Long the favourite pastime of the great and good, falconry – using birds of prey to hunt – has remained remarkably unchanged since the first time someone looked at a raptor and thought “I’m going to turn that into a weapon”.
So too has the art’s arcane, yet universal, jargon: eyas, passager, tercel, austringer. The words evoke something old and just out of reach.
And old it is.
Hittite hawkers
It all began in ancient Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) – at least, we think so. The earliest pictorial evidence we have of falconry is stone slabs carved by the Hittites in the second millennium BC, but the exact origins are unclear.
From there, it spread both east and west, into China, India, Korea and Japan between the first millennium BC to fifth century AD, and adopted by the various Germanic tribes of Europe from around the fifth century, ending up in England sometime between the sixth and eighth centuries.
Wherever its cradle, it probably started as a means of hunting fresh meat, rather than a sport. Falcons can take birds as large as a bustard or crane, and a goshawk can provide about a dozen rabbits a day.
Kestrel for a knave
While the terms “falconry” and “hawking” are used interchangeably these days, they once had more specific meanings. A falconer flew falcons (of the genus Falco), typically peregrines and gyrfalcons, while hawkers or “austringers” used true hawks (of the genus Accipiter), typically the goshawk. Some might also fly buzzards (larger hawks of the genus Buteo) or eagles.
Female raptors, being bigger than the males, were preferred as hunters. So in English falconry tradition the terms “falcon” and “hawk” referred specifically to female birds. All male hawks and falcons were called “tercels” (from the Latin tertius), because they are roughly one-third smaller than the females.
The earliest printed English treatise on falconry, The Boke of St Albans (1486), had it that each bird of prey was assigned to your social rank:
Emperor: eagle, vulture or merlin
King: gyrfalcon
Prince: peregrine falcon
Duke: “a falcon of the loch” – possibly an osprey or peregrine.
Earl: peregrine falcon
Baron: “a bustard” – probably meant to be “a buzzard” (from the Old French busard), although buzzard meant any broad-winged raptor.
Knight: saker falcon
Squire: lanner falcon
Lady: merlin
Young man: hobby
Yeoman: goshawk
Poor man: a tercel – probably a male sparrowhawk.
Priest: sparrowhawk
Holy water clerk: sparrowhawk
Knave or servant: kestrel (this actually comes from the unprinted The Booke of Hawkyng after Prince Edwarde Kyng of Englande, not The Boke of St Albans)
But it’s unlikely this hierarchy was followed. Rather, raptors were selected for their suitability to the quarry being pursued.
Longwings, like the peregrine and gyrfalcon, were flown over open terrain to hunt other birds in flight, often flushed from cover or water.
Shortwings, like the goshawk and sparrowhawk, adapted to hunt in wooded countryside, were generally thrown directly at ground quarry from the falconer’s gloved fist.
Broadwings, including buzzards and eagles, were sent soaring high above rolling countryside and mountainous terrain before dropping on ground game, like rabbit and hare.
Manning my haggard
Birds were usually taken young – either from the nest (called an eyas) or during its first year in the wild (known as a passager) – so the falconer could more easily get the bird used to humans and mould it into an effective hunting bird. A bird trapped in its full adult plumage (a haggard) was harder to break in.
My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,
And till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged,
For then she never looks upon her lure.
Another way I have to man my haggard,
To make her come and know her keeper's call:
That is to watch her, as we watch these kites
That bate and beat, and will not be obedient.Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, Act 4, Scene 1
Then began the long process of “manning” the bird – making it comfortable around humans and training it to stay on the fist, but never allowing it to lose its hunting instinct.
During this period, the bird was cruelly “seeled” – temporarily blinded by having its eyes sewn shut – so it didn’t get agitated, but this practice was eventually replaced by simply putting a hood over the bird’s head.
The final goal was for the bird to be so accustomed to receiving food from the falconer that it returned to him, or a familiar lure, if it failed to kill its prey. It also had to be willing to leave the prey for the food offered by the falconer.
