Falconry : more of a voyage than a destination In the Beginning
I have had a continuing interest in Falconry for many years now, admit it who
could resist the image of hunting with a hook beaked, talon clawed, steely eyed
bird of prey as your partner? However it is only as I have grown older that I
have discovered that all these things that I once wrote off as 'never going to
happen to me' are actually quite possible. Now I am retired and alone I didn't
feel that I wanted to take on another dog and having tried a year or so living
with caged animals, which just proved that they really aren't my sort of thing,
I would like another beast in my life. A hawk looked both inviting and a bit
intimidating.
I researched it... Well I googled it and I found Steve Charleton at
Sussex Falconry offering a
one-to-one day spent with his birds. He calls it the "VIP Falconry Experience"
and you get the talk and as it runs you have first some
small
owls
, then
larger and larger owls sitting on your glove. As the morning progresses you are
introduced to having a bird fly to you, starting with a small cuddly looking
owl but by the end of the day you have progressed to having the Harris Hawk, a
seriously well armed, no messing about apex predator, coming to you for the
reward that the falconry deal requires. I did my day at the end of September
2017 (I say a day but it's a bit shorter than that as they have to do all the
mundane hard work of caring for the birds before and after your visit so you
get a more relaxed 10:30 to 4).
So, before I start to write me into the picture, let's lay some groundwork. How
does falconry work?
Birds are depressingly stupid. To fly superbly everything has had to be trimmed
down for absolute minimum weight so the brain that does flight, aerodynamics,
prey selection and breeding has very little room left for much else. If you
want them to comply with your plans you will have to play to the simple
motivations that they can manage and hence everything is based on food. They
understand food. They quickly learn that if they do things for you then there
is an instant food reward in it for them although, when the tummy is full, ie
they are 'fed up', they rather lose interest. If you weigh the bird before
starting out you know how long it will play ball for and you never go beyond
that or it will just sit in a convenient tree and look at you
gormlessly.
I'm not going to try and give you the extended history of falconry, Steve has a
lovely presentation for that and fills in all sorts of interesting details and
I'm not going to steal his material. Let it suffice to say that men have been
doing the deal with hawks that 'if you will knock down our common prey for me
then I will see to it that you always eat regularly' for thousands of
years. Falconry truly is
the sport of
kings.
I went into the day as interested but a bit sceptical but, I will admit it, by
the end of the day I was totally hooked. I know that caring for an animal is
quite a commitment but a hawk isn't going to be much more labour than a new
puppy and it has the added bonus that while a dog always always wants to go
out, even in the rain, the bird doesn't. Steve offers a four day course where
you learn all the downsides of cleaning, feeding, weighing and training. I
booked it for mid November and started looking at my place wondering how a hawk
could ever fit in. Steve has a barn on a farm with an adjacent paddock, fields
and woodland but all I have is a suburban garden that may be large for
Brighton but is hardly a field.
Falconry, let us admit it, is not for the squeamish. Firstly you will never
house-train a bird but, more significantly, when the bird flies to me it is
usually because I am holding a part of a thawed out 'day old' chick or some
other creature as the reward for coming to me. I have more in the bag hanging
at my side. Every compliance gets an immediate reward because, although the
bird may have the attention span of a goldfish, she does have the eyes of a
hawk when it comes to where she expects the next treat to appear from. This is
what training a hawk is all about. You are a constant source of food provided
she works out what to do for you and, if you do it properly, she will even give
up the quarry she has just attacked for the instant gratification of the much
smaller treat in your glove. Admittedly you may then well have to draw out your
trusty field knife and finally dispatch the now mortally wounded target and bag
it up for later disposal one-handedly.
The Course
Again I'm not going to steal Steve's material but then this is the kind of
thing you need to learn with your hands on not from the internet. I had watched
some YouTube videos and bought some books but was rather disappointed by some
of them. Yes, there were lots of lovely stories about hawks and hawking but
what I really wanted was check-lists and drills.
My first training day with Steve was mostly about equipment. You get to make
things. You may later choose to buy everything for your own bird but making the
basics shows you the what and the why and helps you know what are the
essentials of some piece of equipment and what is just razzmatazz. I made a
leash, a pair of jesses and one anklet and I relearnt how to tie a falconer's
knot and thread a swivel. That may not sound like much but tying knots one
handed because you have an owl sitting on your other hand is, shall we say,
novel. I made a note to get more leather in as what I have at home isn't really
the right stuff. The smart money is on kangaroo hide. No, I'm not
kidding.
