The Chase the on-line newsletter of the UK Falconry Club - July 2010
www.ukfalconryforum.com
NEW REPRINT First published 10 years ago and re-printed twice, this best-selling manual continues to be indispensable ‘A compelling and enduringly fascinating read … lives up to its boastful title.’ IBR ‘Everyone could benefit from this book.’ BFC Newsletter ‘This book should be compulsory reading for anyone flying or contemplating flying a Harris’ hawk’ International Falconer ‘Every stage of the bird’s training is carefully thought out.’ The Falconers Magazine ‘This is probably one of the most descriptive accounts of ferreting [to hawks] ever written.’ Hawk Chalk ‘All novice falconers should be made to read this chapter [Dealing With Kills] Countryman’s Weekly ‘This book is a must for all rabbit and hare hawking enthusiasts.’ Scottish Hawking Club
Available August Hard Covers 240 pages £25.00 + £3.00 p&p SIGNED COPIES STRAIGHT FROM THE AUTHOR
Telephone 01902 561075 or Email m.s.hollinshead@blueyonder.co.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Also available from The Fernhill Press
Martin Hollinshead, The Fernhill Press, PO Box 1682, Wolverhampton, WV1 4GQ Website: http://business.virgin.net/fernhill.press/index.htm
CONTENTS
Editors note Welcome to the 4th online version of THE CHASE. With July now upon us and final preparations for the arrival of new birds are inhand and many falconers and austringers eagerly awaiting the end of the moult. I preparing to take up my first Goshawk, a male bred by Lee Feaherstone this season and hopefully everything will go well - ‘fingers crossed!’ I hope all the members of the UK Falconry Club & Forum have a good season and I hope I get a chance to catch up with some of the members throughout the coming season. Neil Davies - Editor
Features 4
Raptor DNA Profiling by Biobest Labs
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Late? by Martin Hollinshead
12 Gull Hawking by Chris Brook 18 The Art of Japanese Falconry 20 Building a Partridge Pen by Neil Davies 22 Competition Win a Set of Brithawk Equipment 44 Club News
The Chase is the online newsletter of the UK Falconry Club. No article, photograph, or part of this publication maybe reproduced without written consent. The Editor and the UKFC Committee reserves the right to approve or refuse any advertisement or contribution for any reason. Cover photo - Gyr © Chris Southern, Armthorpe Falcons
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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RAPTOR DNA PROFILING
Raptor DN Using new advances in laboratory techniques it is now possible to develop unique DNA profiles for the key raptor breeds. A bird’s DNA profile is a permanent characteristic as it remains the same throughout life. DNA makes up the genetic material contained in the cells of all living things. The genetic material is equally contributed to by mother and father, consequently siblings and other related birds have closer DNA profiles than unrelated birds. The initial stage in DNA profiling involves taking an appropriate sample from which DNA can be extracted. As DNA is contained within cells, the sample must contain cellular material.
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Suitable sample materials include blood, feathers, egg membrane material and cheek swabs. Care must be taken that no extraneous material such as food is included as it may contain contaminating DNA. Once the sample arrives in the laboratory, the DNA is extracted using a method that disrupts the cells and allows collection of the DNA. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is used to amplify parts of DNA, called microsatellite regions, which are known to vary considerably in length between individuals. Around 10 microsatellite regions in each DNA sample are amplified and labelled with differently coloured
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
WWW.BIOBEST.CO.UK
NA Profiling markers to allow identification. The PCR products are measured by a process known as electrophoresis - the amplified DNA strands migrate at different rates in an electric current, according to their length. Electrophoresis is carried out by a specially designed instrument, which determines the length of each amplified region and records them altogether as the ‘DNA profile’. A record of the DNA profile can be presented on a certificate and stored permanently to be retrieved when required. This new advance will be of interest to raptor breeders and owners. It is currently available for
Golden Eagle, Gyr, Saker, Goshawk and Peregrine. Breeders can confirm bloodlines, while owners will seek the re-assurance of a bloodline certificate and find the data useful should the bird ever be lost and recovered. Raptor profiling is supported by the Independent Bird Registry. In addition the results from different individuals can be compared and the degree of similarity determined. For more information please contact Biobest Laboratories Ltd Telephone +44 (0)131 445 6101, birddna@biobest.co.uk www.biobest.co.uk
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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HARRIS HAWKS
Late?
