How does falconry work

Other traditional species such as goshawk, sparrow hawk, peregrine and Merlin are either harder to train or require specialist countryside in which they may be flown eg heather moor land, downland plains or fen country.

Older falconry manuals recommend training kestrel but they rarely take acceptable quarry, and due to their small size, fatal mistakes can be made when bringing them into flying condition.

One hawk is more than sufficient for most falconers, and certainly for all beginners. The quarry available to falconers in Britain — hares, rabbits, game birds and birds excluded either wholly or seasonally from the protection by the Wildlife and Countryside Act. The schedules to the act and the Game Laws should be consulted. Hawks moult their feather during the summer, and are flown during the autumn and winter months, when many people working full time are not free to go out during the hours of daylight.

The beginner should take this into account and ensure that he has sufficient time available in which to exercise and hunt with his hawk. An experienced falconer chooses his hawk in accordance with the sort of country either open or wooded over which he has permission to fly it and the quarry available. Far too many would be falconers imagine themselves starting with a peregrine — if not several peregrines!

In fact there are extremely few falconers who have the leisure and the open countryside necessary to do justice to a peregrine, quite apart from the considerable experience needed to fly such a hawk.

Not only is it the most highly regulated sport externally, due to a maze of state and federal regulations, but its unique demands are such that anything less than total commitment is doomed to failure.

To become one, a person must first pass a comprehensive, state-administered written test covering everything from biology to care and handling to pertinent laws and regulations. He or she must then build housing facilities, purchase certain equipment that must be inspected and approved by a state inspector, then purchase all the necessary state and federal licenses. Apprentice falconers are allowed only one bird and are limited in their choice of species. Falconers train birds through the reward of food.

With the regulations, requirements, enormous time commitment, and shrinking habitat, the sheer difficulty of becoming and staying a falconer gives rise to the question, why?

What causes a person to get drawn into falconry in the first place and what about this arcane sport makes almost everyone introduced to it develop an almost monkish devotion to its practice? It has everything to do with the birds themselves, watching them fly, interacting with them.

Or you may never see them again. Falconry is so ancient that its origins are somewhat murky. No one really knows when some enterprising nomadic hunter first lured an eagle or falcon down from the sky, but the first documentation of the symbiotic relationship between man and bird dates to around B.

What is known is that falconry has been and still remains an intrinsic part of human culture, especially in the Middle East and parts of the Asian Steppe, where for over a thousand years Mongolian eagle hunters have trained golden eagles to hunt animals as large as wolves. Either Curtis or Tucker will guide you through using the falconry glove, holding the hawk, and casting the hawk out to one of the nearby pine trees.

However, if you fall in love with the raptors that first round, this is the next step! What is Falconry? Image by holzijue from Pixabay What Is Falconry? A Brief History of Falconry Falconry is an ancient sport people have practiced for thousands of years both as a form of hunting for food in nomadic societies and as a sport for nobles in Medieval Europe, Middle East, and the Mongolian Empire.

What Does a Falconer Do? How Are Raptors Trained? Hawks in the care of a falconer are subject to some of the same dangers when they hunt. They can be taken by another raptor, or collide with a tree while hunting just as any wild bird can. But they also get excellent quality food, protection from the weather and most predators, and medical care. There are many falconers who have birds seven or ten years, and I know several who are in their teens and twenties still highly active and hunting.

Some of the oldest reports are a falconer who hunted with her 32 year old Harris Hawk, an educational Bald Eagle that lived to be 46, and an educational Golden Eagle that lived to be Most of the raptors that falconers take from the wild are returned to the wild, and in better shape than they would have been had they stayed in the wild. There have been a few very lucky and capable birds that have survived to such ages in the wild, but these are extremely rare. Are my cats in any danger?

Cats can be in danger, or they can be a danger. If the bird is in the house and the cat gets too close, there could definitely be injury to the cat. However, if the mews or weathering yard is not secure, it is also possible that the bird can be in danger from the cat.

Cat bites and scratches can also carry serious infections, so if the wound itself does not harm the bird, the secondary infection might. Do they attack on command? No, these birds are so quickly triggered by a visual of their intended prey that the instant they see it they will take off to attack it. A command to "attack" is really unnecessary because of this. What is the hat for? The hat is actually called a hood.

The hood has been used for centuries. Hawks are very visual and the falconer wants the ability to control what the hawk is seeing. If there is no visual input, the hawk has nothing to react to and becomes much more calm.

If the falconer knows that he will be taking the bird into a situation where there will be a lot of things that will be unsettling to the bird, then he will hood the hawk to prevent her from being frightened.

What negative impact does falconry have? Falconry has been shown in every study performed to have no negative impact, and even to have positive effects.

It was falconers at the core of the Peregrine breeding projects and re-introductions. Raptors in the wild face very high mortality rates. There are "natural" mortalities such as predation, fratricide, infection, and injuries i. There are "unnatural" mortalities such as electrocutions, poison, accidents, and shootings. Most birds who die are never found serving as a link in the food chain.

However, even with many unknowns, the studies on raptor populations all come to similar conclusions. Comparably, birds which have been taken from the wild for falconry frequently enter breeding projects, enjoy good health and medical care, and most are released back into the wild within a few years - in better health than they left the wild population and at an age where they can breed in the wild.

The positive impact that falconers have had on conservation efforts is immeasurable. Much knowledge of behavior, habitat, natural history and ecology is brought to light by this highly dedicated community.

Where can I get a hawk? You can only have a hawk with a license. To start that process, think about how your lifestyle would allow for you to be a successful falconer.

More on the steps to becoming an apprentice are on the Apprenticeship page. How much time does it take to have a hawk? For the initial training of the bird, it can take several hours each day. This may last for a few weeks to a month, and sometimes more.

Once the bird has the rudiments of training, then you can be out hunting. This may be an all day activity, or just a few hours, and once a week to three times a week or more - the more time in the field, the better the bird will be. On non-hunting days, the amount of interaction may be very little - just weighing her, refreshing her bathpan, checking her general well being, and feeding her - in total, perhaps 20 minutes.

However, this is every day, and there are very few people whom you can hand the responsibility to if you need to go out of town on business or vacation. Every day you must think ahead, defrost food, and interact with her. Less frequently you will be cleaning her mews, ordering food, making equipment, traveling to the raptor vet for check-ups, and going to field meets. There are many people who just are not in a position to have a hawk right now due to work schedules, travel schedules, location, or other commitments.

And there are very few falconers who would agree that they practice the falconry that they want to practice. Either they have other commitments family or work which they dedicate time to, or they are not in an area with as much game as they would like or the type of game they like, or they simply are not in a location to be hunting frequently. There are many who are practicing good falconry in spite of these setbacks, and are very successful.

It may take tradeoffs, and falconers are nothing if not excellent at managing tradeoffs. But falconry needs just as many supporters as it can get. If you are not able to be a falconer now, joining the falconry lists will educate you over time and introduce you to many in the falconry community.