Not so long ago, well a few millions years ago, there was a bird that was the absolute master of its world.

Today we consider the eagle to be the ultimate predator and top of the food chain, and rightly so, as there is no other bird or beast that can master it or regularly use it for food.

But between two and sixty million years ago, just before modern man walked upon the earth there was a bird so ferocious more…

Alice - sparrowhawk

As I am writing this I am also looking out the window at Alice in her aviary, sitting as usual next to her mate in an open fronted pen, surveying as only a queen can, over what she knows to be her territory. She is nine years old this year, and looks out over the scratching chickens and watches the children and dogs play with disinterest. Further along the row of aviaries are other hawks and falcons I have hunted with over the same distant hills and fields, but none of them can claim to own the view as she can.

Alice was taken more…

When I was a beginner I knew everything. Now as I learn more about falconry I realise just how little I do know. Falconry, I read, had not changed in thousands of years. I enjoyed reading about the different aspects of falconry such as rook hawking, game hawking, flying merlins and sparrowhawks and each one I mentally ticked off as something that I would master with time. Images of a trained sparrowhawk bursting through a flock of feeding pigeons, or a ringing flight with falcon and prey disappearing into the clouds kept me awake many a night. So that was my plan, get all the equipment, a good food supply, not forgetting the bird and the rest will fall into place. more…

“Lamping!”
“You don’t do that, do you?’’

I once sat at a table with some well known British falconers, purists from ‘Ye Olde Scool of Fauconrie’- you know the type, when I happened to mention that my female Redtail was catching rabbits both day and night. I couldn’t believe the reaction it got, ‘It’s unnatural’, ‘hawks shouldn’t fly at night’, ‘that’s not cricket’. Luckily for me nobody was armed, the fact we had just finished a conversation about another traditional past time; adultery, didn’t seem to bother them at all. 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…