Jim working in the maintenance area

Many years ago, in the Lands of the North, the Old Norse hunters would tell the tales of Noggin-the-Nog, Nog Bear and Draculas, the Bird. So went the children’s stories. There was the story of the Statue of The Little Prince whose soul mate was the little Swallow, left behind in the winter by his fellow swallows from their migration to southern climes, and how the statue and the swallows were friends through the hardening winter. The swallow died of cold and the Prince was left with a broken heart of lead. Later, there was the story of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. From the adventurous, to the heart rending and on to the philosophical; the stories which included birds are legion.

Like most children (at least those who live in the country or nearly so), I had my Observers' Book of Birds, learned their names, habitats, etc.; that a Robin was actually a type of Thrush and so on. I always remember as a lad having spent ages drawing a detailed picture to impress the Nature Study master, a Mr Tom Pierce; he gently pointed out that I had drawn a picture of a ‘Cough’ not a ‘Chough’. But in spite of the ‘goofy’, I have always related to birds. Later on when we had children, we kept chickens, ducks and geese, and went pigeon and pheasant shooting. My introduction to hawks and owls was triggered by flying displays at country fairs and more strongly by game fairs where you could look more closely at these majestic birds and talk to their owners; (owners, or are they just keepers? Raptors seem to have an independence, distanced from humans).

After one of these flying demonstrations, my wife Jean remembered when she had taken the children to what is now the Hawk Conservancy Trust some 30 years ago. She tracked down the number and bought me an experience day as a surprise birthday present. I was delivered to the car park outside the Conservancy and told... ‘Enjoy your day, I’ll pick you up at 5 o’clock’, or words to that effect. Cedric and the rest of the team took me and the others for a day we wouldn’t forget. So from there on I was hooked.

Man has always been jealous of the birds’ ability to reach for the sky. They can laugh at the humans’ clumsy attempts at getting off the ground. From Montgolfier’s bag of hot air sitting over a bonfire, through string bag concoctions of sticks and canvas, to the crass-noisy construction which falls out of the sky when it runs out of unleaded. These soaring, stooping, masters of the sky can only look at us with an air of disdain.

One thing that has always struck me is that when you look in the eye of a falcon or a hawk, there is something different in the eye of a bird of prey. There’s no slightly frightened look of a pigeon, or goose, or robin. Are they looking right through you? Is it a primeval heritage of a raptor or due to fanciful connotation? Is it the distinctive frown or orbital ridge over the eye that makes them so different? Or an undertone of ‘don’t mess with me’!

I like the fact that, for a trained hawk or falcon, although trained and inducted by hunger to become your obedient friend, it is master of its own destiny. It can cry ‘freedom’. You are not truly its master, nor will it be a friend, simply a companion you have to treat with respect.

Reading up on the topic has taken me through books on Falconry for Beginners, the Basics, the Essentials, the Training, Falconry and Hawking and even an Encyclopaedia. One disconcerting and repeated aspect in all the books is that if you buy a bird you are buying a vet’s bill. I’m not interested if I can’t do it properly, so I’m still going through the stages of deciding whether I have the continued commitment. Shades of a –“Hawk is for life, not just for Christmas”.

Well, I’ve read the books and now I am wearing the Volunteers’ sweat shirt and am going through the phase of wondering whether I should buy my own bird. I’ve seen how to build aviaries, large and small, and realised the breadth of the environment involved. At the same time I’ve been able to skive off and drop in on the flying displays. It’s amazing how many jobs there are to be done to maintain and run the Conservancy. I’m retired, so I can enjoy helping out. There are loads of projects on the go, there’s always something that needs to be maintained and it’s like having a huge garden full of fabulous birds. What more do I need?

Perhaps one day I will look my own hawk in the eye.