Falconry Displays

Today was much milder with a very fine occasional drizzle but OK to fly the two lanners. Sprite our peregrine is getting closer to actually completing his moult though he dropped the final outer primary feather on one side yesterday! so one to go on the other wing. So he will stay lofted for a while longer to complete the process.

We saw three wild birds of prey this morning. A lovely Kestrel down at the flying field working a ditch along the edge of a recently planted corn field. The light made him look a lot bigger. I wonder if J A Baker had this problem when he claims to have seen peregrines hovering. Peregrines do not routinely hover – I once saw one hover briefly over St Marys Church in Thornbury – but that is it.

Frank the lanneret start calling to the Kestrel – I had not seen it in the background – a recognition call to another falcon – nearly of its own kind. I did not fly him a second time just in case he wandered over. No sooner had a I blinked and the Kestrel had gone and there was no sight of him when I flew Jarvis.

Talking about falcons I saw a lovely wild peregrine while out walking the dog. Some magpies made a hasty retreat to a high hawthorn hedge and as I looked up the majestic shape of a female peregrine swished over my head at about 200ft – her operating height. She looked magnificent, powerful as she held herself in the wind while she considered her options – and then peeled away to continue her hunting trip and disappeared into the distance. I have found a couple of peregrine kills including a gull in an adjacent field so maybe this is one of her favoured hunting routes.

I include a picture of Sprite our current peregrine down at the flying field last summer – he reminds me of a Spitfire! same sort of shape or I should say a Spitfire reminds of a peregrine falcon!

We found some old pictures including this one of a Harris hawk – I think it is Arizona.

He is sitting in a tree watching me below. This is how we hunt many hawks including buzzards out of trees – they can ‘still’ hunt where we let them get on with it – nothing better in the summer with plenty of rabbits about or alternatively we could try and flush something for him like a pheasant or we could just be walking with the hawk ‘following on’. Every so often he would be called down to the fist for some food –  to add value to the process. A gateway to food. A really smart hawk will fly on ahead and wait for you to flush quarry towards it.  A lot of the flying shots in my book ‘Falconry – aspects of care of the trained falcon and hawk’  in section 5 ‘The development of the hawk including buzzards’ are of Arizona but much later ones than the picture  above. Just before I forget the other raptor we saw was a buzzard – in flight surrounded mobbing crows.