by Martin Hollinshead
It was my forty-fifth birthday. The year count isn’t important (though for the first time the number attached to the prefix did cause me to reflect that I was edging closer to that rather significant destination – fifty). What is important is that it was the last day of the pheasant season, and my even registering this, let alone eagerly gearing up for a hawking session, said a lot about what the passing of those years had done. Forget the vanishing hair, I’d become a pheasant hawker! The decline into this sorry state of affairs – and sorry it was when you consider I’d spent my entire falconry career praising rabbits and hares to the heavens and decrying the pheasant at every opportunity – was down to the gradual loss of more and more local rabbit ground. One property had been sold; a wood taken over by the farmer’s son and his motorcycle-riding friends; and another patch lost when the owner took up clay pigeon shooting and found himself playing host to a new circle of friends desperate to test their skills on something other than clays. The final blow was the fall of my sugar beet hawking. Rabbits love sugar beet, and the protection it provides will tempt them far from their warrens – plenty far enough if a Harris’ is in a field-side tree. On my main farms I’d been able to beet-hawk right into winter, but a change in policy now saw the beet harvested so early I was racing the tractor just to start the season in it. Slowly I was hanging onto a cliff edge, desperate hands refusing to accept the inevitable. And all the while the pheasant was there, strutting, flirting and begging me to grab the rope. So I did. Rob, our border collie, was elated. He’d always been keen to get into a bit more feather. Originally acquired for rabbit hawking – more specifically for marking occupied warrens – it soon became clear that nothing gave him more of a buzz than sending rocketing rattling pheasants up and into the blue. There was childlike delight in being the cause of so much panic; and now he could play to his heart’s content. The sport’s past greats looked on in
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horror. They’d forgiven me a bit of rabbiting with a collie – but pheasant hawking! The Harris’, Flair, had taken a bit more convincing. She’d caught plenty of pheasants but the team’s commitment to fur made her far from dedicated to the job. To increase motivation I looked to feeding from kills, something I’d always done with rabbits and hares but not worried about with pheasants. She wasn’t impressed. Having always been traded off pheasants for a chunk of rabbit – meat she loved above anything – this is what she wanted. And she made her thoughts clear! Pheasant kills were pillow fights, the spoilt Harris’ frantically
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HARRIS HAWKS
ripping feathers from her opened up victim but refusing point blank to feed and almost leaping from it if my reward hand so much as twitched. But I wasn’t going to be beaten. Convinced that warm bloody rewards were the way to greater success, I was insistent. I even resorted to hand feeding! With Flair slowly learning to suffer her new diet, and more effort put into follow-ups and reflushes (the collie now floating on clouds), we eventually started to look a bit more polished and if not exactly deadly, we were a pretty mean mediocre. With today’s hunt I was geared for brunch and off. Flair was geared for this too. Tonya, Rob and the essential car, all due back from a visit to her folks, were obviously geared for something else. By 12 o’clock I was on a hot simmer. I checked the equipment again. I tried the mobile. Off. 12.30 came and went. Now I was pacing, my gaze constantly wandering to the lively thing flitting about the mews. And forget hot simmer – the lid was bouncing off! Then guilt. Maybe there’d been an accident! The tractor-like rumble of the old diesel Citroen on the drive at 1.15 wiped away the accident worry, and Tonya’s calm face spoke before her mouth. ‘Late?’ No, she wasn’t late. I’d misunderstood, got my wires crossed. She wasn’t late at all. She was bang on time. And now I was furious and struggling to keep my rage under control. I opened the tailgate to let Rob out. He exited with a growl, and I bit down on a dodgy filling so hard it broke! I could tell you about having to watch my unperturbed wife now take her lunch and then attend to various other little things before we finally hit the road. But maybe I’ll just say that we were eventually in the field with me just about in control of my evil mood but wondering why the hell I hadn’t said forget it! And this was just the start. Not far away two carefully programmed pheasants were set to test me still further. Soon pheasant number one was ready for me. Its programming involved it being scentless, because as far as Rob was concerned it didn’t exist. It didn’t exist at thirty paces. It didn’t exist at ten, or five, or two. It just wasn’t there. But it was! As far as the