And before each hunt it had to be the right weight: well-fed enough to be in good condition and health, but hungry enough to want to hunt – a condition of readiness known as yarak.
Sport of kings
But while it might have started as a source of fresh meat, the art of falconry quickly gained the favour of royalty.
Athelstan (894-939 AD), the first king of all England, for instance, enjoyed hawking so much that he included ‘birds which were trained to make a prey of other birds in the air’ amongst the annual tribute he demanded from the rulers of North Wales.
And Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250) – perhaps the most celebrated falconer – wrote the treatise on the subject, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (‘The Art of Hunting with Birds’). This was the first work of its kind, making significant contributions to ornithology and zoology.
The book is mostly made up of Frederick’s own observations and experiments: testing whether eggs would hatch by the warmth of the sun, and if birds used their sense of smell while hunting by covering up their eyes. He also touches on the anatomy of birds and their migratory habits, as well as busting the then-common myth that barnacle geese hatched from barnacles on ships’ hulls.
White gold
Hunting birds were highly valued, and loved. Indeed, when a Bishop of Ely discovered that his beloved falcon had been stolen, he excommunicated the thief.
The most prized, however, in both Western Europe and the Muslim countries, was the gyrfalcon, considered the most exotic and noble of raptors. They were imported from Northern Europe, carried by Italian and Spanish merchants or used as diplomatic gifts – and ransom payments.
The gyrfalcon is polymorphic, meaning the colour of its plumage varies greatly from bird to bird. Those to the south tend darker, while the arctic populations are the palest – and the most sought after. This drove falcon collectors further and further north in search of the treasured white gyrfalcon.
In 1225, Haakon IV of Norway sent hunters to Iceland to catch white gyrfalcons as a gift for Henry III of England. After two years, the expedition brought back three white and ten grey gyrfalcons. In a letter sent along with his gift, Haakon told Henry that he should consider these birds more valuable than silver and gold. And they were. After the Battle of Nicopolis in 1396, Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, liberated his son by sending not gold, but 12 white gyrfalcons to his captor, the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid the Thunderbolt.
Lex talionis
Little wonder, then, that there was a profusion of laws that punished the theft of raptors.
Under the sixth-century civil law code of the first Frankish king, Clovis, the fines for stealing a hunting bird rose depending on how well trained it was. Steal a bird from a tree – 3 solidi (Byzantine gold coins); from a perch – 15 solidi; from inside someone’s house – 45 solidi. In other words, the more broken in the bird, the higher the fine. (For reference, a soldier’s annual pay in the tenth century was about 12 solidi.)
The law code of the Burgundians, compiled around 500 AD, went a bit further: ‘If anyone has presumed to steal another’s hawk, we command that the bird itself eat six ounces of flesh from the breast of the thief.’
But it also led to the world’s earliest known avian conservation laws.
In the law code of the Lombards, given in 643 AD by King Rothar, you would be fined particularly steeply for stealing a raptor that was nesting in a ‘blazed tree’ – a tree marked to show that a protected bird was nesting in it.
Old birds, new tricks
Falconry swiftly declined from the late seventeenth century, as firearms became the weapon of choice for hunting.
But, while it may no longer be the sport of kings, falconry continues today – from the old royal hunting grounds of the New Forest to the Arabian Peninsula.
These days, hunting birds are bred in captivity rather than taken from the nest or trapped, and red-tailed hawks (whose call, incidentally, is used for almost all birds of prey in TV and film), Harris’s hawks, and gyrfalcon-saker hybrids are the most commonly used.
Kazakhs and Kyrgyz, however, keep up the practice of hunting with golden eagles in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, the last hosting the annual Golden Eagle Festival, where eagle hunters (Burkitshi) celebrate their heritage and show off their skills.
The relationship between man and bird is also evolving – or perhaps returning to its original utility, with the Dutch police using eagles to take down unauthorised drones, and hoteliers in Georgia using raptors to ward off boat-tailed grackles for the benefit of guests.