Literary Non-fiction, Fiction and Essays
(on falconry, raptors, the lives of falconers)

• E A Rage for Falcons, Stephen Bodio
  • A smart, autobiographical, and lyrical introduction to American falconry; well-written, like everything of Bodio's
• E Equinox, Dan O'Brien
  • A Great Plains falconer and writer describes his pursuit of the perfect falconry season, its costs and rewards
• E On The Edge of The Wild, Stephen Bodio
  • Collected essays on Bodio's favorite raptors, places, people, books and food, and how they're all related
• E Querencia, Stephen Bodio
  • An evocative, beautiful memoir of loss and life set within a falconer's mental and physical landscape
• E The Goshawk, T. H. White
  • A story of one man's tortured, doubting attempts to train a goshawk without instruction
• E The Wind Masters, Pete Dunne
  • A collection of unique short stories written to illustrate the lives of North American birds of prey through their own eyes

• E As The Falcon Her Bells, Philip Glasier
  • An entertaining account of mid-twentieth-century British falconry by a well-known and successful falconer; autobiographical
• E A Fascination with Falcons: A Biologist's Adventures from Greenland to the Tropics, Bill Burnham
  • Peregrine Fund founder recounts his life-long association with raptors, wild and trained
• C,G A Merlin for Me, John Loft
  • The expanded, narrative journal of a British falconer's season with an eyas (captive bred) merlin; includes thoughts on and descriptions of skylark hawking (modern and classical), and the hunting of trained and wild merlins in general.
• E Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia, Stephen Bodio
  • A falconer's surprising and arduous journey to the Far East in search of an ancient, authentic falconry
• C,G Falconry In The Land of The Sun, Sirdar Mohamed Osman
  • A member of Afghanistan's former royal family remembers the lost wealth of raptors, wilderness and falconry that once flourished in that country
• C,G Falconry in the Valley of the Indus, Richard F. Burton
  • 19th Century warrior/scholar/explorer/spy (think: Doyle and Flemming meet Lewis, Clark, Dickens and Twain) gives an accurate and insightful account of falconry in the Near East as it once was
• E Falcons and Foxes in the UK: The Making of a Hunter, A. Lee Chichester
  • American falconer and freelance writer recounts a summer's internship at Nick Fox's Northumberland falcon breeding and training center; trains falcons for hawking crows on horseback
• C,G Notes on the Falconidae Used in India in Falconry, E. Delme-Radcliffe
  • Unique account of falconry in British-occupied India by an officer and falconer stationed in that country
• C,G Observations on Falconry in Pakistan, John Cox
  • The illustrated journal and honest impressions of a westerner experiencing a very different culture and falconry to the one he knows
• E In Season: A Louisiana Falconer's Journal, Matthew Mullenix
  • A narrative account of one falconer's hawking season and home place; his family, friends and favorite local characters. A chronology written in short essays, annotated with technical details, photos and numerous appendices. Interludes provided by three longer, previously published essays. Story focused on hawking small birds with the tiercel Harris', but includes descriptions of hunting with peregrines, merlins, red-tails and others.
• C,G Those Wonderful Hawks, Dan Cover
  • The memoir of one of American falconry's first genuine practicioners, from his early days, road-tripping across the country in search of new quarries, to his later, more settled experiments hawking quail and dove over his own managed habitat
• C,G Harris' Hawk Days, Martin Hollinshead
  • A collection of thirteen entertaining and well-written stories by a British author and falconer recounting various memorable days in the field.

• A Falconry and Hawking, Philip Glasier
  • A solid and useful introductory text by a long-time British falconer
• C,A The Falconer's Apprentice: A Guide to Training the Passage Red-tailed Hawk, William C. Oakes
  • A thoughtful and wide ranging discussion of important issues American apprentice falconers must consider
• A The Red-tailed Hawk: A Complete Guide to Training and Hunting North America's Most Versatile Game Hawk, Liam J. McGranaghan
  • A treatise of similar subject range and good quality to Oakes's book but with a more terse, "bulleted" presentation
• A,G Understanding The Bird Of Prey, Nick Fox
  • An exhaustive treatment of scientific, medical and practical subjects germane to successful falconry; combines introductory information with advanced theory; British

