Set wrote:Ink: Since you're into the falconry thing I have a question for you. Are goshawks really as psychotic as everyone says they are?
No, goshawks aren't psychotic.
And neither are Eagles.[spoiler]
They just demand a high level of skilled handling because of the extremely high risk of damage they can do. It doesn't evolve into, "Their temperment is psychotic!" No, they're just REALLY big power-houses that can and have screwed people up. If you get a really nasty kestrel (ha-ha-ha) they can't do the same amount of damage, but an eagle might squeeze too tight while on the glove or bate* off the glove and do some serious damage -- especially if they're new the glove.
(bate*: The action of the bird attempting to fly from a perch or the fist while attached by a leash. The bird may be startled and wanting to leave, may have seen something attractive and wanting to fly to it, or may be impatient to be flying or hunting. Definition taken from:The Modern Apprentice, by Lydia Ash)[/spoiler]
NOTE: I wanna say this before I begin ranting --
I am not a falconer --
I'm some girl that likes to look into the material and talk to people who're into it. So, from THOSE observations alone, and about $500 dollars worth of books invested into this, here's what I gather:
From tales I've heard, a Harris Hawk can have a bad habit of footing his Falconer, a Redtail might just get cocky and when flying up to the glove latch on. Some birds might be said to just stick around to be a handful.
In Frank L. Beebe's book,
A Falconry Manual, he says,
"It could be said humans rode out of the darkness of pre-history astride a horse with a goshawk or a saker on their left hands."
Goshawks are a humbling sort of bird. They are versitile, large, the ultimately prized falconry bird and, according to Beebe,
"goshawks remain as much the ultimate hawk as gyrfalcons are the ultimate falcon."
In Beebe's book he closes about these hawks stating,
"There is one more observation which can be made regarding the North American goshawks. Simply stated, the further north a goshawk originates the better the bird it is likely to be as a falconer's hawk. There is no explanation for this observation, but goshawks captured in autumn on the rim of the arctic are so different in behavior from mid-latitude goshawks that they may as well be a different species. These northern goshawks can be tamed and trained more easily than red-tails and, once trained, they are the most spirited and the most competent of goshawks."
From what I hear, some people love the Goshawk and hold it on a pedestal. Other falconers will jump up and down and tell you horror stories and the abrupt ruin of years those birds caused them.
While the birds tendencies and habits might be horrific or amazing
it is not of the fault of the bird. That is where the biggest errors stems, blaming the bird.
The all-critiquing eye should go
FIRST to the
falconer.
That's all too often forgotten, even though it's a well preached lesson in almost every book I've read on the subject.
That's
not to say birds don't have temperment issues --
but those are the subject of the falconer to deal with and cases which should be
carefully judged.
