, Katherine Ng, Tony Robertson, Dewey Savell,
Dave Steele, Terence Tiernan, Wayne Upton, Victor Wong
An Afternoon with Ed Ng
— by Pam Hessey
(Editor’s note: This past spring (2004), a few of
us went to visit Ed Ng, who was battling cancer.
Ed, his wife Cheryl, Frank and Linda Ely, Jim
DeRoque, Pam Hessey, and I (Charlie Kaiser)
had the pleasure of an afternoon sitting and talk-
ing about falconry with a tape recorder going. I’d
like to thank Lisa Snowden for her transcription of
the recording.)
Pam Hessey: I was one of Ed’s apprentices. He
gave freely of his time and knowledge; that is
invaluable to me. We spent hours talking about
my bird’s progress, my handling techniques, and
Raptor psychology. However, we never got around
to how Ed got started in falconry. Ed said he had
been inspired by two movies he had seen...
Ed: “The rst one was Marco Polo with Gary
Cooper. And I think they had playing opposite of
Gary Cooper a girl named Lana Turner. That one
didn’t have much of a falconry scene.
And then there was another one; it might have
been called the Golden Horde with Genghis Khan.
There was one scene that really turned me on —
a princess that was trapped, held prisoner, and
she’s releasing a messenger pigeon. So, these
guys released the hawks, and they ew after the
pigeon. In the next scene, the bad guys got the
message, and the hawk was eating the pigeon.
That left a very lasting impression in my mind.”
I then asked Ed what his very rst bird was...
Ed: “The very rst bird .. .the rst bird was a
Kestrel, the second one was a Kestrel, the third
one came from St. Helena, the winery - and I
thought it was maybe a Goshawk, so I jumped
at the chance of getting this bird from a friend of
mine, a non-falconer. So, when I brought it home,
I told my sponsor, Ken Gammon, to come down.
And he came down, took one look, and he started
laughing. And I said, “What the hell you laughing
about?” He said it’s not - he was slobbering, and
he was stuttering. And he was laughing. He said,
“It’s a red shoulder, Ed.”
When did you have your rst long wing?
Ed: “Ken was getting me different long-wings -
not different long-wings; always prairies. In those
days, say around 1960-ish, very few people
had access to Peregrines. The person with the
Peregrine was really top dog. The people I ew
with in the sixties were big names, they were Louis
Davis, he’s very well-known, you know, back in
those days especially. I think he was also one of
the very rst Peregrine breeders. And he didn’t do
A.I.; he went natural. A guy named Steve Herman.
Ed Cummings was around, Hans Peeters, Jimmy
Adamson, Sterling Bunnell. This was the big group
that - I was a breaking in.
And then I think the next few birds, I had were
Goshawks. That was when I ew Shadow... I
didn’t have a bird then. It might have been Kevin
Condin that gave me the bird. The rst season
Shadow ew with another owner, caught some
rabbits, broke a leg - healed, and that was when
I picked up the bird. The leg - the left leg - was
already healed. She had a little crooked spot on
it, and I had her for all these seasons. She was
a good bird, not a big bird, something like 28, 29
ounces. I think every time somebody wore a scarf
or a hat, the bird never ew well out in the eld.
The bird didn’t hood well, but she stayed on the
st well enough, long enough for game. And that
bird - I kept records on that bird and head count,
and the average that she’s taken is something like
60 head a season times 11 seasons. That’s 600-
something heads. That can range anything from a
mouse to a pheasant, but mostly it’s jackrabbits,
a couple of pheasants, and one blue-winged teal
and squirrels; that’s about it.”
“I ew Goshawks, Coopers, Sharpshins, Merlins.
Nothing unusual. Just - those are all the basic birds
that I went through in my - let’s call it 44 seasons.
Jim DeRoque asked Ed who he had hawked with
in the seventies:
Ed: There was a guy named Wes Stetson, Dick
Warbridge. Both these guys have pretty much
dropped out of falconry. Mike Coins, Bob Sobee,
Oh, yeah, John Pappas. That group. Les Winkler,
Ed Lynch, Lopez; quite a variety. Well, the trade-
off, you know, looking back then to now, today
we have telemetry, we have the balloon method;
we have better advanced medicine. Even the so-
called “giant hood,” that’s something new. They
didn’t have giant hood boxes in my day. I eventu-
ally did one, but I’m sure I copied it from some-
body.”
Ed: The Goshawk I had this season chased. But
they were never close slips. I saw him chasing
something, and I know it’s got to be a bunny by the
way he moved. You know, Goshawks, they move
differently than a Harris’ Hawk or a Red-tail. It’s
a little bit quicker on the turn, more erratic. Didn’t
catch anything.”
Ed: “You know, one thing I want to enter into this
get-together is my sponsor, Kenneth Gammon,
he’s not known, even my in my days, not that
known. But there were two things that he did that
I can always reect back on. One of the things
was that he said, “You guys should somehow, one
of these days, breed birds.” In those days, it was
unheard of. A wild hawk, whatever hawk, it cannot
be done. There was a group of us ying, and there
was one woman falconer - she was a good falcon-
er - and she had a Cooper’s Hawk.. The Cooper’s
Hawk was a real good game hawk, but nobody
within this whole macho group could gure out
what sex the bird was. “It’s either a small female or
a large tiercel,” that type of an answer. Ken went
up to her and stuck his ngers up the bird’s vent.
And she never met the guy before, and she was
totally freaked out. He said, “It’s a female.” And
everyone walked away laughing, guring, “What
do you know?” In something, like, two or three
seasons later - the bird laid eggs after eggs. So,
everybody ate crow. So, he said breeding birds
should be something you should do, and he did
that. And then the last thing he did was he sold
hawks. Everybody was really uptight over that,
even I was, because it’s a noble sport, and you
should be trapping your own, right? But what he
did was a little bit different, was that he was selling
imported birds from Pakistan and India, you know,
like Shaheens - or was it Red-headed Merlins?
His approach was that for every bird that was sold
would be one less bird taken from the wild; eyass
or passage. That was his mentality. But he was
still kind of blackballed then.”
Ed then recalled having been given honors as a
visitor at a European Falconry Meet. “What I did
when I went to the falcon masters’ competition in
Europe... All the guy did was give me his bird, be-
cause he was busy emceeing the thing. I took the
hood off; the bird took off and went the highest the
fastest, and they gave me rst prize. That’s why
I said, “Oh, God. This is like embarrassing giving
me rst prize.” So, I think that...I suppose there’s
a lot of political stuff that we could do to improve
our standing.”
Volume 34 Number 2 Fall 2004
Cheryl, Tracy, and Ed Ng
E
d Ng died May 27, 2004 at the age of 66. He was born and raised in the heart
of San Francisco’s Chinatown, lived in the Bay Area most of his life, settling
in Concord 28 years ago.
He was a graduate of Francisco Junior HS, Washington HS and Heald’s Business
College, in SF. After high school, Ed joined the Navy and served on the USS
Midway. He started his career in the early stages of the computer industry, but
changed direction to join his brothers in the family business of Taylor and Ng,
Inc. for many years. He also operated other small businesses in between.
Ed was the beloved husband for 27 years of Cheryl Wong-Ng, devoted father
of Tracy Ng, and caring relative of an extended family. His three passions in life
were family and friends; the sport of falconry; and support for the good works at
the SF Chinatown YMCA.