Falconry Displays

No sign of Jarvis sadly and it is doubtful I will get her back now, but stranger things have happened.

Of course, it has put a dampener on the spirits and as I say in my book ‘Falconry – aspects of care of the trained falcon and hawk’ it is quite easy to lose your confidence. I had a break for a couple of weeks while I searched for Jarvis, thought about what happened and awaited any news. The weather which has been so poor has not helped.

But now I am flying Frank again and he is doing really well which is uplifting. He is a bird that would not think twice about returning to the swung lure – in fact he did last year when he went pigeon chasing and I ended up bumping into him on the edge of the local airfield. As soon as he saw me, he came dashing back.

Had I got Jarvis back She/I would have learnt from the whole episode and the falcon would have been mentally far more resilient if it were to happen again. Sadly, it looks like we are not going to get a second chance.

Well, the wild birds are pairing up now. Groups of buzzards circling together and display flying as they pair up. So Spring is very much in the air.

We saw a falcon barrelling along at great pace on a hunting flight. I assume it was a peregrine, but it was so fast I thought for a moment it may have been a merlin. But they tend to have a more undulating stoop. Kestrels can motor and Sparrowhawks can have a falcon look to them in flight at times, but I think from the disarray it caused in birds skying up in its pathway it was likely to have been a peregrine. It was a fantastic show of speed whatever it was.

I will sign off with a picture of Frank from yesterday.

My book ‘Falconry – aspects of care of the trained falcon and hawk’ is widely for sale….

It is very much the lived experience from the last 50 years – which I am still having! Hopefully for those folk who have kindly bought the book have found it useful. I hope it paints an all-round picture of the care of the trained falcon and hawk and the joy and anguish it can bring.