What is falconry?

If you were to go ask passersby on the street for the definition, you would probably get a range of responses.  Plus, that would be cheating.

So, allow us to provide you with some study materials.  In this piece, the author, Tim Cahill, gives a humorous account of his efforts to discover falconry’s true definition.  Indeed, in just a few short weeks, Cahill evolves from thinking of falconry as “that extinct medieval sport wherein guys in metal suits throw birds to fish” to a more enlightened view of the sport as “that flourishing contemporary field sport in which frenzied, monomaniacal men (and some frenzied monomaniacal women) soil their neighbor’s living rooms with bird droppings and run around naked in the snow.”

Really powerful stuff.

If you would like to read more about the author’s trials and tribulations in seeking this knowledge, as well as a number of his other insightful stories (we recommend the one about the outhouse built over a bat cave), you should pick up a copy of his book, Pecked to Death by Ducks.  In the meantime, you can see a preview of the stories on Google Books.

To learn even more about falconry (or to start training to be a falconer yourself!), check out FSC affiliate Duane Zobrist of The Falconry and Raptor Education Foundation.