• G A Hawk for The Bush, Jack Mavrogordato
  • An informative, well-designed text on practical training and hunting with the "traditional accipiters," goshawks and sparrowhawks; the long-time modern standard in this field and still very useful
• G American Kestrels in Modern Falconry, Matt Mullenix
  • The result of the author's ten years flying American kestrels at small birds; emphasizes precision weight control and equipment, quality diet and providing good slips
• G Art and Practice of Hawking, E. B. Michell
  • Written, according to the author, for the benefit of non-falconer sportsmen so that they might be pleased to invite a falconer along on a future hunt; in truth, a wide-ranging, insightful, entertaining, and expert treatise on late-19th Century British falconry, notable for now-famous passages on flying merlins and sparrowhawks; still a timely and useful text, despite some anachronistic references
• G Desert Hawking II, Harry McElroy (see short essay re: Harry in REVIEWS below)
  • The second in a series of three volumes that together influenced, instructed and inspired two generations of American falconers; Cooper's hawks and Harris hawks are principle subjects
• G Desert Hawking...With A Little Help From My Friends, Harry McElroy
  • The third installment in the above-mentioned series; expanded with chapters from several expert falconers; covers a wide range of species, including South American raptors, all presented in light of the author's minimalist, no-nonsense approach to successful falconry
• G Gamehawking At Its Very Best, Harold Webster, Editor
  • Another multi-author text with good contributions covering a wide span of North American species and hawking styles
• G Hawking Ground Quarry, Martin Hollinshead
  • A solid treatment of the raptors (chiefly shortwings) and quarries (chiefly rabbits) most favored by the author; emphasis on manipulation of slips for best results; excellent photographs
• G The Hunting Falcon, Bruce A. Haak
  • A unique treatise on modern, practical, American long-winging, analogous to Mavrogordato's treatment of the British shortwings; covers all practical considerations for hawking a range of species
• M The Imprint Accipiter, Micheal McDermott
  • Represents much new thinking on raising and training the accipiters, and competes directly (sometimes controversially) with views presented by McElroy and Mavrogordato; written by an extremely successful modern falconer; emphasizes a specific imprinting scheme capped off by serious hunting
• G Observations on Modern Falconry, Ronald Stevens
  • A surprisingly short, dense meditation on training and keeping falcons; a beautifully written and insightful window into the falcon's mind and motivation

• E Falcon, Helen Macdonald
  • Billed by the publisher as "a cultural and natural history of the falcon," Macdonald's work is much more complete and surprising than this suggests. An excellent and sweeping treatment of the long relationship between falcons and people. Review below.
• A,G Life Histories of North American Birds of Prey (Parts I & II), Arthur C. Bent
  • Parts of a multi-volume masterwork on the natural histories of North American birds, circa 1937, these two give an accounting of our raptors like none other; somewhat notorious for including stomach contents (ie, the hawks shot and examined), and for dated references to the "beneficial" or "harmful" nature of different species, it remains untouched as a valuable reference; includes the very best description of the Harris' hawk I've ever read, and this from 1902 (by Maj. Allan Brooks):

    Harris's hawk is a dual personality, a sort of Jekyll and Hyde character. A casual acquintaince with this species will probably show one, or more probably a pair, of these hawks sitting in the top of a tree that rises above the general scrub, sitting quietly like Buteos apparently taking little interest in their surroundings as they soak up the morning sun. Presently they will take flight, mounting into the air in easy spirals, higher and higher into the blue, and that will probably be the last you will see of them. But to see this hawk in action, one has to be afield early while the mists still hang over the resacas. Then Mr. Hyde appears, a flutter of wings as a flock of teal rise in confusion with a dark shape striking right and left among them with all the dash of a goshawk. If unsuccessful, the next attack may be on a group of small herons, one of which may be singled out and followed until killed. Very often a pair of these hawks combine to secure their quarry, and I have seen a snowy heron shared amicably after it had fallen victim to one of these raptores. in action and flight it combines many of the characteristics of the Buteos, marsh hawks, and goshawk.

