Blood Ties

by Crane, Ben;

  The next morning, long before the heat takes hold, I pack up and drive to a new motel 200 miles away. On the back roads near the towns of Freer and Hebbronville, I find a lone male Harris hawk on a low branch. His head bobbing, his gaze transfixed on something hidden in an adjacent tree. I stop and watch. I recognize his behaviour: just like Cody, he is working an angle of attack, waiting for something to flush. Through the mesquite he disappears from sight. An explosion of yellow orioles react, shrieking, lassoing and looping above the hawk in the light blue sky. Unperturbed, the hawk curls around, rises up then lands on to the top of a tree. He begins to pull their nest apart, attempting to get to their chicks. The orioles, pushed beyond the limits of fear, strike the hawk on the head, pulling feathers free and forcing him from the nest site.

  Later in the week, I stop for a day at a vast inland lake and fish for bass. The evening chorus of grackles and small wading birds’ whines and hisses sails through the air like phosphorescent, crackling static. Having caught a big fish, I cook it on one of the outdoor barbecues dotted about the park. The clean flesh, fresh, white and steaming, tastes like perch or cod. I carry a Lone Star beer and walk the empty shore. Finding a baby alligator sitting on the water’s edge, half in reeds and half out, I foolishly reach down to touch him. His mother (the size of a sofa and perfectly hidden) explodes out of the lake. I take to my heels, and the shocking squirt of adrenaline makes me shake and laugh uncontrollably for half an hour.

  Driving to the airport on the last day, I pass a desert correctional facility, a prison. I stop and hop from the truck. Walking along the roadside ditch, I end up parallel with a Harris hawk’s nest. It looks an easy climb for a nosy human. For twenty minutes I try every conceivable angle, at each turn pushed back and speared painfully by chest-high cacti. A perfect piece of natural history: the nest flawlessly protected by a dense circular wall. It is a clever, well-considered design, the placement of nest and jail perfect for keeping coyotes out and dangerous men in.

  *

  On my return from Texas to England something shifted. Having seen the way in which wild Harris hawks fit perfectly into a specific ecosystem, seeing the delicate structure they had evolved from, noting their specific patterns and typical natural behaviours, something vital now seemed missing every time I took Cody hunting. At the time I was unable to pinpoint what it was. It was not until eating spiced francolin in Pakistan, and when I showed Haider some video clips of Cody hunting, that the penny dropped. Watching Cody swirl about on the little camcorder screen, Haider was polite, impressed even, said Cody looked like an eagle. He wondered aloud, asking why it lived on the land in the film; it did not seem to fit. He asked if the wild hawks we have in England are not good enough for falconry. I explained that, under English law, falconers are no longer able to harvest or trap wild hawks. A knock-on effect being the development of captive breeding and the importation of birds of prey.

  I explained that Britain has hundreds of licensed breeders, all supplying a range of non-indigenous hawks, eagles and falcons imported from across the world: New Zealand falcons (that’s their name) from New Zealand, Aplomado falcons from South America, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, Harris hawks, diminutive kestrels and prairie falcons from the US; lagger, lugger, lanner and saker falcons from the deserts and continents of the Arabian peninsulas; pale-chanting goshawks from Africa, black sparrowhawks from South Africa, bi-coloured sparrowhawks from Peru and shikra from India and Pakistan. Non-falconry exotica also abound: palm-nut vultures, tropical screech owls, Turkmenian eagle owls, burrowing owls, Indian scops owls, Magellan eagle owls, caracaras, Malay brown wood owls, jackal buzzards, kookaburra and Harlan’s hawks. On top of this we are also able to produce a wide range of synthetically-bred hybrids, whipped up and criss-crossed in a glue of semen and egg. The peregrine falcon mixed into a merlin, hybridization in name and body: a perlin. Gyr falcons crossed with merlins and prairie falcons. Peregrine, sakers and kestrels crossed with merlins. All shifted about through artificial insemination, artificial falcons with artificial names, the gyrlin, the peresaker, the gyrprairie and the kerlin. What started with falcons has spread to eagles and hawks. European goshawks crossed with American Harris hawks and sparrowhawks, golden eagles crossed with red-tail hawks, indigenous with imports, mixed and matched solely to scratch the itch of human curiosity. Haider’s innocuous question ‘Are the hawks you have in England not good enough for falconry?’ was as simple a deconstruction of the situation as it was possible to have, and it remained with me all the way back to England. What had been sewn as a seed in Texas, what transformed my thinking in Pakistan and eventually led to the rehabilitation of injured sparrowhawks in England, is that the true power of birds of prey (and, by extension, all falconry) stems from a direct connection to specific landscapes and the quarry they support. No matter how much I tried to convince myself to the contrary, an imported hawk such as a Harris hawk would only ever take me so far. Flying and owning Cody began to feel like a false premise. Moreover, if he escaped or was lost, I would have inadvertently introduced an invasive species with the power to survive and the temerity to kill and displace indigenous hawks. This was a shocking realization.