Day two was a study on diet, a discussion on the 'furniture' you need, diseases
and care. This ranged from the black art of feeding your bird enough to keep it
healthy but still motivated to hunt through to 'imping', the art of the mending
of broken feathers with pins and glue. It also progressed from managing the
equipment (aka tying knots one handed kneeling in mud) to flying first an owl
and then a hawk on a creance, a long line. Everything needs to be done in
strict sequence so the training is always being reinforced. I also started
building a list of recommended suppliers and a pointer to 'the' book to have
which, despite being out-of-print, was available across the web from
Blackwell's in Oxford. I wasn't actually doing anything physically hard but I
found this course a pretty exhausting experience as it was all full of
'new'.
Day three was decidedly more visceral. Literally. Firstly I got to watch while
a Falcon had a beak trim, a tail radio tracker mount fitted and its working
equipment updated. This involved it being hooded, no worries, and then being
'cast', that is being wrapped in a towel and held, which was obviously not so
popular. However the procedure was done quickly and efficiently and a big treat
when the hood came off seemed to be considered a suitable recompense. Then
there was food to prepare. I now know how to gut duckling, prepare rat and mice
and finally how to dice up a thawed 'day old' chick to make flying rewards.
One lesson in the afternoon was to get out the radio tracking rig and search
out an isolated transmitter over the fields. This is much harder for not having
a very visible hawk attached to it as they are rather tiny. The final stage of
the day was to fly two hawks on the creance again getting all my procedures and
knots right. Hawks are not very forgiving if you get things wrong or are a bit
slow and, at that time, I was failing on both.
Day four started with a reprise with the Hawk on the creance and either I had
learned something or the hawk took pity on me. Then I was instructed in how to
skin a rabbit and divide it into seven Hawk sized meals. In the afternoon Steve
loaded Clyde and myself into the van and we headed out to some local woodland
where he has a deal with the farmer. We were hoping that we might find another
rabbit as a hunting example but it didn't happen. It was a nice day for a walk
but Clyde had voles on her mind but still didn't get anything so after an hour
or so of following her through brambles and mud we recovered her and came back.
A catch would have been nice but we actually did all the procedures I needed to
practice which was the point of the day.
It was a good course and the books make much more sense now. After things ended
I sat down and started to assemble list for the toolbox and the other stuff I
would need. I do have a lot of 'useful' bits already but I like to dedicate kit
to a job and not to have to go and 'borrow' tools as I work. There was going to
be a hawk toolbox, a hawk storage bin and hawk space in the workshop with
everything in it nicely to-hand and ready to do the jobs as they need doing.
Things were starting to happen.
The Planning
Well the next thing I needed was somewhere for a hawk to live. This is
traditionally referred to as a Mews although technically the mews was just the
place you put the hunting hawks when they were going through their seasonal
moult and the growing in of their new feathers. Getting building works like
this done was clearly going to be the thing that took the longest time so I
started on it first and it finished, as expected, last. My Mews is probably a
bit over-complicated, that's just me, and I'm pleased with the results. I won't
bore you with the details here but if you really want them
this is its write-up.
The other part of the accommodation is a 'weathering'. This is a more open
place where the bird can be left on a non-working day to get some 'outside'
time. It can be a 'weathering yard', just on open place with a suitable perch,
or a more enclosed facility. I choose to provide both an enclosed cage, so the
hawk would not be threatened by our local cats, and a tall perch primarily for
doing drills on.
Then there was transport. Steve has nice, sensible double hawk box bolted down
to the floor of his Sussex Falconry van. That might have been easy once but I
had just that summer swapped out the big chunky old Range Rover for a low,
flat, eco friendly 'normal' car. Fitting a box into that involved a bit of
creative engineering so I wrote it up too.
Then there were tools. Now I must confess that I'm a bit of a tool nerd. I do
electronics and metal routinely with wood and detailed mechanical when
required. Falconry added leather to my portfolio with a few fun new
leatherworking tools for my collection. Actually the toolbox also contains hawk
medical supplies and a lot of hawk oriented gadgetry such as the Direction
Finders/GPS/SMS hawk locators and, of course, training lures which I think of
as hawk toys.