• E Hawks and Owls of the Great Lakes Region & Eastern North America, Chris G. Earley
  • A good handbook and field guide with excellent photos and easy-to-navigate conventions
• E Hawks in Flight, Dunne, Sibley, and Sutton
  • An unusual and successful approach to raptor ID, relying on gestalt or total-picture impression of the raptor as it moves through its habitat; illustrations in pencil and often in silhouette (as the birds commonly appear)
• A,G Hawks, Eagles and Falcons of North America, Paul Johnsgard
  • One of several bird family accounts from Johnsgard; much useful data on each species culled from the literature; but slightly odd illustrations of the hawks themselves
• E Pirate of the Plains, Bruce A. Haak
  • This title could appear in the first two categories as well; part autobiographical account of the author's years as a field researcher studying prairie falcons in the wild; contains much detail on this species and stands alone as a qualified natural history
• A,G Raptors of the World, Ferguson-Lees, Christie, Franklin, Mead, and Burton
  • Exhaustive reference compiling published data on all the world's raptors; great for "What does that species eat?" late night ponderings.
• E The Cooper's Hawk, Vic McLeran
  • Another multi-category contender, like Pirate of the Plains, parts autobiographical and parts natural history; includes a naturalist's view of the author's region (OK) with a focus on a year in the life of the Cooper's hawk

• E A Hunter's Heart, David Petersen, Editor
• E A Hunter's Road, Jim Fergus
• C A Sporting Chance, Dan Manix
• E For a Handful of Feathers, Guy de la Valdene
• E Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway
• E Tales of a Rat-Hunting Man, Brian Plummer
• E The Unnatural Enemy, Vance Bourjaily
• E True at First Light, Ernest Hemingway

• Medical Management of Captive Birds of Prey, Pat Redig
• Raptor Biomedicine, Redig, Cooper, Remple, and Hunter

I’m too late to say the first nice thing about Helen Macdonald. Doubtless her writing—scholarly work, essays, and erudite poetry—have made heads nod and shake in amazement for years. Author Steve Bodio recently raved of this fellow writer and falconer: “Her blog posts are better than most essays published for money today. I just went through the latest New Yorker and there was nothing to compare with her best.”

Agreed. With Falcon, her first book on birds, Helen Macdonald manages to make a lesser work of everyone else’s treatment of the topic. That’s a big claim: Many remarkable writers and scientists cover the field, but none I know have yet produced a book as smart, insightful, literate or original.

Billed by the publisher as a “cultural and natural history of the falcon,” Falcon simply could not have been written by anyone else. Listed among Macdonald’s fields of study at Jesus College, Cambridge (where she is a Research Fellow), are: “History of ecology, amateur natural history, biological field-sciences and field-sports/hunting in 20th Century cultures; history of conservation and ethology; history of biological warfare; war and nature.” War and nature! There’s depth of interest for you. I could add military aviation to the list, an area of expertise that finds its way often and effectively into the text:

“What of flight, the single most celebrated falcon characteristic? Falcon bodies are heavy in relation to their wing area…Their wings have a high aspect ratio—the ratio between the wingspan and the wing width—and their low-camber wings are long and pointed. The result is a low-drag confirmation more suited to active, flapping flight and fast gliding than soaring.”

Adding poetry to physics, Macdonald describes a stooping falcon this way:

“At speeds of over 100 miles an hour, the minutest alterations to her body shape gave punishingly exaggerated effects; she looked, as Franklin later described, shrink-wrapped, mummified. And just as it seemed impossible for her to fall any faster, she’d change her shape again.”

The military deployment (that’s right: deployment) of trained falcons gets its own chapter in this uniquely well-rounded falcon book. Other sections examine the raptors’ biology, conservation, and successful adaptations to urban life. Macdonald reserves one chapter for the looming mythical status of falcons throughout history. And of course, falconry receives special treatment. Our sport takes pride of place in the center of the book, skillfully tying its wide-ranging topics together.

Throughout the text you’ll find surprising revelations (no “trivia”) that could only result from extensive and enthusiastic study. For example, did you know?

“Falconry techniques and knowledges have been traded between disparate cultures for millennia. European knights took falcons with them on the Crusades, and learned how to hood falcons from their foes…Falconry’s symbolic system was largely shared between both sides, and so it was able to articulate power-struggles in ways immediately comprehensible to either.”

