Falconry World

Understanding the Bird of Prey by Nick Fox, is possibly the most comprehensive book on falconry. Published in 1995 the book is 375 pages, covering everything from the structure and function of a bird of prey to hunting and training techniques.

I must admit that my falconry reading is mostly done when I take a bird from the pen and start the manning process. This means most of my books have blood stains or worse on cover to cover. It gives me an idea how much I’ve read a book. This book is quite heavily marked, so that’s a good sign. The early sections of the book are a bit like the books I had to read for my Biology A-levels back at college.
This section doesn’t have many blood stains as knowing the difference between wing shape, aspect ratio and tail variation may be fascinating enough but isn’t going to improve my falconry (or may be that’s were I go wrong).
So after the biology lesson and then breeding section another lightly stained area we move on to,

Equipment and Facilities

This section is very comprehensive and often referred back to for its good information and it contains the shiny pictures. Nick Fox features in a few of the pictures and is easy to pick out by his beard and early eighties hair style that he still wears to this day.

Telemetry is covered in this section but is a little light on useful information that can help the falconer understand how to use his equipment better.
Nick does state the best way to learn, is it to use it and not just when you need to because your bird is lost. I personally feel this section should be a lot stronger as for some unlucky individuals (myself included) telemetry is a big part of the sport.

The equipment section is really good and points out some of the old equipment that doesn’t have a place in the modern world such as old blocks and bow perch designs.
A very useful design is given for building a shelf perch which I’ve built myself and used for years.

Development and Behavior

This section starts like it might be another biology lesson with another page of graphs.
It does however cover some brilliant topics such as Habituation and Conditioned learning. Both of which are very useful in understanding you bird and the way it learns.

Habituation is basically exposing a bird to something so often that it stops responding or starts responding. So for instance and a good tip, if your bird is afraid of a dog, allow the bird to see the dog when free in a pen so that eventually the bird stops showing signs of fear as the exposed bird has come to no harm and should behave better in the field.
This can have the reverse effect as well though. So as Nick points out, if you leave your lure exposed so the bird can see it all day without it providing food, then it is unlikely that the bird is going to respond quickly to the sight of it in the field unless it actually see’s the food attached to the lure.

I like this section a lot as it helps you understand the mind of a bird, (could someone do a book for understanding a women?) I would highly recommend every falconer should read and understand this section. At least then you might understand why a bird is doing something well or is responding to something bad.

Training and Conditioning

Traning and Condidtiong is a much more practical section and good for numb-tees like myself.
Another key section of the book that should be understood is appetite and weight control and fitness training. In fact the whole section in my copy is splattered with bits of rabbit and the occasional drip of day of chick.
So a well read chapter.

Hunting Strategies of wild raptors is good but again not really practical information. Its does what the book sets out to do; helps you understand birds of prey better.

Hawking in the Field is much better, detailed and scientific in its approach it does has some useful tips though it is a bit wordy and really useful information maybe buried in a load of text about New Zealand falcons, which Nick studied.
I wish he hadn’t. The art of falconry can of course not be learned through reading alone. But we should all try and understand our birds better.

This is a great book to use like an encyclopedia and not really read from cover to cover. Every falconer should have a copy.

Please add your own thoughts about this book and post in the comments box.