Falconry Books

HAWKS IN THE HAND

by John and Frank Craighead

First published in 1939, HAWKS IN THE HAND was one of my favorite books growing up. Reading it (again and again) definitely fueled my passion for birds of prey and inspired my interest in bird photography. It's good to see this fascinating book in print again, now that most copies of the original edition have long since vanished from libraries and used book stores.

Although twin brothers Frank and John Craighead are perhaps most renowned now for their work studying grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region, they began their scientific careers as ornithologists. Indeed, their 1956 book, HAWKS, OWLS, AND WILDLIFE was a seminal work in the fields of raptor ecology, examining in detail the intricate relationship between predatory birds and their prey. But long before they became professional biologists, the Craigheads were studying, photographing, and writing about birds of prey. They were audacious enough, while still in their teens, to submit an article and photographs to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine-and it was published. The recognition they received from the article led to commissions for more articles and eventually to the publication of HAWKS IN THE HAND.

It is interesting that HAWKS IN THE HAND was reissued in the same year that Kenn Kaufman's KINGBIRD HIGHWAY was published. In some ways, the books have a lot in common. They are both, in a sense, coming of age stories about young Americans who have an overriding passion for birds-a passion that they follow unbridled, crossing and recrossing the continent to study birds. And yet the birding travels that the Craigheads and Kaufman took occurred more than 30 years apart. It was a vastly different world in the 1930s. At that time, a native population of Peregrine Falcons still nested across the East, and the Craigheads visited many of their eyries, photographing the eggs, young, and adults-decades later this would provide vital documentation on numerous traditional falcon eyrie sites that had been lost due to DDT and other environmental contaminants. But all was certainly not well in those times. In a poignant 1933 entry in the boys' journal (which was added to this edition), they described an autumn day spent at Cape May, New Jersey. Unlike most fall days now, few bird watchers were present to witness the spectacular stream of migrating hawks passing over. Instead, scores of hunters stood shoulder to shoulder, shooting at every raptor that passed over. "Shells were piled all over the road and hawks were piled all over the running boards of cars and scattered throughout the woods, for no one bothered getting a hawk that fell anywhere but in the road," they wrote. "It seems a crime that they should be so slaughtered."

The equipment available for rock climbing and photography was also much different from what's available today. You won't see any helmets, carabiners, or fancy synthetic climbing ropes in this book. These guys rappelled down sheer cliff, dizzyingly high above the ground, using ordinary manila ropes to reach falcon nests or climbed massive tree trunks with telephone lineman spurs to reach Bald Eagle or hawk nests. One day some nervous spectators, who were viewing the boys climbing to a Peregrine Falcon nest on a lofty cliff, called an ambulance, which parked below them for the entire time they were there. Frank joked, "To heck with them. If we fall, a broom is what we'll need, not an ambulance." And for all their photography, they used 4x5 press cameras-which are about as heavy, awkward, and unwieldy as you can get-but the pictures they took were great.

When I read this book again recently-for the first time in 25 years-I was amazed how well it held up. I highly recommend it.

A very inspirational and interesting book. Written from the journals of each of the authors, this book will never let go of your imagination. This book not only makes you want to become a falconer like the Craigheads, but to LIVE falconry like they did. As Stephen Bodio in the introduction puts it: " ...[the book]made me and children like me want to go and do, just just passivley watch."

A must have.

I love this book. The topic is pretty esoteric but the writing is easy to read and the subject is covered well, in sufficient detail and well documented and researched.

This reviewer greatly anticipated the results of Professor Oggin's decades long interest in falconry, and was gratified with a opus that honored the balance between factual, scholarly work but still offered easily digested prose.
This work can be enjoyed on many levels, from several points of view: from the falconry angle, from the medieval history angle, and from the economics of power and monarchy angle. This work brought me back to happy hours in Mr. Oggin's university classroom!

The fact that this book is so richly illustrated is amazing. The images were printed, using slides of photos that the Craighead brothers took over 60 years ago, yet they are absolutely beautiful. (a testament to the legitimacy of their involvement with National Geographic)
The experience of reading this book is truly like tagging along on the adventure vacation of a lifetime. You will yearn for time in India, and for time with enthusiastic naturalists.
If you're in need of a cheap vacation... buy this book.

This is the best book I've ever read! It's the next best thing to time travel. The Craigheads were invited to visit India as the special guest of a Maharaja's brother, with National Geographic footing the bill. They kept daily logs of their, thoughts, experiences, observations and political debates as they traveled to and from India by ship, just before the US entered World War II. The Craigheads were young collage students who were defining the state of the art in wildlife photography. They experience falconry in India a level that is no longer possible, hunt with Cheetah and attend a lavish royal wedding.

This book and a couple shovels are all you need to dig a snow cave. After reading this book I purchased several other "winter survival" books and they hardly cover the subject at all.

Cave collapse will be on your mind no matter what, but if you build according to his guidelines there will be minimal sagging.

The gear discussion is a little dated but snow is pretty much timeless.

If you travel/ski/snowboard in snow you should know the methods described in this book in case of an unplanned overnight stay.

"How many rabbits have you seen sitting by a fire to keep warm?"

So begins Snow Caves for Fun and Survival, in which Wilkinson demonstrates how people can learn from nature and survive in the wilderness without a fire by using materials at hand- snow, fallen logs and tree branches, whether it be on a winter camping trip or during an emergency situation. Rabbits and birds burrow in the snow and so can humans! Diagrams and photographs aid in the explanations of how to build snow caves, igloos, and other temporary shelters that could save your life.