Then, typically Macdonald, a wry anecdote illustrates the point: “A besieged Richard I sent an envoy to Saladin to request food for his starving falcons; Saladin immediately delivered baskets of his best poultry for the falcons alone.”

What Macdonald does with Falcon is bring all of herself to the subject. She breathes life into the work; pulls the lives of falcons and people together into a rare three-dimensional portrait. The effect is illuminating.

Martin Hollinshead should be a more familiar name. He is the author of now six high-quality hawking books illustrating the most popular form of falconry in the West. It’s likely you own one, yet the name of the author rarely comes up in conversation or on lists of recommend reading. I think the publication of his latest work, Harris’ Hawk Days, may change all that; and I’m here to recommend it.

I remember receiving Hollinshead’s first book with great excitement. Hawking Ground Quarry, released in 1993 and still in print, was not the first title to focus on flying “shortwings,” that diverse group of buteos, parabuteos, accipiters and eagles allied mainly by the fact they aren’t falcons. But it was the first dedicated (and unapologetic) effort to raise the pursuit of rabbits and hares to the status of classic falconry. Prior to Hollinshead’s work, hawking bunnies was a chapter—a story, a fond memory—added to a larger work. In the modern era, Mitchell, Mavrogordato and McElroy all praised the shortwings and wrote about rabbit hawking, yet it seemed their favorite quarries had feathers. For Hollinshead, clearly fur was king.

Then there were the photos. Hawking Ground Quarry featured what would become the new standard for falconry photography: crisp, well-composed images of hawks closing on their quarry. Action shots . . .bird porn! The fine photographer Dieter Kuhn stands out here and should be recognized alongside G.E. Lodge as the working falconer’s favorite illustrator.

Another staple of Hollinshead’s writing apparent in that first installment was his great respect for the Harris’ hawk. In the seldom-challenged fiefdom of the European goshawk and the golden eagle, one enthusiastic rabbit hunter recognized the parabuteo for the prodigy that it is. It must have been hard, for a time, to face one’s mates over a pint and claim allegiance to such an oddity as the Baywing.

In two recent volumes, A Passion for Harris Hawks and the newly released Harris’ Hawk Days, Martin Hollinshead makes his love of the parabuteo a matter of public record. In that he is certainly not alone, but Hollinshead does more than heap additional praise upon the now world-famous hawks: he genuinely understands them, and in this he joins much more exclusive company.

In a paragraph from the first pages of A Passion for Harris’ Hawks, the author hints at a bond between hawk and hawker that Harry McElroy has long described as “complex:”

“…with the right falconer, nothing is beyond this bird. The parabuteo is naturally courageous—weight for weight, probably the most courageous bird on the planet—and with the right partner, this courage is boosted to superhero level. The Harris’ will bounce back from battles that would shake an eagle because it knows it can rely on help. To see this in action—to be part of it—to watch this little bird give everything, and then more, trips a special switch. Barbed-wire fences are bounded over, hedges crashed through. The risk of injury isn’t registered, nor is the pain. Nothing matters except getting to the bird. There’s something strange at work here, something primitive, something deadly.”

Some will say that getting to the bird—to any bird—is every falconer’s responsibility, regardless of risk. But those most familiar with the Harris’ will admit there is something more (“something strange,”) in the motivation to help a bird that at some indefinable point became your partner and your friend.

It is surprising, given this hawk’s popularity and wide distribution, so few good books about them exist. Harris’ hawk stories are common enough in our periodicals but notably rare in hardcover. Like rabbit hawking, the Harris’ as a topic generally gets a chapter or two. Martin Hollinshead, in just a few monographs, more than doubled the volume of books in print dedicated to the Harris’. Were he less successful and experienced a hawker, or a poor writer, this might not be an improvement. But we got lucky: These are good, useful books and fun to read.

With Harris’ Hawk Days, an intended companion to A Passion for Harris’ Hawks, Hollinshead raises the level of his writing to the high standard of his hawking. “Days” includes thirteen vivid and entertaining hunting stories most of us would love to record so well. True to life, they are not all “hero shots.” Hollinshead writes with accuracy and humility of his mistakes, even if many of these are put to right by the exceptional efforts of his hawking team: wife and partner Tonya, collie Rob and female Harris’ hawk, Flair. As any good falconer will admit, success is a group effort!

