My old Brittany died yesterday. He was over thirteen years old and had gone totally blind and deaf. Now he is gone to the great hunting ground in the sky to hunt all the rabbits and pheasants he wants – which doesn’t really make sense, because more…

 I lost my good female Harris Hawk “Martha” the other evening. It was five o’clock and the rabbits were just starting to pop their little heads out into the evening sunshine to feed. Just like I had done a hundred times before, I unloaded herself from the jeep, quietly closed over the door and snuck over the brow of a certain little hill to let her see the rabbits feeding below. The hill dropped steeply down to a laneway and there was a thick old hawthorn hedge bordering the grassy field where rabbits were plentiful. As soon as we peered over the hill a half-grown bunny high-tailed in across the lane toward cover and off she went in pursuit.

It was a typical downward glide flight. A couple of strong flaps to get herself in motion, then she set her wings and glided steadily on a direct course for her target. Not the most exciting of flights but it can be very effective, as from the rabbit’s point of view there is very little moving to catch its eye, and then it’s nearly too late as the hawk is upon it and the rabbit must act extremely fast if it wants to survive, and this is exactly what happened in this case. The rabbit ran, she tried her best, but she missed and I saw her standing on the ditch by the lane under a large sycamore tree.

And this is where things went wrong. more…

There are two types of falconers in this world; those that love Harris Hawks, and those that don’t.

If everyone loved the same things, if everyone agreed on everything and thought the same the world would be a less colourful and interesting place, so this surely can only be a good thing.

Since the first Harris Hawks were introduced into the falconry circle just a few decades ago more…

The other day I was out with my two year old female Harris Hawk. While waiting for the rain to stop I sat in the jeep listening to the radio before the usual ceremony of putting on my wellies and jacket. The landscape was quite undulating with a steep drop off to the left, and as Joe Duffy’s phone lines opened and the callers complained about whatever was on the agenda that day, I noticed a raven and a hooded-crow more…

I just happened to be out exercising a falcon some weeks back, when I noticed someone watching me from a distance. After the bird had flown and was back up and feeding on the fist, the person approached and commented on how graceful the bird was, and what a pleasure it was to see him being put through his paces.  more…

I had a very enjoyable day yesterday with ten of my hawks, the kids and a couple of helpers, in an estate where the house and gardens are open to the public. Usually they get 40 to 50 people in on a Sunday but with the help of a large sign outside and a notice in the paper advertising the event we mananged to draw 450 people last week and in my estimation well over 600 yesterday. The hawks and falcons behaved impecably and neither them or the kids bit anyone. more…

Sparrowhawk

The black cloud is darker today. It’s August and the sun is shining but I can feel the weight of a cloud hanging over me as I take her up in my hands. I know she is gone as I hold her weakened body, her feathers perfect and her eyes once so bright and menacing are fading fast as she looks at me.
I have kept birds all my life, birds of all kinds, from Appenzellars to Zebra finches, but exactly ten years and ten weeks ago I climbed a spruce tree to select a young sparrowhawk, a couple of ounces of fluff and talons that was to give me more pleasure, pain, fun and adventure than all the other birds put together, and here she was dying in my hands. I gave her a broad base anti-biotic knowing it was already too late, as some part of her body was giving up and it could reasonably be put down to old age. I placed her back on her nest ledge already knowing the outcome. I looked in a little while later and she was dead, the musket sitting beside her, doing his high speed laps around the aviary as I went in and lifted her body again. more…

‘Hello, my name is …………, I want to get into falconry and I was half thinking of getting a …….

(in this space put anything from a bat falcon to a lammergeyer), but, the only birds available seem to be redtails and harris’s. Are these good beginners birds?’ more…