A Walk With A Hawk
Heading east from San Diego, it doesn’t take long until you’re in the Cuyamaca Mountains. The beaches and palm trees give way to forested peaks, with an occasional dusting of snow. There, in the chaparral-covered foothills, I’m having a remarkable experience.
If you’ve ever seen a bird of prey hunt, you know it is a thing of beauty to watch. To see them circle, glide, and swoop as they look for food is to witness nature in vivid action. I’ve watched these raptors from my window at home, and seen them patiently scanning the freeway for food as I drive past a light pole. I didn’t think I’d ever get up close to one of these magnificent creatures. Seeing them in a zoo allowed me to appreciate their beauty, but that just isn’t the same.
Today, there’s one sitting on my arm.
I’m learning about a tradition that goes back well over 2500 years. For the Bedouin desert dwellers of the Middle East, falcons caught and shared food that humans could not have captured alone. By the Middle Ages, falconry had been firmly established as a pastime of European nobility. Now I’m going to give it a try.
Sky Falconry is located near the town of Alpine, at the end of a series of dirt roads that wind around the side of Viejas Mountain. It’s a beautiful spot, high above the valley, with dramatic views over to El Cajon Mountain. Denise and Kirk run the place: a dedicated and energetic couple whose excitement about working with birds is contagious. While teaching the art of falconry, they also take the time to educate me about raptor biology, and — most urgently — the need for conservation, so these magnificent animals can endure. I learn how vital hawks are in keeping rodent populations down. I also learn how fragile they are; common garden pesticides, and injuries from cars and other city-life interactions can easily kill them.
Kirk and Denise take me through the rules, before we head out on a walk.
You don’t touch the bird. You don’t bond with it like a pet. You couldn’t if you tried: it’s a wild animal. The hawk knows it can hunt well alongside a human, and that’s why it stays with you. Otherwise, it would just leave and never come back. There’s always the possibility it will do that anyway, without warning.
Once a raptor has had its fill of food, it’s indifferent to human interaction. It’s also aware you are bigger, and it is respectful of that. But it will hop alongside you on a pathway, unconcerned. It’s clear that Kirk and Denise love their birds, but even they treat them with a respect that acknowledges a raptor’s independence.
We head out into the chaparral: Kirk has an enormous Harris Hawk on his arm, and he’s wearing a thick, long glove to stop any scratches and give the hawk a secure grip. So am I, in anticipation of what is to come. The hawk’s head moves from side to side, from front to back all the time, keeping a three-dimensional view of everything around it. I’ve never seen eyes so alert. When it spots something in the undergrowth — boom. Its enormous burnt-orange wings extend, and with the grace of an Olympic sprinter it speeds off to catch it. The sheer physicality of being so close to a bird leaving and returning while hunting is remarkable: it’s somewhat like horse riding, in that you’re intensely up close with an animal. But while horses stay constantly alert for predators, this experience is different. This hawk is the predator. It is scanning around not to flee, but to hunt.
When I call the bird to my gloved hand for the first time, the experience is not what I expected. From some distance away, the hawk aims its face dead at mine and swoops low, inches above the ground. Then, at the very last moment, it swishes up in front of me and lands effortlessly on the end of my arm.
I instinctively tense for holding weight: after all, a bird as large as a cat just landed on me, and I expect to have to hold it up. But a raptor is hollow-boned, and incredibly light. It doesn’t seem possible that something so enormous weighs so little. Vivid yellow eyes scan around me for prey. Feathers vibrate in the breeze. Its enormous feathered chest puffs out, perfectly designed to power its huge wings. And when it is time for it to go back to Kirk, it launches silently, with a weightless grace I hardly feel.
We do this back-and-forth many times. Occasionally, the hawk heads off to sit up somewhere high, scanning in its own unconcerned way. I love how it is entirely the bird’s choice whether to stay with us or not. But it always comes back.
I had no idea hawks fly with so much control even when they brush against things. They won’t always fly around bushes — sometimes they swerve through gaps in them, or even flit through narrow gaps between tree branches. Their wings hit leaves and twigs as they do so, but it has no effect on their flight. I can’t describe how magical it is to watch a hawk fly through a tree as it swerves its way back to your arm. But it’s in my memory forever.
Sometimes I walk between Kirk and Denise on the pathway, and the hawk swishes past my head, the tip of a wing silently brushing my ear. The raptor’s coordination is absolute. The interaction is breathtaking — I hold still, and gasp, and marvel, and can’t help but laugh in sheer joy and exhilaration.
Like skydiving, and other experiences so far out of the everyday, this walk with a hawk in the hills is nothing like I expected. The intensity of being up close with an animal that is totally wild, on a mutual mission, is something you begin to miss the moment it is over. I have a feeling I’ll be back.
Francis French is an internationally-recognized, bestselling science author whose work can be found at www.francisfrench.com
More information on Sky Falconry can be found here.