The stories are set in Hollinshead’s home territory, a rolling English countryside of rabbit warrens, cottage homes, small farms and the necessary nemesis of bracken:

“The encyclopedia opposite me describes bracken as ‘a persistent fern’. It’s the ultimate understatement. Bracken will engulf whole farms, whole hills—whole districts. It doesn’t know moderation: it marches and swallows, marches and swallows.”

Here the author pursues a high flying form of Harris’ hawking, with Flair soaring, Rob working the bracken for rabbits or pheasant and Tonya marking the course of the flight. Hollinshead races to the catch, always. And in the midst of the running, his mind works to record the scene:

“You don’t watch hare flights, you live them, even the shortest pursuits giving you enough time to absorb every detail. As Flair closed on her target, this detail was put down frame by frame and gave a perfectly executed and often seen piece of lethal ballet…”

In the last two chapters (my favorites), a search for the perfect hawking retreat offers Hollinshead and team an unimagined adventure in the Scottish Highlands. It begins simply and beautifully:

“Over breakfast—coffee and a slice of toast—I gazed at the mountain at the back of the cottage. The picture in the catalog hadn’t captured an ounce of it. You had to see it like this, first thing in the morning through cold November light, with eyes that hadn’t yet shaken off the tamer ground of home. And all around more of the same: wild beautiful space. It was our first day and I was desperate to go hawking.”

Throughout Harris’ Hawk Days, Martin Hollinshead demonstrates his powers of observation and a taste for good story telling. Never repetitive, he covers a surprising range of topics encountered in his falconry—from the pleasures of photography to the insanity of Internet chat rooms to the horror of a house full of rats. In turns do his partners Tonya, Rob and Flair assist and cajole and make this falconer’s life complete.

These and other books by Martin Hollinshead are available at www.falconrybooks.com.

“…if I cannot set down sufficient reasons for my proceedings, my hawks shall testify for me…”

Any writer about falconry would love to be able to make that statement. Few writers would dare, and a hawker who makes the claim risks serious embarrassment by his own hawk!

But Edmund Bert, still talking a little trash after 400 years, wasn’t just any hawker.

Consider the eyebrows he must have raised with comments like this:

“I know many will say they have had hawks, that if they had once seen a pheasant, that then they would kill no more partridges that year: it is very likely there have been many such [hawks]; and as I confess that, so I pray you give me leave to think that fault is not with them, but in the unskillfulness of their keeper.”

Backing his views with plenty of “sufficient reasons,” Bert proceeds to counsel on this problem and numerous others regarding the training of goshawks. As a practical man, Bert is careful to show his opinions are rooted in undisputed field success; and as often as possible, he makes clear whose opinions are not!

“I would advise you herein, but all is in the practice and handling; I will tell you my course, if I meet with such a hawk, and my reasons for it, contrary to most men’s opinions.”

I imagine Bert enjoyed a tight circle of admirers in his day and at least as many who would rather die than ask his advice. We are lucky he chose finally to write it down.

Equally fortunate are we for the work of Great Britain’s Derry Argue, who is within Bert’s modern circle of admirers and is his most recent publisher. In Training the Short-Winged Hawk: An Elizabethan Perspective, Argue returns to us the hard-won advice of two past masters of the accipiter. Due to his careful and knowing transcriptions, we read anew Edmund Bert’s classic, An Approved Treatise on Hawks and Hawking (1619) and the anonymous yet enduring work, A Perfect Booke for Kepinge of Sparhawkes or Goshawkes (1575).

Though Argue calls his work “transcription,” something closer to translation must have been necessary to make the Old English words and fonts comprehensible. How many of us today would gladly dive into anything like a “booke for kepinge sparhawkes?” Though I own an earlier facsimile of Bert’s original treatise, I admit I never got far into it. Thanks to this new edition, I probably never will.

In his excellent introduction to both texts, Argue does more than explain what choices he made in the transcription of various words and phrases. He provides a complete primer for each volume, providing necessary background and a sort of road map for the terrain ahead. This makes the slight work of deciphering what original grammar remains (Argue chose artfully here) a pleasure akin to exploring an old and quaint city quarter.

