Falcon (10 page)

What, then,
is
this spacious, noisy, spectacular, beautiful and exciting activity Webster describes? While the sport – or art, or vocation, or however one chooses to call it – is
falconry
, the activity of hunting using any bird of prey is
hawking
. And you don’t train a falcon to chase quarry – she does so instinc- tively (in Western falconry parlance, all falcons are
she
, just like cars and ships and aircraft). The falconer’s task is threefold: to tame the falcon; to shape the manner in which she chases quar- ry; to train her to return should the flight be unsuccessful. No falcons retrieve their prey; should the falcon catch something, the falconer has to run to her and reward her for her efforts, while gently retrieving the dead pheasant, duck or grouse for the pot. After months of work and preparation, the falconer’s duty is above all else, as falconer Jim Weaver succinctly put it, ‘to provide an opportunity for his falcon to demonstrate its natural abilities to the fullest extent possible’.
⁶

aerial battles

Falcons are trained to fly in one of two styles – either a direct pursuit of quarry from the falconer’s fist, or by diving down onto quarry from a great height. In pursuit flights, or ‘out of the hood’ flights, the falconer first spies out the quarry before unhooding and releasing the falcon. Arab falconers fly their birds in this way at
hubara
(Houbara bustard) and
kurrowan

(stone curlew). These beautifully camouflaged sand-and-rock coloured birds are hard to spot with the human eye. So Arab falconers often use a spotter falcon, often a wily old saker, to spy out quarry for other falcons to chase. Scanning the horizon, the saker will bob her head, tighten her feathers and stare intently when she has spotted distant quarry.

In modern Europe, pursuit flights are most often seen between falcon and crow, or falcon and rook. Sometimes the quarry
rings up
or climbs hundreds of feet into the air, attempting to keep above the falcon. In turn, the falcon strives to climb above the quarry, so that she can dive, or stoop, upon it. Very high flights in this manner are termed the
Haut Vol
– the Great Flights. They were the
ne plus ultra
of early modern European falconry, and to secure them, peregrines and gyrfal- cons were flown at cranes, herons and kites. These high aerial battles were seen as reflections of human intrigues of political and military strategy and power. Heron hawking was a ‘game

A saker falcon chases a houbara bustard across the sandy plains of Baluchistan.

Houbaras some- times evade attacks at close range by squirting droppings at their pursuer.

A peregrine falcon flying at rooks in a pencil drawing by Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Bauerle (1831–1912).

of state’ to George Turberville, and poet William Somerville makes the most of these connotations. In his poem ‘Field Sports’, he describes an ‘aerial fight’ between falcon and heron that leaves noble, villager and shepherd boy alike transfixed with ‘wild amaze’:

The falcon hov’ring flies

Balanc’d in Air, and confidently bold

Hangs o’er him like a Cloud, then aims her Blow Full at his destin’d Head. The watchful Hern Shoots from her like a blazing Meteor swift That gilds the Night, eludes her Talons keen, And pointed Beak, and gains a Length of Way. Observe th’attentive croud, all Hearts are fix’d On this important War, and pleasing Hope Glows in each Breast. The Vulgar and the Great, Equally happy how, with Freedom share

The common Joy . . .
⁷

Compared to these buoyant, unpredictable and sky-cover- ing pursuits
,
the
waiting on
flight, a speciality of Western falconry, is an elaborate and formal affair. Here, falcons are trained to
wait on
at a high
pitch
, circling perhaps as high as 1,000 feet above the falconer in expectation that quarry – usu- ally ducks, or gamebirds such as pheasants, partridges or grouse – will be flushed below it. When the game is flushed, the whole point of game hawking becomes apparent: the fal- con, espying the quarry, tips over into a vertical stoop, falling at dramatic speed on an intercepting path towards its prey. The sound of a falcon stooping from a towering pitch across miles of sky can be awe-inspiring: a strange, tearing noise like ripping cloth. As the bird cuts through the air, an adrenalin- filled rush of a kind familiar to airshow or Grand Prix attendees is the inevitable result for the onlooker. ‘You
are
the bird’, exclaimed falconer Alva Nye.
⁸
It seems that the quarry will inevitably be overhauled and killed instantly with a clout of the falcon’s foot. But inevitable it is not. Most flights end

The ‘Haut Vol’, high altitude flight, was revived in the 19th cent- ury by the exclusive Royal Loo Hawking Club, which flew peregrines at herons over the open heaths of the Veluwe region of the Nether- lands. The herons were usually released after they’d been caught.

In a 1940s photograph, the American falconer Steve Gatti exer- cises his peregrine to the lure.

with the quarry escaping and the falcon returning to the fal- coner’s lure.

The lure – a long cord with a leather pad or a pair of dried wings at one end – is also used to exercise the falcon by getting her to chase it in mid-air. It’s a device familiar to readers of
The Taming of the Shrew
, in which many obscure falconry terms are encountered. Shakespeare was writing in falconry’s European heyday, a time when its terminology was bewilderingly com- plex. As in any elite activity, the vocabulary and etiquette of falconry had gatekeeping functions; a proficient command of them attested to one’s high social position. Jesuit spy Father Southwell, for example, was exceedingly worried that he would reveal his true identity by forgetting his falconry terms.
⁹

There were dedicated terms for falconry furniture
,
for differ- ent flight styles, for every part of the falcon. A hawk’s talons were her
pounces
, her toes her
petty singles,
her wings her
sails
and chest-feathers her
mail.
When a falcon sneezed, she
snurted
. Some of these terms are still used by falconers: young falcons

are
eyasses
and immature wild falcons
passagers
. When a falcon lands she
pitches
; falcons
mount
into the sky, rather than climb; when they wipe their beaks they
feak
and when they shake themselves, they
rouse.

Their original meanings now obscure, some terms continue in more general use today: when hawks drink, they
bowse
or
booze
.
Tid-bits
are scraps of meat proffered to a falcon; a
cadge
is a field-perch; a
haggard
is a wild adult falcon and thus difficult to train. And while the term might be more familiarly applied to exclusive, eye-wideningly expensive properties in central London,
mews
were originally built to house birds of prey while they moulted in the summer months.

Falconers claim Shakespeare as one of their own. This engraving from J. E. Harting’s 1864
Ornithology of Shakespeare
playfully adds a falcon to the famous Chandos portrait.

falconry furniture

Despite the arcane terminology of falconry, its equipment, or
furniture
, is relatively simple and eminently practical. Perhaps the most familiar of all is the thin leather
hood
. Popped over the falcon’s head it blocks out all light, and apart from its role in the hunting field, its judicious use keeps half-trained or highly strung birds from alarming sights. Hoods come in many designs – Indian goatskin hoods; soft Arab hoods; stiff, heavy Dutch hoods with coloured side-panels and a wool and feather plume. Modern artisan-falconers have created moulded and beautifully finished hybrid designs that are far lighter and more comfortable for the falcon than many of the ornamented older styles.

Falcons are normally held on the leather-gloved left fist. Arab falconers carry them on a woven
mangalah
, or cuff. The reasons for holding falcons on the left fist are obscure. Medieval clerics unsurprisingly saw it has having mystical sig- nificance. According to one manuscript, falcons are carried on the left hand in order that they should fly to the right to seek their prey: