Customer Reviews (1)

Tells of the performing mascot's importance to the Academy
When a new American military academy was being planned and it needed a mascot - but not just any old bird; one which would represent the U.S. Air Force Academy's mission of flying and fighting. It seemed the falcon would best fit the bill, and Falconry At The United States Air Force Academy tells of the performing mascot's importance to the Academy, as well as the overall history of falconry.
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Customer Reviews (1)

a classic
Totally awesome book. This guy knows his stuff and is interesting to read. Love the authentic photography. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great little book about a great little falcon
Kestrels, perhaps because of their abundance in the wild and because apprentices are allowed to keep them, were long dismissed by "serious" falconers as "beginner birds." That's absolutely not true: for one thing, it takes a certain amount of expertise to successfully fly them, and for another, successfully flown kesses can stand alongside the other "true" falcons as amazing game hawks.
Finally, Matthew Mullenix has come along to give them their due.In this well-written, engaging manual devoted to the American kestrel, Mullenix offers solid information for those of us who would like to house and fly kestrels. He covers everything, from equipment to manning technique, and his enthusiasm for this species is contagious.
I think kestrels have been underrated, in part, because they're really CUTE.(Well, so are hummingbirds, and territorial hummingbird males will stab each other in the neck.)
Mullenix opens the door on a great possibility for falconers who are urban or suburban hawkers, as well as for anyone who has always wanted to fly a "real" falcon but was a bit nervous about managing such a tiny bird.
Thanks, Mr. Mullenix: you've added to falconry literature in a significant way, and I personally can't wait to apply the principles you describe in your book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Hardly even worth one star
If you are interested in becoming a falconer, stay away from this book. As a master falconer, and the current secretary and treasurer of the MaineFalconry and Raptor Conservancy, I have no problem referring to this text(if you could call it that) as "deplorable."

Rowley usesphotographs of hawks with unacceptable equipment, and fails to introduceeven an ounce of information that is new to the sport.Having read nearly100 books on the subject, I can honestly say that this was the leastuseful. Sorry Sam, but if I had been asked to review this book prior to itspublication, the task would have been an easy one; and wrapped up with asingle word...

WORTHLESS

Solid basic falconry manual
Sam Rowley makes the practice of falconry accessable to the novice. His patient, calm, straightforward explanations of the care and training of a hunting hawk is never condescending to the beginning falconer. In the US,apprentice falconers must be under the guidance of an experienced,sponsoring falconer. When your sponsor is not immediately available,consulting this book is the next best thing. It is not the only falconrymanual in print, but since it is written from a US perspective, it is morerelevent to American falconry than some of the British books that areavailable. If you are starting out in the sport, order this book.

Superb book!
This is one of the best books for someone looking to get into falconry.It has excellent how-to factors in it andhas everything or basically everything a novice needs to know to get started.I definitely recommendthis book! ... Read more

Product Description
Basic information on choosing, training and using equipment, chapters on the different species. A simpler book that is meant to lead the falcon lover to more advanced works. Fun and facts from the authors own experiences have been added. ... Read more

Book Description
"Hawking or Faulconry" was originally published in 1686 as part of the author's classic work - "The Gentleman's Recreation.", and is now considered an important milestone in the early history of Falconry.First editions of this work are now extremely rare and consequently expensive.READ COUNTRY BOOKS has now republished it using the original text and engravings.One hundred and fifty five pages contain twenty five detailed chapters:-Directions for Taking Hawks. - Of the Several Sorts of Hawks. - The Gerfaulcon. - The Slight Faulcon. - The Lanner. - The Merlin. - The Hobby. - The Bawrel. - The Castrel. - The Goshawk. - The Sparrow Hawk. - Reclaiming the Haggard-Faulcon. - Enseaming a Faulcon. - Bathing a Hawk. - Making a Hawk Bold and Hardy. - Feeding. - Hern Hawking. - Brook Hawking. - Rules for the Mew. - Falconers Rules. - Falconry Terms. - Diseases and Cures. - Choice and Use of Spaniels. - Certain Terms of Art. - Hawking Statutes. Etc.Also incorporated in the contents is a thirty two page preface with notes on the history of this, and other important falconry books.This is a fascinating read for any Falconry enthusiast or historian, but also contains much information that is still useful and practical today.Many of the earliest sportingbooks, particularly those dating back to the 1800s,are now extremely scarce and very expensive. READ COUNTRY BOOKS are republishingthese classic works in affordable, high quality,modern editions,using the original text and artwork. ... Read more

Book Description
Called "a seamless modernization of Robert Frost," Houghton's poetry explores timeless relationships and contemporary sensibilities within the classic forms and structures of the western literary tradition. A unique and memorable work of literary achievement for the sophisticated reader of verse. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Falconry: A Classical Reading Experience!
"Falconry" comes highly recommended, due to the fact that it is rare, indeed, to find a collection of poems that are so finely penned, so elegantly thought out.The photos by William Ames Bascom are an added plus!
Meter is the backbone of finely crafted sonnets, and Houghton's grasp of cadence, rhythm, strophe, and tone is masterful and confident.He is obviously a pedantic poet-artist, and is very aware of the stresses in the syllabic feet in his lines.His use of syncopated rhythm, and lyrical metaphor, combine to make poetry that is reminescent of theclassicists.Clearly, Houghton is familiar with the workings behind 'the poem', to put it simply--'poetics'.
The words from John William Houghton flow like a stream, rise up and connect the soul to the stars with a yearning for the lovely, the enlightened, the lucid.This reviewer can offer no "stock response" to the likes of the poetry from the man who wrote "Falconry and other poems."Get this book! ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from The Journal of the American Oriental Society, published by American Oriental Society on January 1, 1999. The length of the article is 472 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Falconry in the Valley of the Indus.(Review)
Author: Ludo Rocher
Publication: The Journal of the American Oriental Society (Refereed)
Date: January 1, 1999
Publisher: American Oriental Society
Volume: 119Issue: 1Page: 198(2)

Article Type: Book Review

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Book Description

Customer Reviews (2)

I love this book
I love this book.The topic is pretty esoteric but the writing is easy to read and the subject is covered well, in sufficient detail and well documented and researched.