  The choice was complex. His wellbeing was paramount. Even if it was legal to do so, for obvious reasons I could not release him. I did not want to sell him (he was more important than money) and I certainly did not want to keep him in captivity like a pet. What he needed was a place where he would be treated with the respect he deserved and flown in exactly the same manner as I had been doing for the last two years. Inevitably, the solution came from outside England.

  Croatia

  Now firmly established on nearly every continent, falconry is practised in at least sixty-eight different countries. High-speed digital communication on top of the human need to organize and connect has created clubs and organizations in almost all these countries. Falconers the world over communicate via social media, and through the most significant club of all, the International Association of Falconry (IAF). Having used these two sources both to research Texas and to make contact with Salman, I had cast my net wider, seeking an education well beyond my experience, to connect with people who lived their entire lives vicariously through birds of prey, to strangers with the good grace to mentor me and play a part in firing my desire to fly purely wild indigenous hawks. And it was one of the falconers in this wider net who offered to provide Cody with a new home. So, a few months after my return from Pakistan, I set off across Europe to Croatia.

  *

  It’s late summer of 2007 and I am sitting in a café in the Croatian town of Karlovac. The architecture across the street is odd. Deep, pitted scuffs, gouged, chisel-like wounds, large circles and smaller chipped dots seem to have been spat across the walls of the buildings. High up near the roof, one hole cuts straight through thick alabaster plaster to orange brick. The marks are beautiful. Like air bubbles frozen in stasis, or raindrops on dry dust, it looks like the surface of a full moon on a clear night. Their strange beauty belies darker origins. Each pockmarked scar was made by bullets, mortars and shrapnel as soldiers fought their way towards Zagreb in the last Balkan war. When Croatia was piecing itself back together, the man I am due to meet was a young boy and a passionate falconer. Scrabbling about in the wreckage of bombed-out buildings, looking for gloves and falconry equipment, his neighbours laughed and told him he was mad. But Viktor’s madness never left him. The fizzing hyperactivity and passion of childhood has been funnelled into writing a PhD paper on wild grey partridge, and breeding both highly sought-after goshawks and some of the finest pointing dogs in the world. He is also at this time the IAF representative for Croatia.

  Britain has thousands of Harris hawks; in 2007 there were less than twenty in Croatia. At Viktor’s request, I have driven Cody across Europe and delivered him to Viktor’s friend, a man named Christian Habich, in Austria. Cody will remain with Christian until his export paperwork has been cleared, then he can be imported legally to Croatia. Be
fore making the final leg of my journey to Karlovac, the last remaining image I have of Cody is a calm, handsome Harris hawk sitting in the dappled morning sun of a lush Austrian garden. He rouses and begins scanning the hedges and apple trees for movement, looking neither concerned nor remotely bothered by my departure. His perfectly evolved lizard-like mind is well beyond sentimentality and the type of attachment I feel. I take a few pictures, wishing him luck, and thank Christian. I leave knowing I have done the best job possible; that once in Croatia, under Viktor’s guidance, he will have a life arguably better than the one he has had, or would have, in England.

  *

  During the torrid heat of a Croatian summer, one of the least-known migrations of birds takes place. Quail are small, no more than the size of a human hand, and speckled light brown with flashes of pale ochre, black and grey. This dull camouflage helps aid survival against predators, but it is the speed of their flight that makes them particularly special for falconers. Quail are a migratory indigenous gamebird on a par with the francolin of Pakistan. For thousands of years they have flown through Turkey and across the Balkans, taking up residence in eastern Europe for the spring and summer. The wild sparrowhawks and goshawks in these areas make full use of this fresh supply of food. A handful of Croatian falconers have learnt to do likewise.

