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Trying to make a perma-reduce person'd halfling riding an eagle, and due to feat starvation, I'm contemplating being a fighter with a ranger dip rather than vice versa.
Falconer starts with your choice of bird animal companion at first level, and not fourth, unlike a normal ranger (couldn't believe my luck in finding this archetype) buuuuuut there's this little text --
This ability functions like the druid animal companion ability (which is part of the nature bond class feature), but the falconer must take the bird animal companion, and that companion has only half the normal hit points.
And at fourth level, when a ranger typically gets their AC...
At 4th level, a falconer must select an animal companion when he gains hunter’s bond. He does not gain a new companion at 4th level; rather, his feathered companion gains full hit points.
Am I correct in assuming all that Boon Companion would do is give me a 5th level falcon with half the HP it's supposed to have?
If that's the case I'll simply sub in a Druid dip, I was just wanting Ranger for the full BAB and extra skillpoints.
I believe you have the rules correct. If the companion is what you are after take a look at either hunter or wild child archetype brawler. Hunter will get you the option to teach your bird skirmisher tricks and brawler would keep your bab and hp up and give you some other fighting goodies.
You could go with an arcanist and falcon familiar, using Enlarge Person (via Share Spells) on the familiar to get him big enough to serve as a mount to a tiny master.
When you can afford 6K gp, you can hire a mage to make your Reduce Person and your familiar's Enlarge Person permanent. Because it costs about 3K gp to make one of those permanent with Permanency, IIRC.
My understanding of this falcon is that your druid level = your falconer level, so that boon companion will have no effect. The only difference being that you must choose a bird and that it has 1/2 HP until 4th level. I'll say that the features are not completely clear so there is some room to argue, but thats how I interpret it.