As I’ve mentioned before, when I was a kid my parents took me to Medieval Times in California. I spent hours being mesmerized by swordfights and women in pretty dresses and truly beautiful horses. And the birds…
To fist! To fist and to feast! Ladies and gentlemen behold the sport of kings!
I had never seen a falcon in flight before. I mean, I’d never seen one sitting still either. And there was this woman in the middle of the arena, in the most beautiful cloak I’d ever seen at that age, its edges trailing in the sawdust, and on her wrist was this absolutely magnificent bird. I had never seen anything like it.
I can’t say I ever had a driving interest in the sport of falconry from that time on. But my mum says I always loved the birds, that my interest in them dates from then, and she’s probably right. I don’t remember that. I remember being in first year university and my best friend introducing me to the movie Ladyhawke. Yeah yeah, it was the 2000 and Ladyhawke is 80’s fantasy at pretty much it’s best, but I had somehow never gotten around to a lot of films I should have seen as a much younger person and Silv made it her personal mission to rectify that situation. Ladyhawke was one of the first ones.
That movie, cheesy as it is, brought my fascination with the ‘sport of kings’ back to the forefront of my mind. I started looking up courses, looking up schools, anything that could teach me more about these birds. Eventually I found there was a raptor education center on the island, but it was a good drive away and I am strictly a bus girl. Thankfully, I have friends and they have cars 😉 and a casual conversation one day revealed a mutual interest in the idea of at least taking a half day course (the week long course I eventually want is simply too much money at the moment).
Bringing a falcon onto your wrist is something that’s almost impossible to describe unless you’ve done it. You think they’re going to weigh more than they do, but they’re exceptionally light which makes sense when you think about it as they do – after all – have to fly.
What’s truly amazing is how empathic these animals are, and how intuitive. Having a saker falcon on my wrist felt like an extension of my arm, she could read me, read my every motion. If I got nervous, she got nervous, if I was calm, she relaxed and just stayed perched there, feather’s fluffed.
They stay with us because we’re good hunting partners. We have their trust because we do right by them. They’re not pets, they’re not domesticated…they never will be. They can’t be.
It felt…natural. Not necessarily in the sense of ‘I have done this before’, but in the sense of …it just felt…like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Let’s say this: the week long course doesn’t seem such a ridiculous idea after all.