  It is unusual to hunt with a goshawk in the summer, particularly in temperatures of 30 to 40°C. The heat causes the metabolism of the hawk to slow, and they do not respond well. It takes very capable and experienced falconers to get summer hawking right. More often than not, they fail.

  *

  Viktor wakes me at 4 a.m. after my first night in Karlovac. I slide out from under a thin cotton sheet in the heat of the night; the sweat from my skin has turned it opaque, the sheet now sticky, uncomfortable, like butter-covered baking parchment. Viktor is bouncing about with energy and focused fun, his generous enthusiasm undimmed even by the early hour. His hyperactivity is infectious, and I pull myself together and get up. Tim (the goshawk) and Ella (the pointer) are ready and waiting in the car. Viktor’s mother brings a small, intense coffee, which we follow with a chug of iced water, and we are on our way to the hawking grounds.

  The countryside around Karlovac is one of the least spoilt landscapes in Europe, a mixture of low-level farming and wild spaces jumbled together in a mishmash across lush, fecund and beautiful land. We get out of the car and walk through thick summer growth, but tracking quail is difficult, distraction easy. The fields are buzzing with life. Insects are hopping, jumping, creaking and noisy. Darters and dragonflies clatter and spin about, catching light on wings like droplets of white fire. Working busy-bees fumble into purple jug-shaped flowers then back-out with bums covered in pollen. Big spiders, half the size of a hand, shake on webs between tall grass. Their soft, fat abdomens are covered in flashes of lightning yellow, and shiny black patent-leather legs entice me in close, daring to be poked. On the floor armoured bugs are bumping, little green, brown, black and rainbow tanks stomping with micro-footprints over patches of dry soil. A guinea pig on stumpy legs shoots through with a puff of dust into a grass tunnel. Waist-high wild grasses and seeds stick to cuffs, early-morning dew soaks through to the skin and my feet are sludgy, wet and warm. Spears of bright yellow flowers tower high over a swatch of cornflower blue. There are delicate red, pink and orange patterns, subtle green stalks arrive in a multitude of gradations and tones. The purple bloom of distant mountains rises up to a cracked thin black line spreading the width of the horizon. In the valleys, rivers and streams flow clear and warm. We find a deer lying in the shade of a disused hospital, then spot a wild goshawk. A sparrowhawk and a peregrine falcon follow in quick succession. Viktor tells me that further north, deep in forest enclaves, lynx, bear and wolves can still be found.

  We get two chances at quail. Ella weaves left then right, working out the scent. The quail does not wait for the dog to arrive. It shrieks into the air with preternatural speed, rising high and far ahead, and the distance between quail and the goshawk opens up like a cut across a drum skin. The flight is finished in the blink of an eye. The second quail is just as fast. The dog approaches, pauses, moves forward, then locks solid. We move to the left. The quail bursts from the ground, straight towards me, curves round my shoulders on thrumming wings through the air, beating Tim completely. Quail are simply astonishing.

  By 8 a.m. the temperature is rising up through 30°C. It’s too hot, so we stop and drive to the rivers of the Duga Reza valley. Near an old mill, flowing under a rickety bridge, water runs with a tropical green-blue tint. Diving through the water with goggles I swim over shallow runs of gravel, clusters of minnows; a flotilla of silver torpedoes peck and mouth drifts of food. Deeper, in forty feet of water, curved bowls of stone have been eroded over time and are surrounded by thick blankets of underwater cabbage. A place where pike and perch lurk, ready to strike. Numerous species of fish – chub, roach, barbel and trout – swim about, feeding freely. One or two vibrate alongside one another, laying eggs under cloudy puffs of milt. A water snake slips into the stream, moving through the surface water with a quick, curving motion. I pull up parallel with his bootlace-thin body. He turns, bumps against the tip of my nose, big, disc-shaped eyes set central in a slender head the size of my thumb.

