My Friend Jim

​In modern falconry we have devised many techniques to exercise our falcons and encourage them to use the sky, one of which is to suspend today's meal underneath a kite so that they have to climb hard with lots of exercise for their reward. 

My friend Jim recalled a story of his Jerkin who was unexpectedly presented with an unsecured quail from his kite release mechanism. Jim had devised a parachute mechanism so that his falcon can be free of the kite line when it collects it's reward but restrained by a drogue chute. On this occasion the whole mechanism unexpectedly detached from the intended meal and the Jerkin found himself in a novel situation with his quail in his talons and no restraint! What Was to be done with the open sky of Idaho to be searched to find his familiar dinner table? 

Usual caution when flying a Gyr is to ensure a full tank of petrol but what should be the reaction of the falconer in this unintended circumstance? For Jim it was none other than to realise that inevitably the Jerkin  would be back in a while when he finally remembered Jim would be waiting. It took a while but after about fifteen minutes, with much chupping, the Jerkin arrived overhead - out came the lure and in a spiralling descent the Gyr landed beside where Jim had placed it carefully on the ground. The Jerkin still had the quail untouched and unplucked in his foot; he hobbled to the lure, placed his meal carefully on his familiar dinner plate, arranged it to his liking and then took off for another fly around.

With amazing presence of mind and 'sang froid' Jim calmly tied the quail on the lure and without any option he waited for some time - sure enough the Jerkin returned after quite a few minutes. With much discussion this Jerkin settled down to pluck and eat his meal whilst still telling Jim all about his new adventure in garbled tones amongst each mouthful of feathers and meat. 

Jim put it so well when he observes a Gyr is just something else in the falconry experience, demanding a whole new mindset to read his actions and remain in harmony with the spirit of the day’s events. So easy would it be to set one’s goals and find confrontation where understanding and cooperation is the essence of need. 

In one of my Editorials I outlined a need for an understanding and appreciation for where our falcons are in their own minds when we choose today’s action that will be falconry for us. This stimulated some comment that it is also an important perspective to remember where we are in the falconry arrow of time with our individual creative action in the art that is falconry. In Greenland somebody took a bore sample from a historic Gyrfalcon nest site which showed that it had been occupied for more than 2500 years, from the time before Christ and before the Romans, of course remembering that the whole of the period of life on earth has taken less than a tenth of one percent of the earth's existence. 

Falconry becomes truly an artistic creative event in an ongoing meaningful process - as my fourth season female Peregrine Emma waits on above James, my working Cocker, in the same sky above the same landscape in which Henry VIII flew his falcons, an appreciation of this event in its own moment is of wonder and somehow enabling.