For any falconer, but especially for those of us who love the short-wings and hope to fly them well, I offer my highest recommendation of this book. I soon found in reading, as did Derry Argue, that “…I have become rather fond of Edmund Bert and I think I would have enjoyed his company.”

“Flying our quail is, in my opinion, the very essence of the Sport. While hunting any hawk, at any game, my heart returns my real consciousness to pursuit of quail with the Cooper's. Whereas these flights fit into a certain pattern or fall within limits, their diversity makes a general description a near impossibility.”

—Harry McElroy, from Desert Hawking II

A past NAFA Hawk Chalk includes the report of one Director at Large complaining at length about the evident loss of respect by falconers for their quarry. He notes with alarm the derogatory references made to game animals in our periodical literature and Internet lists, to wit: Some falconers call gray squirrels "tree rats." That one I knew already, but "pasture rats" (for cottontails) and "corn maggots" (prairie chickens) were new to me. My personal favorite among derogatory references is "dumpster grouse," for starlings. But I see that as more a slander of myself and other urban starling hunters than of the noble (if slightly greasy) Sturnidae.

This Director further laments any comparison of hunting to warfare, especially references to game as "the enemy" and to any overzealous falconer's exhortation to "Kill the bastards!" As my literary hero Wendell Berry writes, “One can only agree!”

But why can't I share my NAFA representative’s soapbox here? What defense can I mount for the falconers of my generation, who are most likely the lion's half of these blasphemers?

If disrespect for quarry is something new, and my generation most to blame, then maybe essayist Wendell Berry offers another relevant observation: Almost no American my age grew up on a farm. Nor do many come to falconry with a personal history of hunting. We are mostly making this up as we go along.

Young Americans are raised in cities or suburbs now. Our relationship to animals is nearly one-dimensional, even cartoonish: We have “companion animals,” chicken meat wrapped in plastic, and we get large doses of Walt Disney's bizarro-world visions of wildlife. An older, many-layered interaction with animals (as quarry, labor, food, friends, wealth, and works of God) is almost lost to us. My own perception still lags after years of active catch-up, and it probably always will.

As for taking it to "the enemy," no less a falconer than Harry McElroy refers to quail this way in all his writing. He also calls them "Rommel's Troops." I have never found Harry’s choice of words other than funny, but then I've met the quail myself (bobwhites and cagey “blues”) and failed to catch them.

Harry chases these fine birds daily across the Arizona desert and has for more than fifty years. He takes a tiny fraction of what a gunner could. Quail are his favorite quarry. He loves them. Why would he wage war against them?

I don't believe he does. I think "Harry's War" is the way he frames his life's work, if a decades-long campaign to better his hunting can be viewed as work. Harry changes hawks and shifts strategy from year to year; he mixes dogs and horses and mules, constantly recruiting. If these animals are his air force, his infantry and his cavalry, then maybe it follows, for the sake of metaphor, that he needs an enemy?

If so, it could only be a metaphor, Harry's wry shorthand for a serious and many-layered interaction with animals.

I’m submitting this note in appreciation (and unsolicited defense) of a man who was unwittingly instrumental in my development as a falconer. Harry’s instruction and example, communicated through his books and other writings, have been hugely influential to me. Today, as a flyer of tiercel Harris hawks and small falcons, I can plot a straight line back to my first readings of McElroy. There is no clearer voice for those of us who like to bushwhack little birds, get our hands and knees dirty with honest hawking, and appreciate the truly unique characters that are our hawks.

Much to our good fortune, Harry McElroy is still hawking and still writing. He will soon release a new full length text on the hawking of desert quail with Aplomado falcons and Harris hawks; I’ve read an early copy and can attest to its value and its inimitable McElroy style. He will also re-print, perhaps this year, an updated version of the book that got me started on this long pursuit: the American classic, Desert Hawking II.

No doubt another generation of hawkers—Harry’s new recruits—will be enlisted on extended tours of duty.