This book would appeal to two groups: those interested in winter camping and those interested in learning basic survival techniques. For the serious camper there are chapters on Food, Clothing, Tools and Gear. The author draws on this experience as an outdoorsman and describes his own close calls: how to dry out your clothing after accidentally falling into freezing water, etc.

This reviewer spent the first 25 years of life in Minnesota and thought I knew all there was about snow, but I learned a lot from this book. I wish the topic of cave-ins had been dealt with in more depth, since as a small child I was instructed by my parents about the danger of snow collapsing on me.

This is a lovely story about how a falcon became part of a person's life. This beautiful, independent bird is the central character in this story; the large predator soars across the story, taking the readers along for the trip.

This is such a worthwhile book. It will especially appeal to people who love falcons.

if you like to read about hawks, ospreys, falcons, eagles, or any birds of prey, this is the book 4 u.

Kestrels, perhaps because of their abundance in the wild and because apprentices are allowed to keep them, were long dismissed by "serious" falconers as "beginner birds." That's absolutely not true: for one thing, it takes a certain amount of expertise to successfully fly them, and for another, successfully flown kesses can stand alongside the other "true" falcons as amazing game hawks.
Finally, Matthew Mullenix has come along to give them their due. In this well-written, engaging manual devoted to the American kestrel, Mullenix offers solid information for those of us who would like to house and fly kestrels. He covers everything, from equipment to manning technique, and his enthusiasm for this species is contagious.
I think kestrels have been underrated, in part, because they're really CUTE. (Well, so are hummingbirds, and territorial hummingbird males will stab each other in the neck.)
Mullenix opens the door on a great possibility for falconers who are urban or suburban hawkers, as well as for anyone who has always wanted to fly a "real" falcon but was a bit nervous about managing such a tiny bird.
Thanks, Mr. Mullenix: you've added to falconry literature in a significant way, and I personally can't wait to apply the principles you describe in your book.

Nick has done it again!
This book is such a wonderful glimpse into the experience of mounted crow hawking, that the reader feels as though they are in attendance on one of the hunts in northern England. No mind-numbing tedium here... if you're fed up with falconry books that waste time and space with all the usual repetitive "how-to" stuff of falconry (equipment, training, basic husbandry) you will be pleasantly surprised by Nick's ability to cut right to the proverbial heart of the matter. This is without a doubt the best, and most complete book ever written on the topic of hawking from horseback in open country.

Totally awesome book. This guy knows his stuff and is interesting to read. Love the authentic photography.

This is the best book I've read this year, and it came as a complete surprise. I had no previous interest in falconry, but I was familiar with Tim Gallagher's role in the rediscovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker and had enjoyed reading his book, THE GRAIL BIRD, which details the behind-the-scenes events that led to finding that iconic species. I had also seen Gallagher speak at Cornell once, and he seemed interesting and passionate about his work. I picked up FALCON FEVER purely out of curiosity.

I'm not sure exactly what my expectations were, but FALCON FEVER completely exceeded them. The book is broken into two main parts--"My Back Pages" and "My Frederick II Year"--and in some ways it's like two books in one. The first half is a memoir covering his life up to age 19, and it's a harrowing story, as compellingly written as Tobias Wolff's THIS BOY'S LIFE, and even more grim, as Gallagher attempts to cope with a violent, unpredictable (and often drunk) father, who frequently terrorizes his family. But Gallagher finds solace in nature, escaping for hours at a time to run in the fields with his dog. He takes up falconry at the age of 12, and it becomes a grand obsession as he strives to develop an intimate relationship with the wildest, freest creatures on Earth.

At this time, Gallagher discovers Frederick II, a thirteenth-century Holy Roman Emperor and a Renaissance man 200 years before Leonardo da Vinci. He was also perhaps the greatest falconer who ever lived, and wrote a massive tome on the subject that Gallagher devoured as a preteen. But life was tough for him. He spent the last couple of years of high school working graveyard shift at factories, trying to help support his family after they fled from his father, and he often fell asleep in class.

This was in the 1960s, and like many teens in his generation, Gallagher was deeply affected by the Viet Nam war and the alternative culture that became so pervasive then. He and his friends began experimenting with drugs, and then, in his late teens, he was caught up in a drug sting and sent to jail for months. This was the most harrowing part of the book for me. By then, you feel like you really know who this kid is, and a cellblock is the last place on Earth where he belongs. He was so naive and innocent; it was like Billy Budd thrown into a den of wolves. His portrait of life in prison is unforgettable--the strange people he met; the prison culture; amazing. But Gallagher endures and becomes stronger for it.

The book then jumps more than 35 years. Gallagher is 55 years old, the same age as Frederick II was when he died, and he decides to spend a year intensely involved in falconry, visiting famous falconers in Wyoming, Nebraska, and other places in America as well as in Britain and Europe. He also travels through southern Italy and Sicily, retracing the steps of Frederick II. Toward the end of this section, the two parts of his life come together in a moving climax.

I highly recommend this book.

There are fewer things more beautiful than a falcon in flight. This beautiful, majestic bird is the epitome of grace and speed.

This book is a good beginner's guide to catching, training and working with falcons and enjoying the world through their very keen and penetrating eyes.