high-perched Harris’ was concerned, it was very there, partially concealed in a refuge of brambles and brushwood. Yes it was there, as obvious as a glowing beacon. She told us, we told Rob – he wanted to move on. The scentless pheasant was perfect. Right below the Harris’, this type of pheasant came to me only in dreams. And this made what happened next – the inevitable – so painful. The time between the Harris’ giving her easily recognisable squeaking, ‘there’s someone here do something’, and me registering that the dog had gone mad, was short. It was still too long. I should have immediately negotiated the deep ditch that separated me from the hiding pheasant and done my own flushing. But I didn’t and with the predictability of day following night, the Harris’ took matters into her own hands and dropped from the tree. And with equal predictability, the pheasant – a cock – sidestepped and hit the gas. And now, as all that wonderful explosive energy took our friend rattling away on a staggering exit, the wide-eyed collie finally twigged: A pheasant! The Harris’ followed, of course, but this pheasant was as safe as he had been from the start. We weren’t meant to catch him. Pheasant number two was ready for us about ten minutes later. It was a long flight. As soon as it began I knew it was going to be. No perfect tree setup, just the Harris’ getting close enough to pluck tail feathers and believing with all her heart that this hen bird could be out-flown. And so away they went, soon out of sight behind a bank of timber. And away I went too, flying straight to my customary loony mode, crashing through a hedge on our own ground to end up on our neighbour’s. I stood and stared. Wow! It had been a long flight. Right over an enormous bare field, the pheasant had set course for a small tangled patch bordering more blank ground. And the Harris’ had followed, just as the hen knew she would; she hadn’t allowed her to get near those tail feathers for nothing. And this hen knew too that the closely chasing hawk would read her intention to put in and make every effort to take her; this is what hawks did. The evil part of the plan was the hidden strand of rusty wire the pheasant would duck under as she bowled herself into the cover; the hawk would never see it.
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HARRIS HAWKS
I arrived to see Flair sitting atop a fence post overlooking the patch, her face crimson with the blood trickling from a slash in her cere. She was oblivious to it. Mad with rage, the injury was nothing more than an insult, a bloody nose that would carry her to the final bell. That the pheasant was still there was obvious. I’d known this long before arriving by the hawk’s fluttering coverbouncing attempts to flush it. But the last thing I wanted now was another flight which, given the bird’s poor position, would just go deeper into my neighbour’s land. I also desperately wanted to inspect that wound. I couldn’t get to her without trampling the cover and flushing the target, so I threw out the lure. She refused it. I wasn’t surprised. You had to see the anger to appreciate it. In all the years of flying her I’d never seen anything like it. I tried again, this time tempting her with more food and a bit of tugging. She responded, reluctantly. The cere wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t a disaster. I wet my fingers to smooth down a nick of skin that had been lifted, cleaning up the rest of the beak with a pinch of damp grass. I then hooded her, the face still raging and the battle scar giving her a truly evil look. Had the decision been mine alone, I’d have called a halt there and then. But Flair was having none of it. The wire trap had taken things too far. This was playing dirty. Now she demanded satisfaction, and I knew where she might get it – The Shit Works! The ‘shit works’ (a name I will blame on a past hawking buddy) was a tiny sewage plant, unmanned and, sitting well into the farm and disguised by trees, a place of hidden identity; even at close inspection it looked like a small circular wood. The reason for its existence was the close-by Second World War airfield; it had been built to cater for the base. When I first came to know the place it was a forgotten never-entered jungle, a wildlife oasis in a sea of orderly fields. In fact so swamped was its crumbled brickwork and concrete, its original purpose eluded me. Waterfowl cruised a suspiciously round ‘duck pond’, and rabbits and pheasants crept beneath a blanket of wild roses and brambles. The spot was practically impossible to hawk. The bramble and rose mounds were straight out of a
