If you've spent any substantial time in the woods, you more than likely have seen some sort of aerial attack from a hawk or owl on a small forest animal. I'll never forget watching a hawk nail this squirrel in a beechnut flat while I was bowhunting in my teens. This hawk dropped out of the sky like a bullet and before I realized what was happening, it lifted this noisy little red squirrel right back into the sky. It was totally awesome and since then I've always been intrigued by birds of prey. I love just watching them hunt from a fence post or tree top sitting stoically, watching and waiting and hunting. Its at this time, I am reminded that without the +$1000 in tree stand, bow, and fancy camouflage, I'm probably starve in the real wild. They are the ultimate hunter. Not us. It's humbling.
I'm not the first person to catch onto this obsession, which is why the sport of Falconry is over 4,000 years old. It was started because the same observant hunters back then didn't have a fancy over / under shotgun and realized that falcons and hawks might be a better option than the sling shots they were running around with. It evolved into what was known as the 'Sport of Kings' where only your status of nobility determined whether you hunted with a common hawk or an eagle.
My 4 year old daughter asks a million questions about everything and Its so much easier to explain the circle of life by letting her watch a hawk chase a squirrel in the woods then trying to explain why some animals eat other animals. Experience in nature is a wonderful teacher. So, while most families spent spent Black Friday shopping or lounging around eating leftovers, we took a lesson in Falconry.
The Homestead, in Hot Springs, Virginia has a world class falconry facility (and only a handful in the country), so we took the morning to go and learn. The facility has hawks, falcons, owl and eagles (the eagles were currently being bred over in Europe). Our favorite was definitely this Eurasian Eagle Owl, named Sasha. This owl is huge and very similar to the Great Horned Owl that resides in the US. Her talons were huge and have strength of over 800 lbs torque. Small animals do not escape. Her most striking feature though was her orange eyes evolved for hunting periods of dawn and dusk rather then at night. Her eyes were so hypnotizing and intimidating that I could only stare into them for a few seconds as I thought she was staring directly into my soul. Owls are definitely mystical creatures.
The Falconer that led the session was great and very informative. Though these birds are trained with raw chicken, we did get to see an aerial attack on a squirrel from a Harris Hawk, named Remy. It was intense and you could hear the clasp of the talons as it just missed the squirrel jumping from one tree to the next.
The twins were fascinated watching these birds fly and work and asked me a ton of questions. It was cute. Though, neither of them wanted to hold the falcon - maybe next time they said!
