[MR] hawk hunting links (Fwd: Aoife-Links Digest, Vol 12, Issue 1)

[SNSpies at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/6/2005 1:03:32 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
aoife-links-request at scatoday.net writes:

Greetings, Faithful Readers!

This week's links list is themed  around Raptors. Specifically, Raptors that 
can help humans hunt. These  powerful and graceful Birds of Prey are intense 
hunters, fierce protectors  of their young (and equally fierce about kicking 
them out once they can  fly), and steadfast friends of Man since before 
recorded  history.

Raptors have been on my mind a lot lately. I happen to live  very rurally, in 
the fertile Valley between the Delaware and Susquehanna  rivers. Bald Eagles 
(who really aren't bald, just white-headed) are making  an incredible 
comeback here. Just last summer I pulled into my driveway  which is situated 
near a lake, in woodlands, and in a fairly unpopulated  area. Sitting on a 
half a telephone pole, about eye level with me as I  passed in my truck, was 
a beautiful, enormous, ebony bird with a wickedly  curved orange beak and 
yellow talons.  I was fully down the driveway  and parking in front of the 
house when I realized two things: 1) What I'd  just seen up close and 
personal, as he eyed me while I drove past, was a  young Bald Eagle, before 
his head turned the classic white of the typical  adult. It gave me the 
shivers. 2) I'd better call the cats in pronto. No  sense in them becoming 
kitty dinner.

We get a lot of Raptor action  around here, though. My favorite is the 
red-tailed hawk and the various  Owls we hear in the woods surrounding my 
house. One spring I noticed that  the local Barn Owls were multiplying 
rapidly. At Sunset, you could hear  the deep who-who-who of the parents, and 
the excited, high-pitched  who-who-who of the babies. I once dogsat my 
mother's tiny little city dog  (my husband calls it "the rat"), and my heart 
nearly stopped when I saw,  from the front porch, little Rosie narrowly avoid 
being scooped up by a  huge white snowy owl. I believe it saw me from the 
corner of it's eye last  second and averted it's dive--about 20 feet from my 
head.

So,  Raptors are very very cool in my book. They are also dangerous, useful 
to  mankind, and essential in a properly ordered ecosystem. This Links List 
is  about those raptors that can be trained to hunt with man. Notice I don't  
say "tamed". I don't believe that they can ever be tamed, merely persuaded  
to hang out with us, possibly for the fun of the hunt. Much like my  
teenagers, they're wild animals who're here for comfy shelter and the free  
lunch :) The best we can hope for is to offer firm suggestions for  behavior 
and hope they make the choices we want them  to.

Cheers

Aoife


Dame Aoife Finn of Ynos Mon
m/k/a  Lisbeth Herr-Gelatt
Riverouge
Endless  Hills
Aethelmearc

Ancient & Medieval Falconry: Origins &  Functions in Medieval England
by Shawn E.  Carroll
http://www.r3.org/life/articles/falconry.html
(Site Excerpt) A  swift bird, gliding high above the grassy plain, is the 
focal point of a  group of hunters scattered below. The falcon, its identity 
betrayed by its  size, speed, and shape appears as merely a speck cutting 
across the sky  like a shooting star. It suddently tucks its wings and begins 
to dive, its  stream-lined silhouette growing slightly larger, until a flock 
of mallards  on the small lake take notice and begin frantically to disperse. 
But for  one duck, slightly too young and inexperienced, it is too late.

The  Ancient Art of Falconry
http://www.matrix2000.co.uk/falconry.htm
(Site  Excerpt) The ancient art of Falconry is commonly defined as the 
hunting of  wild quarry using trained birds of prey. Strictly speaking 
Falconry  involves only the long-winged hawks, the Falcon family, and only a 
person  who flies a falcon at wild quarry is entitled to call themselves a  
Falconer, where as the term Hawking should be used for anyone using a  Broad 
or Short winged Hawk, namely the true Hawks, Buzzards and Eagles for  the 
same purpose, and this person would be termed an  Austringer.

The Medieval Bestiary:  Hawk
http://bestiary.ca/beasts/beast249.htm
(Site Excerpt) The hawk has  great courage in a small body; its determination 
arms it better than its  claws do. It is called a robber bird because it 
greedily snatches food  from other birds. The hawk is known as a harsh 
parent, refusing to feed  its young when they are able to fly, but rather 
beating them with its  wings to drive them out of the nest.

Medieval  Hunting
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/m/me/medieval_hunting.htm
(Site  Excerpt) Medieval terminology spoke of hawks of the tower and hawks of 
the  fist, which roughly corresponds to falcons and hawks, respectively. The  
female hawk was preferred, since it was both larger than the male and  easier 
to train. Hawks were captured all over Europe, but birds Norway or  Iceland 
were considered of particularly good quality.

Hawks and  Hunting: Images of Religious Life
by Sister Gillian Mary  SSC
http://www.franciscans.org.uk/2000jan-gillianmary.html
(site  excerpt) Hawks and hunting may not seem the most obvious images for  
Religious Life, yet Franciscans will find a hawk in Assisi. In the Lower  
Basilica a fresco by Simone Martini shows Saint Martin receiving his  
investiture as a knight from the Emperor Constantine. Behind the Emperor  
stands a courtier with a hawk on his fist. It is possible that both  Francis 
and Clare in their youth handled hawks. Even if not, they would  both have 
been familiar with hunting, which was woven into the fabric of  medieval 
society.

