The Harris Hawk

In 2002 I visited The Cotswold Falconry Centre in England, which is in Moreton-in-Marsh in Batsford Park. The Cotswolds are, as my English friend Mike is fond of saying, "very Oldy Worldy". Towns there have names like Chipping Norton and Stow-on-the-Wold, and one can well imagine a curious dragon peering out from behind one of the ancient oaks. Nestled in the heart of this blissfully British countryside is the Cotswold Falconry.

I had always wanted to see a real falconry. I had only ever seen one falconry demonstration, and that was with a Peregrine Falcon in upstate NY many years ago. However, I can still hear the sound of that falcon screaming as it shot like a bullet down a mountainside and through the mist of an autumn afternoon as it dove fearlessly for its prey. Its predatory singlemindedness was chilling.

The Cotswold Falconry not only does wonderful demonstrations with very knowledgeable falconers in charge, but they have a large number of breeding pairs which are protected in very large enclosures for the period of breeding and gestation.

We had arrived somewhat late in the day. My friends and I were almost the only visitors. I stopped to spend some time looking at the Harris Hawks, great imposing brownish/black birds with rust shoulders. Not inconsequential in size, they can have a wingspan of up to four feet in width.

I stood at the front of their aviary, and the male came right up to the mesh fencing and looked me square in the eye. It felt very deliberate of him. I started to walk away, and he made the oddest sound - not a bird noise at all -- more like a cross between a moan and a purr in a higher register.

It stopped me dead in my tracks.

I turned back to look at him, and he began to do this odd little dance, rather like shrugging his shoulders repeatedly at me, never taking his eyes off me. But it didn't feel as though he was trying to intimidate me. On the contrary. Then he made that sound again.

And then I did something wildly foolish.

I made the sound back at him.

He stared at me. Then he made the sound back at me, with a different lilt.

I tried to emulate his response. He was silent, and then purr/moaned at me again.

So, there we stood for over 20 minutes cooing and purr-moaning at each other, looking at each other straight in the eye with an unwavering stare.

Moan, stare, purr, stare.

And although I probably looked like God's own idiot, the urge to do this was undeniably strong. It felt like this bird was trying to break through to me, and I to him. And so we kept up this odd conversation, with me pouring feeling into my sounds to him, and with him sounding as though he was pouring feeling into his sounds back at me. Whatever the motive, it was clear to me that this bird "got" me in some deep way, and I "got" him. We had managed to connect in some bizarre way across our independent species.

It came time to leave, and I confess it was hard to go. I'd look back over my shoulder as we walked away, and the Harris Hawk kept moving to a part of the enclosure where he could see me. He stood on branches right at the mesh, looking, until we were out of sight of each other.

The strangest phenomenon was that for weeks I found myself missing him, missing him the way one longs for something that makes us feel whole, missing him as though something of great value had been taken from me. And perhaps it had been.

I wonder, on this chilly March afternoon, if I returned would he recognize me? But I only wonder for an instant. Then I know.