  In the late afternoon, bored with swimming, I walk to a nearby bar and order bear steak with cranberries. Two hours later, full of wine and false bravery, I set off on an extended expedition, floating miles downstream on an inflatable bed. I cast a fly rod and line at shadows near sunken logs. At the furthest point I dare myself to try a steep waterfall, but the boat tears and deflates on sharp rocks and I sink mid-stream, losing my rod and reel to the slow, deep depths. The swim to shore is easy. I pull the dead plastic up on to the bank and flop down, stranded in paradise.

  *

  The next day, I meet the future: my first rehabilitated wild sparrowhawk. She has fallen from a nest felled by loggers in the mountains; the rest of her siblings were killed. Partially feathered, she has been taken into the care of Viktor’s friend, a former soldier called Zlatko. Viktor and Zlatko name her Bok (‘hello’ in Croatian). Bok is kept indoors around humans twenty-four hours a day and is as tame as Punhal’s sparrowhawk.

  We sit around in the shade talking and handling ‘misplaced’ and ‘lost’ weapons of war. Rolling 9mm bullets back and forwards across the table, Zlatko places Bok on a perch. I cup her between both hands and feel her heart pumping in frenzy. I blow on her head. She remains resolute, unfazed, bored even. This is the first time I properly notice the smell of a healthy sparrowhawk, and the first time I have ever handled one.

  Before meeting Bok, my first introduction to sparrowhawks was delivered fast and first-hand by nature, but at a distance. Packing and preparing for Pakistan, a gun-sudden shrieking splits the moment in two. Looking through the window, I watch the zinging black tracer of a frightened blackbird drop over, down and along the garden path. The sparrowhawk flicked up and arches over the burlap fence, intent on killing it. A split second’s silence, and, in imagined slow motion, she misses. Time winds up, and both birds crash full stop into the ivy running up a nearby wall. A momentary pause, the blackbird taking flight first. Five feet out, and sensing death, he spins on a pinhead as the sparrowhawk cuts across his path. Both birds flip over and back to the ivy. The blackbird, instinctively clever, ladders down inside the bush and escapes. The sparrowhawk, distracted by my presence, wings splayed across green, looks straight at me. Then is gone. The speed, tenacity and skill of their flight was mind-blowing.

  On my return from Croatia, as if prodding me into action, teasing and testing me, a second, more significant sighting of a sparrowhawk occurred.

  For nearly 400 years, farmers, carts, clergy, country folk, horses and hawks have used a small bridleway near my village. Midway along its length the undergrowth curves tube-like, a twisting mess of bramble and high-sided trees. Firing through the wood, up across a stream, sparrowhawks corral and sta
rtle small birds into the tube. With no angle of escape, they are plucked deftly from the air. The only traces left are feathers spinning lightly through shive sunlight.

  Once when I was walking in this tunnel, I saw a female sparrowhawk pinning a pigeon to the floor, silently tearing at flesh and feathers. She was so focused on her meal I almost stepped on her. Three or four seconds passed before the dog ruined it and ran past. The sparrowhawk flew off, leaving the pigeon. I lifted the carcass from the ground, brushed off the twigs and leaves and put it in my pocket. Back home in the kitchen, I cut the breast meat from the chest and peeled the legs from the carcass. The meat was still warm and soft. I dropped two bits to the dog; the rest went into a skillet. Thirty seconds raw to rare: nature’s fast food delivered to me by an indigenous wild hawk. It was hard to ignore the signs this time.

  For a falconer of my mind-set and thinking, the European sparrowhawk is the personification of the perfect hawk. Ubiquitous, supremely adapted, they are ferocious hunters, evolved to maintain the natural avian order. Short wings and a long tail provide high-speed manoeuvrability, and the twisting flights required in dense cover make them unparalleled hunters through tight woodland and along hedgerows. They have lightning-fast reactions and their eyes are an adaptive miracle, allowing them to pursue all targets with tenacity and guile. The underside of their feet is a mass of long, undulating ridges, the perfect glue for the feathers of any quarry. Whip-smart and opportunistic, to conserve energy they will drag larger prey into garden ponds, drowning them before eating them. Once, while I was driving a long, straight country lane, a female sparrowhawk skimmed out of a tree and flew six inches above the car’s bonnet. She was cunningly using the sound and movement of the car as cover to flush birds from the hedges. It worked. She hammered left on to a flock of unsuspecting starlings feeding in winter stubble.