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.

After another £800 on vet bills everything was now fine but in moving the Gyr around with feathers in blood, the inevitable happened and it looked very unlikly I would be flying him in the 09 season. So after trying to imp his feathers and failing another falcon was required. I travelled the perious journal into Yorkshire from Lancashire were the locals still fear us Lancastrians after getting there behinds kicked at the battle of Wakefield (that’s especially for Chris Southern and Anthony Rhodes who continuously try and re-write history only mentioning the Yorkshire victories anyway I digress) So I visited Armthorpe falcons owned by Brynn and Chris Southern. No tiercels were available anywhere but this single tiercel was supposed to have been picked up weeks ago and the customer had let them down. So After he was caught up and hooded he was returned to base and the sanctity of Lancashire.

That evening Simon Higham and Ryan from Astley came down to check him out and other than his most foul smelling mutes the tiercel was a dream. We watched Withnail and I the film and hooded and unhooded him all evening. He weighed in at 1ib 9oz with food in his crop. The following morning he was 1ib 7 and we thought he would fly at about 1ib 5 1/2 to end at 1ib 7oz by the end of the season. The first day he was placed in doors on a block at eye level and left unhooded for an hour at a time. Now this was a bit of an exception to the norm. He didn’t bait and would only show fear on being picked up but even then he didn’t bait off, he’d just hiss a little. He was offered food that evening, Quail, as that was his usual food and he hardy hesitated to tuck in. Only on finishing the breast meat off did he look up and notice my presence. He was then hooded back up and left outdoors until the following day.

After two days of this I introduced the lure by throwing a garnished lure to the floor which he promptly jumped down. A few days of that and then it was same lesson but on the local fields with the kite up a few hundred feet for kiting habituation which was to follow. After coming straight away to the lure from 30 meters with the lure elevated he was flown free. This was all going was to easy and I was just waiting for some hangover to hit. It did come but only after kite training which I’ll cover next time.