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fairytale: a thick-stemmed, razor-barbed confusion to turn back the most determined prince. And just to make sure sleeping beauty stayed put, the whole lot was given a twisted, intertwined support of face-prodding bushes and shrubs. A visitor remarked: ‘You actually catch in there?’ Only if you were unlucky! But over the years things had changed. The airfield had slowly gone from being a scarcely used hobby plane depot to a place attracting much more traffic, and along with this growth had come the need to refurbish the place. The result was that the duck pond resumed its proper function – complete with wide-spanning water-trickling spider arms – and the entire centre of the jungle was cleared, soil and torn-up shrubs and weeds being bulldozed into mounds on two sides. However, the entire outer circle remained intact: a thick wall of tall deciduous trees overlooking a reduced but still substantial area of the princess’s tangle. Understandably, the ducks had gone, but the rabbits and pheasants were still there – and now I could get at them. So this is where I hoped we might balance matters for Flair. It wasn’t far from our present location, a fifteen to twenty minute walk. We were there in twelve flat. Down a little track, through a gate – a gate opened with fingers that moved with criminal care lest a sound give the game away – and then a tiptoe creeping approach bringing us on course for the boundary fence and the final gate, the one carrying the ominous warning DANGER DEEP WATER. All during this the hooded Harris’ had sensed and read our intentions, our secret whispers and the slowing of pace telling all. She knew what was coming, and Rob, now sneaking along like some cartoon cat, knew too. Before the final gate I let Flair fly. She didn’t take the branch I’d singled out, the one I’d have taken, not even my tree, but her position was good with plenty of height giving her immediate command of the location. Now burglar fingers went to work again, through the gate, Flair moving across the work’s bare centre to take stand in an isolated oak that had been spared the bulldozing. It was an odd picture: bird in tree over sewage bed.
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HARRIS HAWKS
Behind the bird lay our target area, a long bramble-covered mound dropping down through brushwood and fallen trees to the little brook that was work’s boundary on this side. The plan needed no discussing: dog in the ditch, bird following in the trees. We’d had success on pheasants here before; the setup was good, with tall close-standing trees and a narrow field of operation keeping any sneaky creeper moving in one direction. And then it happened. There was no warning, no mark – which in this place you’d have been hard pushed to see anyway – just a crashing branch-breaking commotion and a strong cock pheasant powering up and away. The detail was lost to the trees, but soon one bird became two, falling back to earth on open ground. We waded the brook and I dispatched our prize. Flair’s cere was bleeding again. I looked at the pheasant and said it for her: ‘We’re quits.’ Taken from Martin Hollinshead’s highly popular Harris’ Hawk Days
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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GULL HAWKING
Gull Hawking with a Sakeret by Chris Brook
I was initally going to write an article on the imprint Goshawks in my life, small Goshawks at that, but this time of year always reminds me of one very special bird.
site, a recent contract he’d negotiated, and I’d been lucky enough to be able to work some hours for him. I fancied trying a falcon, so I went down with him to collect his youngster.
What I actually decided to write about was my first longwing.
Whist there I discoverd he was also breeding some very nice blonde Sakers, and had a female on eggs, and at the time I couldn’t really afford a female, so I ordered a male.