Scriptorium: Hunting  (Falconer)
http://mw.mcmaster.ca/scriptorium/hunting.html
(Site Excerpt)  To succeed in making the falcon obey the whistle, the voice, 
and the signs  of the falconer was the highest aim of the art, and it was 
only by the  exercise of much patience that the desired result was obtained. 
All birds  of prey, when used for sport, received the generic name of falcon; 
and  amongst them were to be found the gerfalcon, the saker-hawk, the lanner, 
 
the merlin, and the sparrow-hawk. The male birds were smaller than the  
females, and were called tiercelet - this name, however, more particularly  
applied to the gosshawk or the largest kind of male hawk, whereas the  males 
of the above mentioned were called laneret, sacret,  émouchet.

Historical Perspectives on Falconry copyright Robert G  Ferrell
http://66.82.75.68/falconry2.html
(Site Excerpt) The practice of  flying birds of prey at game has been extant 
for at least 2,500 years, and  is still in evidence today, in the retinue of 
falcons and falconers  preceding kings in their grand ceremonial entrances 
and progresses.  Falconry no doubt played an important part in the education 
and actual  sustenance of medieval man, from the serf right up to the  
sovereign.

A hawking party from Tres Riches  Heures
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/images/heures/august.jpg

History  of falconry:  Bibliography
http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc12787/bibacci/hist.html

Borsch's  Falconry (History of Falconry in Scandanavia) Articles on the  
subject
http://users.cybercity.dk/~ccc12787/homeeng.html
(Note: If  page appears in Scandinavian, please click the English Flag for  
Translation. Site Excerpt:) Most of the articles are written from the  
assumption that the reader have little or no knowledge of falconry at all.  
Falconers might find the addresses, the booklist in "Bibliotheca  
Accipitraria", the hawking stories in "Round the Smoking Room Fire", the  art 
in "Galleria Accipitraria", the pages on legislation, culture and  history 
worthwhile.

Stefan's Florilegium:  P-Falconry-msg
http://www.florilegium.org/files/ANIMALS/p-falconry-bib.html
This  particular file is a bibliography of Falconry in several  cultures.

History of  Falconry
http://www.scottishfalconry.co.uk/falconry_history.htm
(Site  Excerpt) The first defensible record of humans using birds of prey for 
 
hunting comes from an Assyrian bas-relief dated in the early part of the  
seventh century, B.C. References to falconry in China come from as early  as 
680 B.C. in the kingdom of Ch'u, although one Japanese work states that  
falcons were used as gifts to Chinese princes during the Hsia Dynasty  
(206-220, B.C.), encouraged by the Emperor Teng's fondness for hunting in  
the imperial forests with falcons and dozens of that era's finest  falconers.

ORB Bibliography: Medieval Hunting, Falconry, Angling, and  Horsemanship
http://www.the-orb.net/bibliographies/hunting.html

The  Hunt Guild (and interkingdom SCA guild for the  hunter/huntress)
http://donwenna.homestead.com/HUNT_GUILD.html
(Site  Excerpt) The  ultimate goal is to  help focus people on the big part  
of Everyday Life in our  Period: animals and hunting . So everything  
researched on Period Hunting Techniques is for Persona Development and  
personal knowledge. And of course, to explore another facet of Equestrian  
Arts, that of hunting on horseback. Individual Kingdoms are invited to  form 
their own Chapters of the Hunt Guild.

Royal Stables of  Artemesia: Hawks
http://www.artemisia.sca.org/stables/hawks.htm
(Site  Excerpt) The art of Falconry was enjoyed by both noble men and noble  
women. Hunting with hawks or falcons was a favorite pastime to war and the  
tournament. Proper care, feeding, and training of the bird was time  
consuming and kept under strict supervision -- similar to how the modern  day 
falconers are inspected and licensed by each state. Because of the  
dedication required to support healthy birds of prey, not many modern  
peoples keep to the sport and art of hunting with them. Anyone interested  in 
this art should seek out a licensed falconer and learn directly from  
him/her.

Training for a Career in the Hunt Talbot Mac  Taggart
http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/wsnlinks/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=33
(Site  Excerpt) Every medieval trade begins with an apprenticeship period. 
The  huntsman's training is no different. At the age of 7, a boy would become 
 
apprenticed to the master of the hunt. Here he would learn to get used to  
the demands of the job. His first job was to spend each day and night with  
the dogs. The apprentices slept in the kennels, making sure that there  were 
no cold drafts or leaky spots in the roof.

World Falconry  Yahoogroup
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/World_Falconry/
(Site Excerpt)  This Group has been set up for anyone that has an interest in 
raptors, be  it a casual interest, rehabs, or falconers. On joining please 
introduce  yourself to the other members. Being an international Group, it 
would help  if you gave your name, your location, and any relevant experiance 
you  have.

BBC: Falconry at Shakespeare's mum's  house
http://www.bbc.co.uk/coventry/features/shakespeare/falconry.shtml
(Site  Excerpt) Officially the Shakespeare Countryside Museum, this chocolate 
box  pretty and very tranquil spot in Warwickshire offers a real step back in 
 
time to the days of William Shakespeare and his mother, Mary Arden. Heart  of 
England Falconry That includes showing you one of the ways the Tudors  caught 
their fresh meat. The Museum is the base for Heart of England  Falconry, 
where you can not only learn how birds of prey were used to  catch rabbits 
and pigeons, but have a go yourself.

Birds of Prey by  Norma Jean Venable (Acrobat Reader required to read this  
treatise)
http://www.wvu.edu/~exten/infores/pubs/other/birdprey.pdf





Ingvild