The literature of falconry has many texts but no Death in the Afternoon. Our books are penned by experts, mystics, fanatics, poets and apologists, but not by journalists. It may be no surprise that such passion as we have for our sport inspires few dispassionate accounts. But even an attempt at objectivity is rare. The experts and fanatics refuse it. Poets and mystics refute it. The apologists at least acknowledge other points of view, but in the end reject their implications. Death in the Afternoon rejects nothing, good or bad, about the barbarous art of fighting bulls. It's value stems from this and from its author's frankness with self and subject.

What would it take to shift the eye of Hemingway's classic treatise onto the sport of hunting with birds? There is probably any number of good reasons why no one cares. But let’s consider:

A book like this would follow the falconry and falconers of one country. The sport in Spain is a tempting choice. I’m sure the Spaniards have a wonderful falconry, and I’ve heard some interesting things about it. I’m told they fly European kestrels at migratory pharaoh quail, for example. They have native partridges, sparrowhawks and peregrines, and I’ll bet someone flies Harris’ hawks very well at a classic quarry. He is probably smug about it, too, and despised by the goshawkers.

Other countries have their proponents. Stephen Bodio, an enthusiastic Russophile, wrote recently and at length about the Russian-flavored Mongol falconry of Central Asia. Harry McElroy writes fondly of Mexico and Peru, places no less foreign to us for being in our own hemisphere. Lee Chichester of Virginia returned from a summer hawking crows in Northumberland and turned that into a good read. E. W. Jameson’s The Hawking of Japan is as arcane and beautiful a book as its subject.

But what’s called for is a treatise on the general type illustrated by a classic example. Men fought bulls in Mexico, Central and South America, Portugal and France, but Hemingway found its classic example in Spain. Falconry claims many classical forms; which should we chose? Bedouin, Indian, or Chinese? Fox-pelted, Mongolian eaglemen claim as much right to real falconry as brass-buttoned, British crow hawkers. There is no One True Sport to standardize the others.

So why not write about ourselves? We have much country and good hawking, a great diversity of each. Bodio wrote about us. A Rage for Falcons takes aim at the largest of our local regions and sub-cultures, and it aims higher as a coherent and gentle tutoring on what falconry is and means. Yet Rage is a thin book and ours a wide country. And Hemingway is not so gentle as Bodio.

Death in the Afternoon finds Hemingway being certain about something he knows, and about which some certainty is possible because the fighting of bulls is thoroughly codified. His certainty is further assured because he seeks the impact of beauty in art, and he knows it and names it wherever he finds it. As he writes of favorite wines and fighting bulls, “a person with increasing knowledge and sensory education may derive infinite enjoyment…” Knowing the rules and loving the game are essential to the effort Hemingway makes in his exposition of the bullfight.

Our own national pastimes inspire this kind of writing, too. There is a thriving industry of it, an entire genre for baseball alone. Many good writers seek and find beauty in falconry but rarely as spectators. Our art is inscrutable at a distance, impossible to see from the stands. This is probably good for falconry but bad for anyone trying to pin down the truth of it for a lasting and objective treatise. And there’s another hurdle:

“The bullfight is not a sport in the Anglo-Saxon sense of the word, that is, it is not an equal contest or an attempt at an equal contest between a bull and a man. Rather, it is a tragedy…”

Death in the Afternoon is a chronicle of artistic decline as much as a counting of virtues and a viewer’s guide. Hemingway wrote of bullfighting as a decadent spectacle and an impermanent art. He despairs of this, as a lover and a connoisseur, “but what are you to do? Should you stay away? You can but you cut your nose to spite your face that way.”

Should our own impermanent art grow decadent and decline, what are we to do? What we can do but haven’t done is write a serious book comparing the artful and artless in American falconry. This would be an incendiary work, of course. To name names, as Hemingway does, would be unthinkable and probably uninsurable. Spanish bullfighters in the 1930s were like major league ball players today, public figures about which much was written, the good and the bad. I am saying that it is not so easy to critique bad falconry and those who practice it, but that we probably should.

“After you go to bullfights for a certain length of time, when you see what they can be, if finally they come to mean something to you, then sooner or later you are forced to take a definite position about them…there is one thing you can do and that is know what is good and what is bad, to appreciate the new but let nothing confuse your standards.”