Rossi, a little Sakerett (named after Valenteno Rossi) not only introduced me to the wonderful side of falconry that is longwings , but also the cold reality of long telemetry track downs and heart ache coupled with the hard work that is flying and hunting falcons on a daily basis. The choice of falcon wasn’t really down to me at all, he was actually a bit of a fluke.. A friend of mine had ordered an imprint female Gyr/Saker from a breeder for use on the landfill
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3 weeks later I got the phone call, and I was off to collect “Rossi”. He was 9 days old and not much to look at really. But I was made up and we went through the imprinting process, pretty much following what I’d learnt from Goshawks. 24 hour food availability but with the inclusion of a little bit of hood work. I started lure training Rossi at around 5 weeks, calling him short distances for a full feed 3 times a day. He spent every moment
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
Photograph ©Mark Williams
GULL HAWKING
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GULL HAWKING
Rossi with Gull with me from day one, at the landfill site and including trips to very public places, even Tesco on one occasion - to say he was bomb proof was an understatment! He’d also sleep in my room on a shelf perch at night. He was tame hacked at the landfill site , being left pretty much all day to his own devices. Once he’d started to take short flights around the local area I introduced him to the lure and stooped him (and let me tell you that was a steep learning curve for both of us!). I also trained him to the kite and within a few weeks he was going up to a respectable height of 1000ft. At 10 weeks old he took his first head, a young jackdaw, which he caught over the landfill site. I’d never really intended to seriously hunt with him, my motto was just “see what happens”. I was simply enjoying flying a longwing to a lure really.. I was pretty much putting his success down to
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nothing more than luck, that he was catching young easy game in the summer and once things got “tough” he’d give in... How utterly wrong I was. At around 13 weeks old and 5 corvids later he caught his first gull at the landfill site, and man.. what a flight! I’d unhooded him at some crows sitting out on the fence surrounding the landfill site , and he’d bobbed his head a few times, setting off in his typical low to the ground fashion, climbing slowly over the terrain . Once they’d seen him leave the fist , they’d all started to climb and even on this hot agust day he spent a good 10 minutes harrassing one crow untill it evaded his relentless stooping, and made it to a thick hawthorne hedge. Rossi gave up and began to make his way back over towards the land fill site. He came back overhead fix winged and soaring on the warm summer thermals. Perhaps it was the heat from the
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GULL HAWKING
ground which made him gain height, but either way by the time he was back he was at well over 500ft and I was pretty sure he was off for a soar. At the same time a young gull had meanderd it’s way using the same thermals to the landfill site, having it’s eyes fixed on and easy meal, making it’s way slowly towards the pile of freshly brought in rubbish and, seemingly utterly oblivious to the young falcon, it started to circle below Rossi. He’d previously never shown any interest in Gulls , and I’d always thought of him as being too small for them. But for whatever reason he broke the soar and went into a classic tear-drop falcon shape eating up the remaining altitude in seconds. The gull, having focused it’s intentions on an easy meal, was oblivious to the strike , clean and the deadly dull thwack eccoed round the site . The young gull folded in half and spiraled the remaining 50ft hitting the floor with a much
weaker more pathetic thud, Rossi wasted no time in throwing up and landing on the fatally injured gull. I came running over a little surprised and incredibly impressed with what I’d just seen. After this kill he never looked back , and became very deadly on Gulls. His forte was going off to gain height before drifting over the landfill site, sometime he’d come back as a spec overhead before folding up and selecting his target with devastating results. He took 11 gulls in 5 days at one point - all jaw dropping, utterly mind blowing flights that I’ll never forget, and feel incredibly lucky to have witnessed. It wasn’t all perfect flights and easy kills though this bird taught me all about telemetry, and at one point I tracked him down 9 miles on foot to find him defending his gull kill from a buzzard.
Another kill THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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GULL HAWKING
Rossi
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THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
GULL HAWKING
I felt lucky to get him through his first season and even more fortunate to get him through his second, with the IBR helping out on more than one occasion. Flying him became a real worry, with every flight becoming a track down fraught with worry for his safety. I decided to retire him from hunting early in his third season when he was tracked down in a supermarket carpark on a pigeon 18 miles from home...( he’d actually left the Isle of Anglesey and had gone onto the main land!). I still fly him to a lure for a few weeks each year, and he’s looking good as a semen donor. In total Rossi took almost 50 head in his first season ,and many more in his successive seasons. Infact his retirement was due to being too good at hunting.... I believe pure Sakers are very much underestimated in this country - brave, strong, determined and deadly is how I’d summarise this bird - I very much doubt he was one of a kind. I was fortunate enough to fly a fair few falcons at this landfill site, mostly hybrids. But of all the gull hawks I’ve flown Rossi was by far and a long way the best.
