Falconry World

Falconry season is very nearly over for those of us that fly game, so what better time than now to reminisce about the past season. I said before that I was going to go through my training regime with this year late purchase tiercel. My Jerkin from last year had to be pulled out of the pen early after discovering that he had a swollen foot which ended up resulting in some rather expensive surgery. [Read more]

Here is a great film cooperatively made by the British Falconers Club and the GWCT formally known as the Game Conservancy Trust. There is some great camera work in the film and some excellent information for all those with an interest in one of the UK’s best falconry quarry. Now the season is all but over I shall spend some time putting up the video’s and pics taken over the hunting season and spend a little more time in front of the Imac rather than starring at the sky, well sometimes the sky, sometimes my feet.

Enjoy the film

Well I’ve been flying a sparrowhawk with Simon Higham for a few weeks now. The young bird is a captive bred imprint that belongs to another friend that doesn’t have time to fly so we stepped up. For two weeks now she has caught a magpie every day, some days even nailing two in succession.

Yesterday we spotted a magpie near the area we hunt Partridge, sitting on top of a thorn hedge. As we approached the magpie slipped off but as we looked around, we found what the magpie was after. A late brood of partridge huddled together no bigger than wrens, the magpie must have got a taste for them. No wonder our grey partridge is in such decline. We shall of course be doing all we can to try and protect our game. Sparrowhawks on magpies give classic falconry slips and you can appreciate why Jack Mavrogordato and many others before him rated this courageous little bird so highly.

The picture shows my son Aidan holding the two magpies we caught that day, wearing Simon’s jumper to keep out the cold. I think at least if he gets a realistic appreciation of nature in his early years he can make up his own mind about nature management when he’s older. So far the Sparrowhawk has killed well over fourteen magpies. She’s giving great long slips now as she gets stronger and fitter. I’ll keep up on the posts.

Trying to find the ultimate BOP is much like trying to find the ultimate…
Your going to get many different answers, but the truth is unless you’ve tried them all you won’t know…

When you first start, anything will do… you want the easiest and the quickest to enter and you’re not to fussy about the looks or how many people have flown her before you. This is OK for a while but after seeing a friends bird go, you decide you want more…

Then you get a little more adventurous. You try something faster with beautiful plumage which has a fast temper, and is hot off the mark, exciting to watch and gets lots of stares from passers by. But many bad habits appear like sulking after a missed flight that had you satisfied but not her. She demands lots of manning and expensive equipment to keep her and then she starts self hunting and you move on to something else.

Next you try a bird that takes a while to get up! but when she comes down its worth the wait but it takes years to train and even then they never perform as well in a crowd. When you fly alone its amazing but you want someone else to acknowledge how good she is. You start taking her for granted and you stop putting as many hours in with her. Then like the other she starts wondering around and after chasing her about you move on.

Then you get really into one and find you can’t try others without getting into a huge amount of trouble because of the friends you’ve made whilst flying this bird and flying two at once is really difficult as you can never give one your full attention and you end up flying the best one and only flying the other when the she is fed up or injured. Eventually you decide that the best BOP is the one you’ve got and if it puts up with you, it has to be good. After all the ultimate BOP is the one your with.

I hope you enjoy this short BBC video of a eagle in flight with a camera attached. Be sure to click the HQ button if you have a good internet connection for high quality it works a treat.