t is very important to me that responsible falconers put themselves into the public's eye to ensure a positive view and accurate representation of falconry. If all responsible participants of any group withdraw from the public's view then it is only the irresponsible of that group that are left from which the public will form a perception. When falconry birds are seen to be healthy and eagerly cooperating with their falconer as the vast majority are, it cannot be said that these birds are being coerced or mishandled. Because of this view, I have donated my personal time to the projects of others when I have been fortunate enough to be asked in order to further the accurate understanding of falconry. I have written original materials for some groups, donated pictures to some, and spent time personally educating others. Indeed the entire site is intended to open all aspects of falconry for the public to understand, and hopefully support. The original materials here have been used for education in such a variety of places as the Klamath Bird Observatory, the American Birding Association, the IFF Beginner's Starter Pack, the Vermont Institute of Natural Sciences, and articles have been reprinted in the California Hawking Club Journal.
I have been fortunate enough to contribute to a number of publications, both publicly available and private. Links to some of the articles and sources can be found here. I also have hand-outs on a variety of topics related to ecology, conservation, raptors, and falconry and use them in education. These are made available for download, printing, and sharing. If you use these in your own education, please cite this site as the source of the information.
The Modern Apprentice has been cited by many of the states in their reference materials and guides for learning about falconry. It's also been featured by many falconry clubs including the California Hawking Club and the Washington Falconers Association. It is one of the source materials cited in the book How Fast Can A Falcon Dive?: Fascinating Answers to Questions about Birds of Prey (Animals Q & A) by Peter Capainolo and Carol A Butler. It's quoted in MentalFloss' article on hoods. Cited in the Proceedings of the 44th Annual National Conference of the American Association of Zoo Keepers, Inc - The Shape of Raptor Training delivered by Jennifer Conrad. One of the main citations for Wikipedia's article on falconry. The Modern Apprentice is the primary source for AskDefine's coverage on falconry. The Oregon Falconers club cites for their material on raptor medical care.
The handouts and information available on The Modern Apprentice has had the distinction of being used by rehabilitation organizations to help train their new volunteers, several falconry organizations in their educational efforts, authors researching books, and historical re-enactment groups to supplement their outreach programs. If you use the materials, please let me know how they worked for you!
2016 - The Journal of Washington Falconry - Impact of Wild Take of Raptors for Falconry in Washington State
2012 - The Journal of Washington Falconry carried a paper analyzing the causes of mortality among falconry raptors. The data covered 10 years of Washington State falconry reports giving a substantial insight into the causes of death of falconry raptors. mortality.pdf
2012 - The anthology The Passage Cooper's Hawk and Those Who Fly Them was published. The opening chapter is a narrative of training and hunting with a passage Cooper's Hawk.
September 2007 - The National Red Setter Field Trial Club published the Falconry FAQ to compliment an article by one of their members on the Red Setter in falconry.
February 2007 - New Jersey Audubon Society's Nature Center of Cape May produced educational lesson plans for their Cumberland County Winter Eagle Festival's Raptor Discovery Days. The videos and much information for many of their programs came from this site.
November 2006 - Speaker at Raptors on the Prairie conference. Authored a presentation on the use of raptor mutes as a leading indicator of disease and illness. Hosted by the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center
The full PowerPoint presentation is available here mutes.ppt
December 2005 - Writer for the North American Falconers Association. This research paper was featured in the December 2005 issue of the NAFA Hawk Chalk. The full paper is available here. Longitudinal Analysis of Cases, Violations, and Citations involving the MBTA Regulations from January 1, 2000 through April 20, 2005
April 2005 - Authored research paper on the current population pools of native raptors, the impact of falconry, and the population trends of our wild raptor populations. Population Pools of Native Raptors
March 2005 - Guest writer for the Primitive Ways site. This article has subsequently been selected for their exclusive CD. Falconry - Modern and Traditional
Sample inspections report form. I have several copies of this printed out and available with my falconry papers so that if I am inspected by officials, I have a method to drive the inspection and ensure I have met the criteria of our regulations. Note that this is not an official publication by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, but an inspection report form that I have worked with our state association and law enforcement to ask the WDFW to standardize on. Washington is still working through all the approvals on this. Falconry Inspection Report form
Mews Sign For placing on your mews with your appropriate paperwork. Gives emergency numbers and a bit of deterrence to any visitors.
NOTE: This is not a sign carrying any legal weight and is not intended to convey legal information to the possessor or to visitors to your mews. It is for information, contact numbers, and to act as a kindly worded deterrent to the casual visitor who may not realize that they need to respect the mews and the bird's space.
Permission to Temporarily Possess Raptor A template for those times when another falconer, or other appropriate permittee, will be caring for your raptor. Cites specific regulations and helps you hand over a raptor for temporary care with all the necessary information. Just print a copy, fill it in, attach a copy of your bird's 3-186A, and hand it over to your raptor sitter.
