Human development affects wildlife through intensified farming and forestry, construction, pollution, disturbance and climate change. Some wildlife can be protected for the future in reserves. However, there is little pristine land left to reserve in most developed countries, and very few reserves large enough to hold viable raptor populations. Most raptors and other wildlife must therefore share areas that are already changed by humans.
To preserve diverse wild systems in these areas requires knowledge, skills and resources for management. Falconers have already contributed very widely to knowledge of wild raptor ecology and management. Modern falconers continue a tradition of research that extends from Frederich of Hohenstauffen, through fundamental studies last century by the Craigheads, Hamerstroms and Heinz Brüll, to many recent publications by falconer-ecologists. No less important is the veterinary knowledge that falconers have accumulated over the centuries. The many publications by falconer-vets provide the basis for treatment and rehabilitation of many injured wild raptors each year, often in centres run by falconers. Falconers become raptor psychologists. This gave modern falconers the skills to develop raptor breeding in enclosures.
When organochlorine pesticides wiped out peregrinefalcons in large areas and threatened total extinction, falconer-biologists Tom Cade in the USA and Christian Saar in Europe were inspired by earlier falconer-breeders Heinz Meng and Renz Waller to build large breeding and restoration programs. These programs provided a knowledge-base for other peregrine projects in Sweden and Canada, and for crucial programs to rescue other species. The techniques developed by falconers to release raptors are also important skills for restoring lost population.
Trained raptors were used in studies to design electricity transmission lines with little risk of electrocuting wildlife . Falconers used released raptors to encourage nesting on human structures , to gain an understanding of predation that can be needed to preserve rare species in managed landscapes and to develop radio-tracking techniques that are so important for studies of wild raptors.
Falconers founded internationally active organisations specifically to distribute the knowledge and skills they developed, including the Peregrine Fund and Raptor Research Foundation . Of course, knowledge can be preserved in writing and pictures, but practical skills are best preserved live. Falconry provides a self-funding resource for preserving and developing raptor handling skills, with training centres and apprenticeship schemes to ensure that novices meet the welfare needs of tame raptors. Falconry also provides the resources to maintain domestic breeding populations of rare raptors. These domestic stocks are an insurance against the extinction that might come to wild populations from unanticipated pollutants or disease.
Another potentially great value of falconry is as a resource for preserving wildlife through the World Conservation Union’s concept of sustainable use. Healthy wild raptor populations can sustain high yields of young birds, especially within the traditional practise of borrowing for falconry and then returning them to the wild. This relationship with wild raptors proved sustainable for centuries in some parts of the world. Although domestic breeding can remove a need for wild raptors, new methods of DNA-fingerprinting and electronic tagging are now available to control harvests whose value can motivate preservation of wildlife habitats. Falconry is also a potential resource for conservation through sustainable use of prey species. Falconry represents a natural method of predation, with a lower rate of take than shooting and negligible risk of prey escaping injured.
Falconry already provides an incentive for preserving some areas that hold too few game for other sustainable uses of wildlife to be economic. Modern falconry has developed many benefits for wildlife management and remains a unique resource for conservation. We believe that preserving falconry is important for conserving birds of prey.
It’s the end of August and the hawk migration has commenced. In Artvin’s Arhavi township, Ahmet is making his final preparations. He is telling me how the red-backed spider, actually a small bird, is used as bait to catch a hawk. “We tie an insect known as a mole cricket and place it in a cage. Because the insect is constantly flitting around, the bird goes into the cage to look for food and is caught.” He was going to train the bird to perch at the top of a 1.5 meter long stick for a few days. It would wait there at the tip of the stick so that hawks flying overhead could see it. During the training session its eyes would be covered in such a way that it couldn’t look up. That way it wouldn’t see the hawk and be startled. Finally everything was all set. We could proceed to the waiting place.
Hawking is a tradition that extends all the way from Rize on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast to the border with Georgia, and quail hunting is at the root of it. On a major migration route between Eurasia and Africa, the Eastern Black Sea witnesses intensive bird migrations. Innumerable quail fly over the Black Sea heading south, alighting ennervated in the coastal flats for a brief stopover. At the same time, the migration of the sparrow hawk, a raptor which preys on quail and other small birds, is also under way. The traditional sport of falconry, which continues from the end of August when the migration commences to mid-November, has been practiced for years.
As well as a tail, a beak and powerful claws, sparrow hawks have wings that enable them to execute sudden turns in the forest. The females lay four to six eggs in May. While the mother hawk stands watch over the newly hatched chicks, the father goes in search of food.
FALL IS THE SEASON
Owning a beautiful and good-natured sparrow hawk is very important to a Black Sea man. When I asked a man from Ardeşen about this, he said, “What? So I should go around with a crow?”, and he emphasized what a noble bird the hawk is. Carrying such a friendly, dignified, proud and handsome bird with attractive markings on your arm and sitting with it at the falconers’ coffeehouse is considered an extraordinary privilege.
As octogenarian Halim Yılmaz says, “We love hawks more than anything. We don’t eat anything, we feed them. We look after them like our children.” The falconer in the tree across from me has come from Bartin. Another says he’s from Istanbul. They’ve taken their annual vacation and returned to their native province on the first transport available to catch falcons even before paying a visit to their villages. Some men are mentioned who even abandoned their wives on their wedding day to go up in the mountains and didn’t come back for 10-15 days. Such a passion does the sparrow hawk awaken in the Black Sea male…
Dr. Oğuz Kurdoğlu of the Artvin College of Forestry, who does research on the subject of hawking, regards it quite simply as an unquenchable passion and adds, “Predatory birds have been a symbol of countless states and institutions throughout human history, representing power, nobility and sovereignty. With roots going very far back, all the way to 700 B.C., hunting with predatory birds is an autumn sport that has managed to survive despite changing living conditions and legal arrangements. Eagerly awaited every year by falconers, it consists of a series of feverish activities that begin at the end of August and continue to the end of
October. So passionate are men about falconry that, among the Caucasian peoples, the Mingrelians have a proverb that goes, ‘Happiness is having a good horse, a dog and a hawk.’ And even if not mentioned by name, hawking preserves its popularity with the local people even today. Nevertheless, all raptors are on the list of species that are protected today by the international treaties to which Turkey is a signatory and by our own national laws, and even though hawking is one of the oldest living traditions, it should only be practiced within the limits of the law.”
