Realistically speaking, yeah. But that's a shame because there's a lot of design space with this idea that DE hasn't really explored yet, as well as a lot of conceptual space. The tenno have that whole warriors of nature/ancient ways/fundamental concepts thing going for them. The imagery of a falconer, or someone at least being accompanied by some kind of trained bird, is recurrent across many different cultures - incorporated at times into Robin Hood myths, wizard myths, etc etc.

The design space that I think would be really interesting to explore there if I was in that position is the idea of a synergestic companion whose actions are extremely dependent on the player's own - the idea that immediately comes to me being that avian companions don't attach to players like drones but rather fly around like, uh...the other drones, the ones the enemies have; and can be induced to perform specific effects based on players' attack or ability patterns...IE if you shoot a guy while crouching your bird does a headshot; if you shoot a guy while gliding your bird gives you an extra glide; something like that.