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SALT LAKE CITY — What started as a childhood passion has morphed into a lifelong pursuit and career for one employee at Hogle Zoo.
Recent setbacks, however, almost caused him to abandon his love and leave the field.
When he was about 8, Steve Chindgren spent his summers at the Hogle Zoo. Every day his mom made him a bag lunch and his dad dropped him off on the way to work.
“I was always fascinated with wildlife and wild animals,“ he said.
There, he caught a glimpse of his future.
During his visits, he'd make his way behind the old elephant building to the hawk cage. Eventually, zoo director Gerald DeBarry noticed the young boy. Noticing that the boy liked birds, DeBarry once offered, "'If you were a little bigger, we would give you one.’”
Some time later, DeBarry phoned the boy.
“'Steve, we have a hawk that’s just your size,’" he said.
Chindgren picked up a small box from the zoo, took it home to open it and found a small female kestrel.
A few years later, tragedy struck. DeBarry was bitten by a puff adder, a venomous snake, and died.
His influence lived on in the young boy.
The bird he gave Chindgren inspired him to become a falconer and bird trainer.
“Their size and their ability to soar and fly. They were just impressive as far as I was concerned,” he said.
Today, Chindgren still spends his summers at Hogle Zoo. He puts on bird shows, each season reaching an audience of 140,000.
“You know when I was little … everything just seemed pretty normal to have an eagle in my yard,” said Chindgren’s daughter, Jena Beckstead, who inherited a career with birds. She works with her father and fronts some of the shows.
“I’ve always liked birds but, honestly, it started with wanting to spend more time with my dad,” Beckstead said.
She worked at the show after high school and planned to move on to a career in health education, but by the time she graduated from college, she had fallen in love with the job.
“She’s (Jena’s) a little more normal,” Chindgren said. “I would have to say anyone that’s as obsessed with birds as I am and has pursued it the way that I have, it’s definitely kind of obsessive-compulsive.”
His daughter sees things a little differently.
“I really admire everything (Chindgren)'s built here at the show,” Beckstead says. “He turned his passion into a career, which was really inspiring, and I really look up to that.”
This season at the zoo has been a tough one for father and daughter. Last June, a macaw flew into traffic by the zoo entrance and was hit and killed. The previous month, Max, a 17-year-old lanner falcon, took a wrong turn, flew into a wolf enclosure and was killed.
Chindgren said he was so devastated, he thought about quitting the show.
“If you went into the woods with an axe and decided you were gonna build the log cabin of your dreams and you worked on it for 10 years and finally finished it, it was so perfect, and you brought someone back to see it and it was burned down,” he says. “That’s kind of the feeling that you get.”
Chindgren has started the slow process of training another lanner falcon to replace Max. Early each morning he flies the bird, Little Dell, to a lure and then to food dangling from a drone. The drone takes the place of the mother bird. In the wild, young falcons fly after their mother. When they get close enough, they get fed.
The falcon still needs to hone its skills and flying before it can be a part of the show, Chindgren said.
“We look forward every day hoping that he’ll improve little bit and get just a little more flight time and get stronger.”
To see when you can catch the bird show at Hogle Zoo, visit hoglezoo.org.
With more than 30 years in broadcast journalism, Peter is a skilled reporter, producer, and editor. He's won the National Press Photographers Association Reporting Award, as well as national NPPA editing and photography awards and six regional Emmys.