Sally
Well I wrote all that stuff above while I was waiting out the months between
finishing the course and finally bringing my own bird home so it's finally time
for you to meet my hawk.
May I introduce you to Sally. Sally is a female
Harris Hawk. She
hatched on about 15th April 2018, she was reared by her parents until she came
to the age when they wanted her to leave the nest and then she came to me on
the 5th August at about 16 weeks old. Please note that she is 'captive bred'
and a 'non-native' species to the UK so she would not exist and hence cannot be
released until she can be trusted to return.
The Harris Hawk is reputed to be both a good and a bad beginner falconers'
bird. They are good because, almost uniquely among hawks, they are a social
hunter and adjust easily to the life of a team player and they are bad for
exactly the same reason as they will work round the failings of a poorly
skilled falconer and won't force them to master the art properly.
Sally was as much a beginner as I was. She had been pushed out of the nest by
her parents who had a new clutch of eggs to worry at about the end of the
previous week and so the breeder separated them and phoned the customers that
their birds were ready. Then I came and chose her and she was grabbed from the
enclosure where she was busy bickering with her brothers and sisters. We kitted
her out with anklets et al and then she travelled 200 miles in the box in a
car. It was all a bit abrupt and new for both of us.
Actually she travelled very well and arrived still on the perch, sometimes a
problem to a young bird, and with no visibly damaged feathers. OK she wasn't
pleased when I got her out but last time she had met a human he was holding her
upside
down
so
her equipment could be fitted without damaging anything more than her
dignity.
As soon as she arrived at her new home she was spending hours at a time sitting
with this funny guy who restrained her gently and offered her treats and wanted
to do weird things like take her photograph and weigh her (initially 930gms).
She was probably thinking "Well adult life sure ain't anything like what I
expected." However she quickly went from 'Baiting' (flappy panic) to 'Mantling'
(threat display) to folding her wings tidily and accepting a tip-bit and the
'manning' process, where I became 'normal' to her, only took a couple of days.
Then we started to learn the important 'doing stuff for rewards' part of the
business.
Now I have to confess that I don't really think hawks, or birds in general, are
the sharpest tool in the draw. They have got flying and flying to hunt pretty
much sussed but ask them to step beyond that and they don't have anything. The
trick with training a hawk is to make sure they know where the next treat/meal
is coming from and then control their diet so that is what is on their mind.
There is, I admit, some interesting work on crows actually solving three step
problems that would defeat a chimpanzee but Sally's normal problem solving
technique is to scream at it then attack it with extreme prejudice. (If it
moves: kill it, if it doesn't move: eat it).
Sally learnt 'sitting on a glove with a man in it' very quickly and soon
progressed to eating stuff while sitting on the glove. Then we advanced to
adding getting on and off the T shaped perch stuck in the lawn and the scales
to her repertoire. OK she didn't cope with mornings very well but I'm a bit
like that too. I'd turn up and it was all flappy panic time but as soon as she
got her talons into the old familiar glove the wings folded away and she
clearly had breakfast in mind.
The next big step was to be sitting on the T perch in the lawn and being
offered a treat on the glove and hopping over from one to the other. Then we
swapped the leash for a creance, a long line, and progressively increased the
distance. I think Sally basically understood treats and the rest was just me
being awkward and she could cope with that. For her the obvious move from this
point on was to keep a careful eye on me as the treats came out often enough to
be crucial. Actually she got fed all of her diet in this way.
OK. Let's admit that it was not all that simple. It started well but something
spooked her on about day 9 and it was flappy panic at everything for a bit,
even things she had approved of the day before. It took two weeks of gentle
sitting together time to get back to day 8 again.
I guess that's what being a hawk is like. When you're little you just open your
beak and squeal and somebody drops a vole in or your share of that mouse they
just caught. However as you grow your full feathers you get kicked off the nest
to follow those who are doing the work and join in. If you aren't there when
the hunters are ripping up the prey you missed out. You'd love to go back to
the old way but nobody else cares. Sally had the advantage that while learning
I was always there to make sure she always ended with enough food going in at
the end of the day but if she wanted it on her program she needed to 'come and
get it'.
So what is a Harris Hawk like and why is it an interesting falconry
bird?
