The History of Falconry
Falconry is the art
of hunting wild prey with trained hawks.
Its origin is uncertain. A Japanese writer, Ahizato Pito (1808), reported that
falcons were given as presents to Chinese princes of the Hiu dynasty around 2200
BC.
The British bibliographer Harting reported a bas-relief possibly depicting a
falconer in the ruins of Khosabad, dated to around 1700 BC. However, these early
records might represent the keeping of companion animals rather than true
falconry. Nonetheless, the earliest indisputable evidence of falconry comes from
the Far East.
There are Japanese
records of trained goshawks introduced from China in 244 AD.
It is also certain that falconry came to Europe with the Germanic tribes.
It first appeared in Roman culture shortly after the Vandal immigrations,
although Romans and Greeks had used trained raptors to help net birds earlier.
It was popular in Saxon times: the Bayeux tapestry shows King Harold taking a
trained raptor and hounds on his visit to William of Normandy in 1064.
Many falconry terms
come from French, including bowsing for drinking, from the French "boire", and
austringer for a trainer of accipiters, from the French "autour" for goshawk.
Falconry also thrived during the first millenium in the Middle East, with a
first treatise in Arabic in the 8th or 9th century. The Arabs gave many tips to
the crusaders, probably including the use of the hood. Hooded raptors are
protected from alarming sights during training, and from seeing other hawks or
prey at inopportune moments during hunting excursions. Falconry flourished in
Europe during the subsequent half-millenium.
The first surviving
"western" falconery treatise was written around 1247 by another crusader,
Emperor Frederich II of Hohenstaufen.
As a result of his book, De Arte Venandi cum Avibus, Frederich II has been
called the father of ornithology.
His principle of testing hypotheses, for instance by sending a trusted servant
to the north to see whether barnacles really turned into geese, was an important
step in the development of modern science.
Falconry was
responsible for the earliest legislation protecting raptors: Henry VII of
England protected goshawk nests "in pain of a year and a day's imprisonment."
The English Boke of St Albans indicated that falcons were flown mainly to
provide spectacular flights for the aristocracy, whereas a goshawk "for a
yeoman" could be expected to keep the larder stocked with common small-game.
Thus the doings of common austringers went largely unrecorded, compared with the
falcons in the paintings and writings of the ruling classes. However,
Shakespeare's use of falconry metaphors in many plays indicates that falconry
was as well understood in Tudor Britain as is football today.
Falconry has
continued to flourish in Asia and the Middle East to the
present day, following for the most part the ancient tradition of trapping young
hawks or falcons in the autumn, hunting with them in winter and releasing then
back to the wild in the spring. However, falconry lost popularity in Europe with
the development of effective sporting guns, and by the late 18th century was
restricted to a few landowners, mainly in Britain. They formed a series of clubs
that kept the art alive, leading eventually to a renaissance and modern
development of falconry in Europe,
North America and Africa.
