What is a Falconer?

@letshearit - You're right about there being a lot of famous characters and people who have picked up or be given the name Falconer. I think because of its relation to the word falconry, there is a certain level of adventure associated with the name.

I recently started writing a book about a traveler and named my lead character Tom Falconer. I really think it has a nice ring to it. Though I did toy with the ideas of whether or not to name him Paul Falconer or Adam Falconer. I guess I will just have to stick with the name I picked and hope that my book is successful.

The last name of Falconer has been attached to a lot of famous figures over time. While most people automatically think of the sport, I always remember Quellcrist Falconer, the fictional activist that was wrote about in the Takeshi Kovacs series written by Richard K. Morgan.

Quellcrist Falconer is a pretty intense figure on her planet, and actually leads a revolution against the elite rulers.

What I find really interesting about Quellcrist Falconer is how she moves from a historical figure to a character downloaded and stored in memory.

If you love books set in the future, and want a glimpse of where digital technology is taking us, the Takeshi Kovacs series is a great read.

I have seen falconry techniques on television. The falconer exposes the bird to people constantly. If he plans to use dogs for hunting also, then he exposes them to the dogs as well.

The falconer uses a dead bird attached to a string to lure the falcon, which is tied to a lengthy line until it learns to come to the falconer. After it has learned to come to him with the dead bird, it is given the chance to hunt.

Some falconers put radio transmitters or bells on their falcons. This way, if they travel beyond the area where they can be seen, the owner can find them.

@Perdido - I have a falconer in my family as well. My grandfather worked with birds for several decades, and he developed a pet-to-master relationship with them like some people have with dogs or cats.

After his apprenticeship, he progressed to the General Class. In this stage of training, he was allowed to pick from a bigger selection of birds, so long as they were not endangered. He picked an eyass and trained it from the beginning.

He loved this bird, and it was loyal to him. Unlike some falconers who trade out their birds as often as they are allowed, my grandfather would keep them until they died.

My uncle is a falconer. He told me that there are three classifications of birds to train. One is an eyass, or a young one obtained from a nest prior to learning to fly. When it is ready to learn, the trainer lets it fly freely to develop its skills. It must be held captive in between flying sessions.

Another is a passager, or a young one that already knows how to fly but is only a year old. The third is a haggard, or an adult, but sometimes laws ban the capture of these birds if they are old enough to mate.

As an apprentice, my uncle had to catch a passager to train. He could only choose between the red-tailed hawk or the American kestrel. He would gain more liberty as he progressed, but he started out with a red-tailed hawk.

It is astounding to me that a falcon can be trained. I didn’t know they were that intelligent. I really didn’t think they would have any contact with humans.

I suppose if a bird were raised up from a baby around people then it might be more likely to interact with them. I guess if the humans with baby falcons provided food to them, then they would be more willing to trust them.

It’s just hard for me to imagine a bird willingly returning to a person who is going to put it back in captivity. The best thing about being a bird is the freedom to fly wherever and whenever you want!

I can see through reading the comments that falconers can be more than a sport or lifestyle and can provide a very valuable service to the community and help save lives. However, a question I have about falconry concerns how it is used for spectacle.

I once went to a dinner theater and there was what I thought a falconer there and he had his bird fly over the crowd for awhile then did this incredible catching of the bird by throwing something up in the air and having it land on what he threw up.

My question is considering that this was only done for entertainment and not to catch wild game was this a falconer or was it just a trained bird used for entertainment? If it was a falconer then I would assume it is possible to teach a falconer's bird other things besides catching prey.

@matthewc23 - That makes very good sense. I have driven by airports and on a couple of occasions seen some very massive birds. I assumed that there was simply something dead around and it could have been a falconer's bird or it could have been a turkey vulture.

That being said that is another problem that falconer's fix at airports. Say something is dead on a runway or within the boundaries of the various runways at an airport there will probably be birds circling it, usually very big one. It is very dangerous for big birds to be around in an area where airplanes are getting ready to land and could create a tragedy during descent. Sending out a falconers bird to gather all the dead animal carcasses not only keeps the dead animals off the runways but keeps circling birds in the sky away from the airports and makes the runways much much safer.

@cardsfan27 - You are totally correct. Sometimes on rare occasions falconers services are called upon in major cities if there is a major pest bird or rodent problem because it is the bird's natural instinct, as well as training, to hunt prey like that, as opposed to humans trying to catch them. It is safe to the environment and in a ways keeps with the natural order of things.

I will say another place that falconers are used quite often is at airports. Of course the runways need to be clear in order for the planes to land so if falconers will send their birds out and gather the rodents, whether dead or alive, and usually do a much better job than the airport workers will do.

I have heard of falconers being used to control pests in major cities. Although falconers can be seen as a sport, or lifestyle as the article states, they seem to be able to provide valuable and practical services to the community if they need to be called upon to do.