Falconers and Falcons: Birds of a Feather

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold . . . .

--William Butler Yeats

Ed Ng and his goshawk, Shadow, had gone out on a bunny hunt just before dinnertime. When she heard Ng’s signal--”Hi! Hi! Hi!”--Shadow took off from the man’s forearm and gave chase to a fur target.

Now it was nearly dark and no sign of Shadow. The falcon could not hear the falconer--or vice versa.

Ng and his three companions formed a grid search pattern and combed a quarter-mile of plowed field, listening for the jingle of Shadow’s bell. The mud collected on their rubber boots till it felt like they were wearing ankle weights.

Shadow finally appeared silhouetted against the cloudy sky atop a bush.

“Oh come on, bird,” Ng said, exasperated, as he went to retrieve her.

Some people judge the ancient sport of falconry--practiced today by about 600 licensed falconers in the state--to be a violent pastime, with its goal the bloody capture of game. But those interested only in gore soon drop out of the sport, say its practitioners. Those who stay with it find that keeping a bird of prey requires more patience at times than raising a strong-willed child.

Disappeared for Six Days

Many is the time Ng, 48, has had to chase after Shadow in a cold field after dark. Once Shadow disappeared for six days, recalled Ng, who owns an ice cream store in Berkeley. (When he got her back on the sixth day, he said she was “dirty, muddy, bloody and heavy,” meaning she had dined splendidly while on her own.)

He must take her out for daily flights, and feed her fresh meat every day. In order to go on vacation, he has to find another falconer who is willing to care for the bird.

“It’s not like having a gun that you just put away and take out now and then, or like owning a set of golf clubs,” said Brad Felger, a horseshoer from Atascadero. The bird, he said, becomes a primary partner in the falconer’s life.

“If it is a slave-master relationship, we (the bird owners) are the slaves,” said Larry Baines, a maintenance worker at a chemical plant in Pittsburg, Calif. Baines said he once had $2.50 in his pocket on a Thursday--a sum that had to last until payday on the following Monday. He opted to buy gas for the car so that he could take his bird out flying rather than purchase food for himself.

Baines is president of the California Hawking Club, whose members gathered recently in Los Banos for their annual get-together and field trials.

“It’s not the killing of the game at all (that attracts people to hawking),” Baines said. “What we’re after is the flight.”

Felger agreed, saying that more often than not a falconer will release his bird’s prey if it’s not injured so badly that it could not survive. “There’s no reason to kill everything,” he said. “It’s not how much game you’ve taken, it’s the flight.”

Falconers are not so different from remote-control airplane buffs in that they like the feeling of identification with an object that twists and turns so beautifully in the sky. Unlike the plane operators, they have no control over the flight. But because the bird is a living thing, they feel a connection to the vessel that no remote-control pilot can. Baines said that the thrill of watching his bird make a perfect flight is like seeing his son hit a home run in a ballgame.

Those falconers who came to Los Banos said that their animals are supremely well taken care of, so much so that they’re better off than they would be in the wild. Young raptors confront numerous hazards such as predators, insecticides and falls from the nest. In the wild, mortality is as high as 70% for birds of prey in their first year of life; in captivity, that figure drops to less than 10%.

Dedicated to Birds

State Department of Fish and Game spokesman Andy Cortez said that strict regulations help ensure that, “The people that do finally get through all the obstacles are very dedicated to their birds.”

Applicants for a falconry license must take a written exam covering raptor biology, care, literature and laws and regulations. They must find a falconer at the master or general level (one with at least two years’ experience) who will sponsor them. The beginning falconer also must provide a cage, or mew, that meets federal standards.

Those who disregard regulations are subject to a $1,000 fine, six months’ in jail, or both. The rules are intended first of all to protect the wild raptor population from depletion by falconers. “The second concern is the bird itself,” Cortez said. “They’re not easy to care for, they require a lot of time.”

A wild hawk perched on a telephone pole beside Box Car Road near the Central California town of Los Banos. Crunching on the fresh kill in its beak, the hawk didn’t seem to notice the procession passing on the muddy road beneath him.

It looked like a medieval fair. There were excited children, playful dogs, and men and women, all on their way to a hawking meet. On the arms of the men were falcons, hawks and even one African tawny eagle. Jesses, or leather straps, hung from the birds’ legs; each bird had a silver bell attached to its jesses. The parade was accompanied by the jangle of many bells.

Whereas in old England hawking was (and still is to some extent) a diversion for dandies, these men were dressed like hunters or fishermen. They wore simple, warm flannel shirts, jeans and high boots to keep their feet dry in the boggy field. The birds, however, were as well-outfitted as those of the nobility who used to fly them in the days when falconry was the sport of kings.

