Falconry World

It’s been my quest for some time to have a good hunter of magpies. I’ve set larson traps, flown imprint sparrow hawks and now finally I’m catching them with Victor the male Goshawk. Hunting magpies is no easy task as anyone who has tried will vouch. The magpie is very common were I live and with the rise in the wild Sparrowhawk and the increase of magpies and decline in suitable habitat the grey partridge is in a spiralling decline. Before I went to the British Falconers Club meeting a couple of weeks ago at Norton Hall, myself Simon Higham and Ryan slipped my Gos from the car to successfully nail a magpie. Since returning from the BFC field meeting I’ve been really busy with Marshall Radio Telemetry and I’ve been kite-flying Ivor the Gyr to get more pitch.

The Gyr falcon has really proved hard work at times often outwitting me (not hard my five year old son does it all the time, Imagine homer from the Simpsons with Dewey from Family guy and you get the picture) anyway I digress. The Gyr has been very aggressive to other falcons and shown to much focus on me. So I’m back on the kite, but he’s been hitting the lure to make it fall down so he doesn’t have to bind and generally buggering around. He has now finally come good so He’ll be kited to 1000ft for another week and then I’ll hunt until the end of the season and then put him down for the moult.

Anyway back to the Goshawk.After dancing around like Id won the lottery on catching a simple magpie I cropped the Goshawk up. Today I kited the Gyr to maybe eight hundred feet, which was enough to make me smile, but then to cap it off I thought, “I’ll just have a look to see if any magpies are feeding in the stubble field.”

I leave the Marshall Scout transmitter permanently on the Goshawks trackpack, so I simply used the magnet to turn it on, checked the signal and removed his bullet jess’s. We were all ready. I used my VW Transporter van as cover and sprung out. Twenty or so Magpies scattered and the Goshawk bolted off the fist. I thought he might have been to heavy as he was 1ib 9oz but he flew sharp to the ground and then cut one magpie off trying to make to cover. The other magpies made a din at the sight of seeing a fallen comrade, but they soon scattered when they realised nothing could be done. Falconry is an up and down ride. It’s not for those that easily give up, nor is it really for those that don’t give up easily, it seems best set for those with a stubborn persistence, that in the face of increasing failure you just keep trying until eventually it comes right.