housing it properly – even though these are wild and dangerous birds. A warm and gentle falconer I spent a few days with in Scotland once told me a story about a novice who took it upon himself to get a golden eagle as his first bird. This man was as mild a soul as I have ever met but he almost delighted in telling me how the novice failed to show the eagle the necessary respect and the precise details of how he was consequently attacked, losing the sight in one eye in the process. People are normally uneasy about having a bird of prey on their fist because they’re afraid of the bird’s beak, but it’s little more than a knife and fork. The taloned feet are what you have to watch out for. Only an arrogant fool or a respectful master of falconry would dare to offer a home to a golden eagle.
The woods clear and you climb a small hill, where the tufts and clumps of grass shelter rabbit holes. As you reach the top a long shallow valley falls away towards a derelict barn and a lonely telegraph pole. He bates, feathers wildly flapping, and fights to be free of your fist. With the height you’ve gained he wants to claim the roof of the barn. Now. Then you’ll walk towards him and scare the quarry as you come. He can sit, wait and pounce. Simple. You want him to work a little harder than that. You scoop him up and back on to your fist. He screams violence in your face, but any eye contact is unconscious. You walk gingerly through the holes along the ridge, heading further on.
The annals of falconry offer a variety of methods for training your bird, a process that begins with ‘manning’. You have to grind down the bird’s natural instincts to flee from you by keeping him on your fist for as long as possible. Eventually he will accept you, and when he is hungry enough will drop his eyes and eat from your fist. This is the first step in training the bird. Feeding from the fist opens up the possibilities of more advanced training as he begins to associate you with food. In The Goshawk, T.H. White struggles with the tempestuous Gos, who is delivered from Germany in a basket, only a few weeks old and still never having seen another living thing:
. . . he was tumultuous and frightening . . . born to fly, sloping sideways, free among the verdure of that Teutonic upland, to murder with his fierce feet and to consume with that curved Persian beak, who now hopped up and down in a clothes basket with a kind of imperious precocity, the impatience of a spoiled but noble heir-apparent to the Holy Roman Empire.
White introduces himself to Gos in a barn, and what follows is a battle of patience and instinct as White attempts to force Gos to accept him. Endlessly placing him on his fist only for Gos to ‘bate’ and end up suspended by his jesses until White again puts him on his fist, and on it goes.
I was to stay awake if necessary for three days and nights, during which, I hoped, the tyrant would learn to stop his bating and to accept my hand as a perch, would consent to eat there, and would become a little accustomed to the strange life of human beings.
Eventually Gos accepts White, suffering to sit on his fist while he walks around his farm, into town and even on a visit to the local pub.
Happily these days the best method of training birds of prey is more widely agreed on and much less stressful for both bird and man. For one thing eggs are no longer taken from nests but laid in captivity, and chicks are fed from the glove from the moment they hatch. This ‘imprints’ the person doing the feeding as the parent and means the bird will accept food from anyone from that moment on – as long as it is offered from a glove. This process makes the hawk or falcon think that you and they are the same species. While this has obvious benefits when it comes to training, it also means that they have no fear of you and if cornered will attack. Falconers also introduce the ‘lure’ earlier in the training process these days too. Feeding a bird of prey from a small leather pouch at the end of a long string familiarises the bird with the lure as a food source. You can then drag the lure, with food and/or animal fur attached, to ‘remind’ the bird of its natural behaviour when the bird is more mature. Because they tend to hunt prey that lives on the ground, hawks and eagles are taught to go for a dragged lure to simulate chasing rabbits and small animals. Falcons will hunt other birds on the wing (in mid air). In this instance the bird, familiar with the lure as a food source, will attempt to catch the lure when the falconer swings it around his head. Expert lure practitioners strengthen their falcons and improve their hunting ability by sweeping the lure away at the last minute in a cross between a choreographed dance and a martial art. (I’ve tried my hand at lure swinging, but was no match for the saker falcon I found myself pitted against. She mugged me for it on her first attempt.) The falcon needs this kind of training so it can cope with hunting in the wild – I saw a hobby hunting bats at dusk on the River Avon once, which was stupefying. Falcons have an instinctive agility that the human eye can barely match, but as the falconer is aiming to push the falcon into discovering its innate ability rather than teach it everything from scratch, it doesn’t take long for the bird to ‘get it’ and successfully hunt on its own.
The ridge softens and you stop in front of a bramble bush that shelters you from the field, slowly untying the falconer’s knot and releasing the jesses with your right hand. Closer to the barn now, you raise your arm and push him into the air. You must not let him get too far away. He glides down towards the roof, and lands on its highest point. You are 100 metres or so away when you begin to walk towards the barn. The brown fur of a rabbit lollops near you, but he just sits – it’s not worth it. He looks behind the barn, spots something and vanishes. Damn! But you don’t run. There’s no point. You twinge in panic – could this be the day he decides to leave? It’s always possible, but no. You remember his hunting weight. It’s just hunger driving instinct. Then he reappears on the roof. You relax with relief. You start to move again. The wave of impact from your footsteps begins to interest him, he spots something but there’s no movement. Then he beats his wings and dives down. The rabbit that you can’t see has a fifty-fifty chance. You imagine it darting left and right, heading for a hole. The hawk seems to be going too slowly. He’s barely moving his wings, then he arcs one way and then another. You see it! The rabbit’s back legs force him into a high leap over something, towards a bush. Then he stoops, wings raised and feet falling, covering, and then there’s no sound. You run now, forgetting the holes. You charge and find them both. He turns to you and squawks mercilessly. The rabbit is alive, one eye fixed in terror and the heart juddering under its fur. He mantles with his wings, talons gripping the rabbit’s face and back. Not sharing, not yet. You offer something else from the bag, a whole chick that’s dead – easier to eat and no risk of injury. Your left hand now firmly presses down on the rabbit’s back. He jumps for the chick and eats it in one go, cocking his neck to swallow. Your right hand reaches for the rabbit’s neck. You pause, registering the soft fur, and then you pull hard. The rabbit’s neck breaks and the fight is gone. You feel exhilarated and shocked. The quarry goes into your bag.
You sit in the wet grass. Breathless. He stands on the floor. There is no pleasure in death but also no regret. His eyes flit and twitch. You are tame. He is wild. This is the world. A glimpse of the truth that lies behind every breath becomes clearer in the cold autumn light. Whether you would have it or not, this is the world. Climbing to your feet you hold out your fist. He flaps his wings impatiently and is up. His feet tangle with the jesses. You unravel them and hold them between the fingers and palm of your left hand. He’s still concentrating. Still hungry. Always looking for something else.
Recommended reading:
The Goshawk by T.H. White
Falconry by Emma Ford
A Manual of Falconry by M.H. Woodford
England Have My Bones by T.H. White
Selection of falconry terms (reprinted from Harting’s Bibliotheca Accipitraria):
AYRE and EYRIE, nesting place. ‘Our aiery buildeth in the cedar’s top.’ – Shakespeare.
BATE, BATING, fluttering or flying off the fist. ‘It is calde batyng for she batith with hirselfe, most oftyn causeless.’ – Boke of St Albans, 1486.
BOWSE,