Ornate plumes danced atop the leather hoods that hid the birds’ eyes to keep them calm until the time to compete. The hoods can cost as much as $3,000 although the average is closer to $100. The leather lure bags, which hang by the falconer’s side with a piece of fresh game inside to lure the bird home, go from $100 to $150.

In the course of Sunday’s “pigeon derby,” as it was called, falconers released their birds one at a time to pursue a pigeon or pheasant. Raptors are always weighed before they are flown to ensure that they are hungry enough to hunt--and hungry enough to come back to their owner, the food source, at flight’s end.

Wheeled and Played

Once in a while a competitor was distracted by a sandhill crane or great blue heron passing above the flat fields of Los Banos. Once they were done with introductions, the free and captive birds wheeled and played together.

Then at the sound of his master’s whistle, the competing bird would look to see a distant human swinging a rabbit carcass on a string. And the bird would return to the ground.

“They look for you (while they’re flying). They want to come home,” said Art Haschak, a secretarial worker from Willits. His prairie falcon, Cap, won the field trial portion of the meet by catching five starlings over the course of three days.

Once in a while a raptor realizes there are really no jesses tying it to the man on the ground, and it just keeps flying. Some birds are equipped with telemetry tracking devices for that reason. Falconers are sometimes forced to charter a small plane in order to track a missing bird.

“I’ve had birds that I just loved. When something happened to that bird it was like something happened to my best friend,” said Baines. “Others I never liked.”

So difficult is the making-friends stage between a falconer and his falcon that it’s easy to see how feelings of love or hate develop within the human partner. One of the Department of Fish and Game rules is that a beginning falconer either capture his or her own bird or acquire it by transfer from a licensed falconer. Most elect to trap their first bird, and so even by the time they’ve taken it home, they’ve gone to quite a bit of work, and probably been pecked a time or two.

The bird can be either an American kestrel or a red-tailed hawk. It has to be a first-year bird--with the characteristic brown predominant in its feathers--but it must be out of the nest and able to fly. This improves the chances that if the bird gets away from an inexperienced keeper, it will survive back in the wild.

Winning It Over

Once Dave Steele, a firefighter from Pinole, north of Berkeley, had captured his own red-tailed hawk and named it Roja (Spanish for red) he began the humbling process of winning it over.

He sat on an old sheet on his living-room floor for hours at a time with the bird, trying to get across the idea he wasn’t going to hurt it. He said he learned from watching his sponsor, Ng, that if Roja decided to test his intentions by sinking beak or talons into the soft part of Steele’s hand, he had better not strike the bird or try to shake it off. He had better not even flinch.

The idea is to endure the pain, pretending it doesn’t faze you, Steele explained, until the hawk gives up and relaxes its hold. Strike the bird in a moment of anger, Steele learned, and you’ve lost its cooperation forever. There can be no punishments. The bond between bird and man is made of patience and morsels of red meat.

Although Steele chooses to believe today that Roja’s milder nibbles are a sign of affection, other falconers agree with Larry Baines that hawks and falcons never really like their owners like a dog or other pet would. “The only real sign of affection is when they don’t act like they hate you,” Baines said.

The Northern California pigeon population wasn’t seriously affected by the Los Banos pigeon derby. For a larger bird to successfully overtake a small, fast pigeon, it must make a series of precise calculations. It must guess where the smaller bird will turn, and match its longer stride so that it will arrive at the same place in the sky at the same second as its prey, having achieved enough velocity to knock the smaller bird down.

The prey managed to outfly most of the competitors at the meet. After surviving a few passes of the big bird, the pigeon would say “Uncle!” by hiding in a tree or the undercarriage of a parked car. The aggressor then knew the game was over and left the victim alone.

Mostly it was nonviolent family entertainment. Children snacked from tailgate spreads and shrieked at dramatic moments--like when Gary Beese’s Peale’s prairie falcon soared almost out of sight before plunging down toward the prey. Beese, a fireman from Riverside, rewarded his bird with a bit of meat after his spectacular--but non-lethal--flight, and gently replaced his hood.

Finally, though, one bird of prey did accomplish the task it was made to perform in the wild. For a moment the competitor seemed to blend with the pheasant in midair; then the stricken pheasant toppled out of the sky. A hound dog broke from the sidelines and ran after the downed prey.

The owner of the triumphant hawk had his picture taken with his live bird on his arm, a dead one in his hand. Pheasant feathers continued to float down over the wet field for a few minutes. A boy ran out and caught one to put in his cap. A girl grabbed one to weave into her braid.