Falconry (July 21)

Today class was nice because it was only half as long as usual. I really do love class but three hours is way to long to be sitting in a classroom…especially when you are in a foreign country that you want to explore and experience. Today we learned about Shakespeare and all of the words that he invented. We also learned about Jamaican patwacreolenglish. I learned a few words, two of my favorites were: “bunaununus” which means “delightful” and “grabalishos” which means “greedy.” After class we went to the British Library where we watched a presentation on Falconry. Falconry was a way of hunting before guns. It was also a sport for many and a sign of status. They showed us a few birds of prey and then told me about how much each one would have cost during the time of king Henry VIII (which ranged from 100,000-250,000 pounds!) we also learned about the different ages that you could purchase and train a bird. The two that I remember were the passage falcon which was the most common. This type of falcon was still young but had branched out and already knew how to hunt. They were not too difficult to train. The most desirable type of bird however was the “haggard” falcon which was older. It was mature (3-5 years old) and difficult to train. Also the females were more valuable because they were larger. Females were called falcon gentile and males were called teasel (?) which was a French word meaning less than 1/3 the size. Another interesting fact about these amazing birds is that they have 2 inch long talons, and if that’s not scary enough, they have the strength of 5 times the average human grip. Needless to say they could easily grasp and slice open their prey. Finally, a little bit about the clothing. The gloves worn by the trainers were only designed for the left hand. This is because the left hand was considered the evil hand, and the right hand was the holy hand. It was disgraceful to use the holy hand to hold the bird of prey. Also, the birds wore hoods to blind them. Now while this might seem cruel, it was all in the best interest of the bird. The hood would completely shut out the light which would calm the bird down. We learned that stress and shock will almost always kill a bird. Before the hoods were introduced in the 4th century A.D. they used to suture their eyes shut and at the end of every week for four weeks they would cut one of the stitches off. I’m not sure why they did this but I thought it was interesting.