NOTE: This is not a document carrying any legal weight and is not intended to convey legal information to the possessor or to agents. It is for assistance in including the proper information when handing your raptor for short-term care to another properly permitted person.
Permission to access land for falconry A template for conveying what falconry is to landowners and gaining written permission from them. You will need to edit this inserting your own name, and editing it for your purposes. It can also be useful to hand landowners information on pasture management.
NOTE: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is not a document carrying any legal weight and is not intended to convey legal information to the possessor or to agents. It is for assistance in your creation of your own document based on your state's laws on your understanding of the laws. This has been based on many different falconers' forms and has some good notes for any falconer.
Card for carrying to access land for falconry A template for a card you can carry and give to a landowner securing written permission for accessing land for hunting.
NOTE: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. This is not a document carrying any legal weight and is not intended to convey legal information to the possessor or to agents. It is for assistance in your creation of your own document based on your state's laws on your understanding of the laws. This has been based on many different falconers' forms and has some good notes for any falconer.
Disease Card For placing in your wallet in case of medical emergency. Raptor rehabilitators, falconers, and hunters come into contact with a variety of diseases that are not typical in the general population. Because of this if you develop symptoms which are difficult to treat or diagnose, providing your physician with a sampling of common zoonotic diseases can help them diagnose and treat you.
Raptors A general handout on raptors, useful for educational settings.
Pasture Management A handout on managing pastures and fields for wildlife.
s a corporate speaker, Lydia Ash has had many speaking engagements, a few include:
October 2008 - Chair for the Google Test Automation Conference 2008 (GTAC 2008)
January 2008 - Panelist for the Women in Leadership Symposium
July 2007 - Panelist for the New York Test Engineering Forum co-sponsored by the Society of Women Engineers
http://www.swe.org/SWE/regionE/Sections/sweny/Miscellaneous/GoogleEvent072507.pdf
July 2007 - Speaker at the Conference of the Association for Software Testing (CAST)
Data Set Analysis: Approaches to testing when the build is the data
Identifying some simple approaches to some complex problems.
July 2007 - Panelist for a QA SIG/CAST testing exhibition
March 2007 - Speaker to the Society of Women Engineers
Working in the Innovation Factory
December 2006 - Speaker at University of Washington
Essential Skills for Web Testers
September 2006 - Speaker at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference 2006 (PNSQC)
A Peek Inside Google's Innovation Factory
April 2006 - Invited speaker at Amazon
5 Things to Make Your Web Testing More Effective
Lydia Ash focuses on effective testing - making the testing efforts the most effective they can be. As such, her talk will focus on 5 high impact things testers can do to be more effective immediately, yet with a small additional cost to their time and effort. Suggestions are concrete with immediate results that set a firm foundation for web testing.
April 2006 - Invited speaker to Association for Women in Computing (AWC)
AJAX in Action: Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
Sold out engagement to AWC's engineers!
Topics covered include:
- What is AJAX?
- Components of modern web applications
- How Gmail works
- Pros and Cons of AJAX
- Public AJAX libraries
- Similar burgeoning technologies
- Testing AJAX applications
Lydia Ash's book The Web Testing Companion has received much recognition as one of the foremost books on testing web applications, and is now one of the foundation books given to new Google employees and on several of Microsoft's recommended reading lists.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471430218
Wiley online site for The Web Testing Companion
https://www.wiley.com/compbooks/ash/
Lydia was a consulting expert on the recently published book Software Requirement Patterns by Stephen Withall.
https://www.amazon.com/Software-Requirement-Patterns-Best-Practices/dp/0735623988/
Lydia is also a co-author of the chapter on behavior change in the recently published Handbook of Marketing Analytics.
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Marketing-Analytics-Applications-Management/dp/178471674X
Sites Citing The Web Testing Companion
An Introduction to Quality Assurance
http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2005/01/13/quality_assurance.html
Wikipedia - Software Testing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
Software QA and Testing Resource Center
http://www.softwareqatest.com/qatbks1.html
StickMinds - Book Review
https://www.stickyminds.com/book/web-testing-companion
Microsoft - Security Booklist
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/tn-archive/dd277371(v=technet.10)
Plynt - Penetration Testing
COQAA - Recommended Reading
Answers.com - Software Testing
https://www.answers.com/search?q=software-testing
R.S. Pressman - Resources
http://www.rspa.com/spi/webe-test.html
Testing web applications in practice
Quality Assurance and Software Testing booklist
http://quality-assurance-software-testing.blogspot.com/2005/07/software-testing-books-amazoncom.html
Testing Testing 1, 2, 3
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/testing123/tag/testing/
The Web Testing Companion is also used as a university textbook for several courses including:
Institute for Advanced Studies in Software Testing
University of Leeds
https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/media
University of Calgary - Software Reliability and Testing 521
University of Calgary - Software Reliability and Testing 635
Lydia Ash's paper Data Set Analysis published in the CAST 2007 proceedings describes the foundations to testing data accuracy and relationships in large-scale sets of data through simple approaches to complex problems.
Data Set Analysis