Back when I had hair

10 years ago, we a couple of years after I started crow hawking seriously the BBC approached me about featuring the Dartmoor Falcons this was the result

Watch "The Dartmoor Falcons on inside out" on YouTube

With typical journalistic licence they failed to mention that we caught 7 crows whilst filming this

The Dartmoor Falcons

After a disorganized couple of years, only flying falcons from horses occasionally had become the norm, but with the arrival of the spotty pony, and a more settled life it's time to  get organised mounted falconry back and so I'm planning to breathe new life into the Dartmoor Falcons, our old mounted falconry/ crow hawking club.

This will be flying pursuit falcons at Corvids, on Dartmoor, our main quarry being the carrion crow,

This is, in my mind, the most spectacular form of falconry, and because of the way it's run opens up the spectacle of the classical high flight of falconry to many who would never be able to see it.
Our main afternoon will be Fridays, others by arrangement, starting in August, Non riders are welcome to come and watch (especially if they bring cake)

Anyone interested please contact me 

The one that got away

Well I had one of the most visually stunning flights I've seen this season,
I'd gone down to the foxhound kennels to pick a few box's of chicks they had in their freezer room and by some funny chance Morguasse had stowed away in the back of the car (Aly still does not believe she put herself there).
Thinking it would be a waste not to take advantage of her presence I detored back via one of my favorite spots over the west dart valley. The river was still very high but a good strong wind was blowing from the river to me so not any real chance of a flight going across.
Anyhow I had a lovely slip at a crow about 150 yards out and she took it beutifully, but rather than trying to head back down wind to cover it was determined for some reason to go across the river, She fetched it as it go there, turned it but rather than coming back over my head it started climbing back out over the river.

Morguasse turned it 6 times, getting higher and higher, till it had worked itself into a position where it was ready to dive for cover when she was out of position, and it just beat her to a tiny patch of gorse on the other side of the river. Nothing I could do to help so I called her back, raised my hat to the crow and headed for home

A bit of a soaking

I sloped off with Sebille this after noon, found a nice slip for her, in bright sunshine.
She caught her crow about 500 yards away after a nice flight.
I started to walk over to where she was, with that little smug feeling you get when things go right When the heavens opened,by the time I'd picked her up I was soaked through, wellies sloshing with the amount of water that had run into them,
By the time we got back to the car all feelings of smugness had been washed away (actually sebille was still very pleased with herself).
The joys of Hawking on dartmoor

The joys of wind

Flying fit  Falcons in strong winds is one of the real joys of working with birds of prey from the unbelievable dorn wind stoopps of Morguasse and Morwenna to the delicate manoeuvring of Little Faye as she hovers overhead.

Any how Anyhow due to meetings with solicitors over problems we've been having recently I was not planning to get out in anger today, but when I took Mordred out to exercise him I saw a flock of Jackdaws messing around across the valley, not in ideal country (by any stretch of the imagination), but I was bored and am easily lead astray, so I slipped down to the boundary hedge and slipped him. Chaos erupted and with Jackdaws going every where and I lost track of where he was very quickly.

I scrambled over the hedge (which took a couple of minutes) accompanied by the ever present Danny and spoted him waiting on at about 70' above the next hedge.
In goes Danny and after a quick rumage around out comes a jackdaw, He missed on the first stoop but then nabbed it as it turned to go down wind.

Not classical falconry but great fun, and I even remembered to take a photo