Well they have some interesting adaptions for their desert dwelling life style
in that, almost uniquely amongst the normally territorial hawks, they will hunt
as a pack. Often a family consists of a breeding female with a nominal mate and
a bunch of others that are mainly from the last few year's broods that manage
to bring in enough food to sustain this year's chicks. This makes survival in
arid desert conditions manageable but gives the hawk several traits that mirror
wolves and mean that they are primed for domestication.
Aside from being happy to be a team player and ready to tackle prey larger than
they are, hoping the rest of the pack will pitch in and finish it off, it isn't
too bothered at loosing much of its quarry to the rest of the team after the
kill so provided the rewards keep coming it will keep hunting.
Also, we have to admit it, they are not really sane. A rabbit is over twice
their weight but is just viewed as a challenge, often leaving the falconer to
'finish off' mortally wounded prey with a talon in its throat. In the wild
things like a rattle snake is just viewed as a prospective breakfast. (You can
strike at my wings, they're just feathers, but you've exposed your head. When I
can get a talon on your head/neck then it's all over). One can only surmise
that natural selection has discovered that it is better to loose a bird
occasionally so that in hard times the gung-ho tactics mean that the pack
survives. (OK. I admit it. I have this mental picture of a Harris Hawk perched
on top of a rather unconcerned elephant thinking "OK. I've caught it. What
now?")
Problems? Well Sally doesn't like seagulls and they definitely don't
like her. Fortunately living by the sea my neighbours are no fans of gulls
either so they get the blame for the ensuing shouting match.
What else? Well I have a freezer full of Sally food so visitors need to be
warned. That's stuff like day old chicks (you know: yellow fluffy things),
rats, mice and a couple of rabbits. It's not quite the sort of thing you want
to come upon unexpectedly looking for breakfast.
One of the other delights has been making Sally's kit. I've always been a bit
of a tool freak so adding leather working to my CV has been fun. Here is a shot
of some
practice
pieces
in cheap stallion leather rather than the posher Kangaroo hide Sally now
wears.
In the Beginning
Again I'm not going to steal Steve's material but then this is the kind of
thing you need to learn with your hands on not from the internet. I had watched
some YouTube videos and bought some books but was rather disappointed by some
of them. Yes, there were lots of lovely stories about hawks and hawking but
what I really wanted was check-lists and drills.
My first training day with Steve was mostly about equipment. You get to make
things. You may later choose to buy everything for your own bird but making the
basics shows you the what and the why and helps you know what are the
essentials of some piece of equipment and what is just razzmatazz. I made a
leash, a pair of jesses and one anklet and I relearnt how to tie a falconer's
knot and thread a swivel. That may not sound like much but tying knots one
handed because you have an owl sitting on your other hand is, shall we say,
novel. I made a note to get more leather in as what I have at home isn't really
the right stuff. The smart money is on kangaroo hide. No, I'm not
kidding.
Day three was decidedly more visceral. Literally. Firstly I got to watch while
a Falcon had a beak trim, a tail radio tracker mount fitted and its working
equipment updated. This involved it being hooded, no worries, and then being
'cast', that is being wrapped in a towel and held, which was obviously not so
popular. However the procedure was done quickly and efficiently and a big treat
when the hood came off seemed to be considered a suitable recompense. Then
there was food to prepare. I now know how to gut duckling, prepare rat and mice
and finally how to dice up a thawed 'day old' chick to make flying rewards.
The Harris Hawk is reputed to be both a good and a bad beginner falconers'
bird. They are good because, almost uniquely among hawks, they are a social
hunter and adjust easily to the life of a team player and they are bad for
exactly the same reason as they will work round the failings of a poorly
skilled falconer and won't force them to master the art properly.
Now I have to confess that I don't really think hawks, or birds in general, are
the sharpest tool in the draw. They have got flying and flying to hunt pretty
much sussed but ask them to step beyond that and they don't have anything. The
trick with training a hawk is to make sure they know where the next treat/meal
is coming from and then control their diet so that is what is on their mind.
There is, I admit, some interesting work on crows actually solving three step
problems that would defeat a chimpanzee but Sally's normal problem solving
technique is to scream at it then attack it with extreme prejudice. (If it
moves: kill it, if it doesn't move: eat it).