Falconry World

The falconry season may well be over for most of us. Many of you will be having your hair cut, trimming back the beards and reacquainting yourselves with loved ones whom you may have only passed getting to the freezer for a day old chick before disappearing back into the field. Falconry really is a funny thing. To do it properly, it has to be like a vocation. Falconers that cannot give the time, usually give up through frustration, and those that do not have suitable land and quarry suffer the same fate.

So don’t relax. Don’t just put the bird in a pen and start communicating with your wife about things other than flying conditions and weight management. Get out there and get more land and look after what you’ve got.

Many of us have land to fly that could be dramatically improved if we put some time in to feed the available game and reduce the number of predators feeding on them. This will be the same the world over. For us here in the UK, Partridge, ducks and Pheasant all benefit from some extra help feeding, looking after habitat and pest control. Look at www.basc.org.uk for loads of info on pest control habitat creation and feeding. So lets break it down.

Looking after habitat.

For ducks, habitat that gives protection can be as simple as placing a floating reef in the middle of your pond for the ducks to sleep on at night to be safe from foxes. This can be easily done by using an old wooden pallet covering the top and adding some buoyancy aids under the bottom such as sealed water bottles. Rope the new island to some form of anchor to keep in place. It doesn’t however save your ducks from Mink. So you should also place Mink, traps around your site. Many traps are available online one good store in the UK that post anywhere is www.targetsports.co.uk There are cheaper though so have a good look on the net first. More tomorrow….