Rossi
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FALCONRY IN ART
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THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
FALCONRY IN ART
THE ART OF
JAPANESE FALCONRY MEIJI Period CARVED IVORY HAWK/FALCON Okimono JAPAN NR - Picture courtesy of The British Museum This is an amazing late 19th century, Japanese miniature ivory sculpture of a hawk or falcon hand-carved in extraordinarily fine detail. Made during the Meiji period or Meiji era denotes the period in Japanese history during the 45-year reign of the Meiji Emperor (from 23 October 1868 to 30 July 1912). It was during this time, Japan began its modernisation and rose to world power status. Meiji means 'Enlightened Rule'. This remarkable piece is carved from elephant ivory, and measures only 2” in height. The sculpture integrates the variation in the ivory's color, along with handapplied pigment, in the feather detail and is fixed to a wooden stand which is simply stamped ‘Japan’, on the base. It is likely this remarkable piece was made for foreign travellers or export to the west.
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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BUILDING A PARTRIDGE RELEASE PEN
Building P Partridge R
Solid board End Panel
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300 mm
Chicken Wire
1000mm
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Side Panel with door
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
BUILDING A PARTRIDGE RELEASE PEN
PLANS for a Release Pen by Neil Davies
400mm
1300mm
1200mm
Access Door
End Panel with drop down door Materials for constructiong a 2400mm x 1300mm pen suitable for holding approx a 20 partridge poults. Materials required for: • Use tanalised timber 30mm x 50mm in diameter for the framwork. • For the boards at the bottom use feather edge timber or tanalised planks. • Galvanised chicken wire netting. • Roof netting available from www.knowlenets.co.uk or www.bridportnets.co.uk
• Timber and hinges/latches for entry gates and pop hole. • Nails, staples, hammers etc. • Heavy duty cable ties to fix panels together . • Two-strand electric fencing system to deter foxes/vermin. • 12-volt car battery. • Water butts and feed hoppers.
THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
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COMPETITION
WIN a set of Brithawk Braided Falconry Furniture made for your hawk or falcon
The UK Falconry Club & Forum and Brithawk Braided Falconry Furniture offers one lucky forum/club member the opportunity of winning a set of mews jesses by simply answering the following question. Who wrote ‘As the Falcon Her Bells’? Send your answers to neil_davies@ukfalconryforum.com The Winner* will be drawn from the entries received before the 25th July 2010 and will be notified by email and the results of the draw will feature in next month’s issue of THE CHASE. *T&C’s - The editor’s decision is final and the draw is only open to the UK Falconry Club and forum members. No other alternative prize will be offered to the winner. Only one entry per member. Competition closes midnight 25th July 2010.
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THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
Quality, hand braided falconry furniture made in Britain
Falcon fitted with Brithawk braided furniture
Brithawk Braided Falconry equipment order from Zoe Jones THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010
07743 573 755
CLUB NEWS
Club News Club BBQ The UK Falconry Club will be holding a Summer BBQ in September 10th - 11th at Rhosllefain, Tywyn, Gwynedd LL36 9ND. If any members wish to attend, please contact Ben Crane for further details ben_crane@ukfalconryforum.com We hope you can come along and meet the committee.
UK Falconry Club Committee President - Ben Crane, Vice-President - Neil Hunter, Chairman - Lee Featherstone, Vice-Chairman - Martin Whitley, Secretary - Steven Lambert, Treasurer - Tommy Miles, Membership Secretary - George Duncalf, Legal Officer - Mike Roberts, Field Meet Officer - Kevin Massey, Assistant Field Meet Officer - Joe Hatton, Newsletter Editor - Neil Davies
Membership is now available online If you wish to join the UK Falconry Club you can now apply and pay online at the clubs forum www.ukfalconryforum.com Membership fees are per year and include Public Liability Insurance for Full & Associate Members: Full Members £32, Associate Members £32 and Supporter member £17
Field Meets We are presently organising a number of UKFC field meets through out the whole of the of UK. We will post a list of date on www.ukfalconryforum.com in due course.
the uk falconry club supports the campaign for falconry
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THE CHASE - THE NEWSLETTER OF THE UK FALCONRY CLUB - JULY 2010