A New Way to Measure Power and Influence
This reviewer greatly anticipated the results of Professor Oggin's decades long interest in falconry, and was gratified with a opus that honored the balance between factual, scholarly work but still offered easily digested prose.
This work can be enjoyed on many levels, from several points of view: from the falconry angle, from the medieval history angle, and from the economics of power and monarchy angle. This work brought me back to happy hours in Mr. Oggin's university classroom!
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Book Description
Hawks in the Hand is an American treasure. First published in 1939 when the authors, Frank and John Craighead - pioneers of American conservation - were just nineteen years old, this chronicle of their early adventures in falconry and wild-bird photography was a groundbreaking book that propelled the identical twins to long-lasting international fame as ecologists.

Hawks in the Hand is full of the boundless energy and charming honesty of boys becoming intelligent young men, discovering that the natural world that had been their playground could yield fascinating insights about animal behavior, particularly that of the noble birds of prey. While their discoveries are worthy of any budding scientist, their stories and breathtaking adventures are skillfully rendered and wonderfully entertaining.

These two ingenuous storytellers introduce a cast of unforgettable characters: their friends and partners in adventure - human, canine, and avian - including Comet, the Cooper's hawk, one of their first birds trained to the fist; Bad Boy, the friendly American kestrel; Ulysses, a peregrine falcon; Cactus, the adorable burrowing owl; and Handsome, the osprey, who takes up a surprising friendship with a little skimmer.

In this edition, the first since its original publication, the authors have included dozens of additional photographs as well as excerpts from the log notes that provided the material for their book. Today, Hawks in the Hand is as relevant as ever: an important reminder of how much there is to learn from all wild things and how vital is the connection to the natural world for people of all ages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Inspiration
A very inspirational and interesting book. Written from the journals of each of the authors, this book will never let go of your imagination. This book not only makes you want to become a falconer like the Craigheads, but to LIVE falconry like they did. As Stephen Bodio in the introduction puts it: " ...[the book]made me and children like me want to go and do, just just passivley watch."

A must have.

This review appeared in LIVING BIRD magazine - Winter 1999
HAWKS IN THE HAND

by John and Frank Craighead

First published in 1939, HAWKS IN THE HAND was one of my favorite books growing up. Reading it (again and again) definitely fueled my passion for birds of prey andinspired my interest in bird photography. It's good to see this fascinatingbook in print again, now that most copies of the original edition have longsince vanished from libraries and used book stores.

Although twinbrothers Frank and John Craighead are perhaps most renowned now for theirwork studying grizzly bears in the Yellowstone region, they began theirscientific careers as ornithologists. Indeed, their 1956 book, HAWKS, OWLS,AND WILDLIFE was a seminal work in the fields of raptor ecology, examiningin detail the intricate relationship between predatory birds and theirprey. But long before they became professional biologists, the Craigheadswere studying, photographing, and writing about birds of prey. They wereaudacious enough, while still in their teens, to submit an article andphotographs to NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine-and it was published. Therecognition they received from the article led to commissions for morearticles and eventually to the publication of HAWKS IN THE HAND.

Itis interesting that HAWKS IN THE HAND was reissued in the same year thatKenn Kaufman's KINGBIRD HIGHWAY was published. In some ways, the books havea lot in common. They are both, in a sense, coming of age stories aboutyoung Americans who have an overriding passion for birds-a passion thatthey follow unbridled, crossing and recrossing the continent to studybirds. And yet the birding travels that the Craigheads and Kaufman tookoccurred more than 30 years apart.It was a vastly different world in the1930s. At that time, a native population of Peregrine Falcons still nestedacross the East, and the Craigheads visited many of their eyries,photographing the eggs, young, and adults-decades later this would providevital documentation on numerous traditional falcon eyrie sites that hadbeen lost due to DDT and other environmental contaminants. But all wascertainly not well in those times. In a poignant 1933 entry in the boys'journal (which was added to this edition), they described an autumn dayspent at Cape May, New Jersey. Unlike most fall days now, few bird watcherswere present to witness the spectacular stream of migrating hawks passingover. Instead, scores of hunters stood shoulder to shoulder, shooting atevery raptor that passed over. "Shells were piled all over the roadand hawks were piled all over the running boards of cars and scatteredthroughout the woods, for no one bothered getting a hawk that fell anywherebut in the road," they wrote. "It seems a crime that they shouldbe so slaughtered."

The equipment available for rock climbingand photography was also much different from what's available today. Youwon't see any helmets, carabiners, or fancy synthetic climbing ropes inthis book. These guys rappelled down sheer cliff, dizzyingly high above theground, using ordinary manila ropes to reach falcon nests or climbedmassive tree trunks with telephone lineman spurs to reach Bald Eagle orhawk nests. One day some nervous spectators, who were viewing the boysclimbing to a Peregrine Falcon nest on a lofty cliff, called an ambulance,which parked below them for the entire time they were there. Frank joked,"To heck with them. If we fall, a broom is what we'll need, not anambulance." And for all their photography, they used 4x5 presscameras-which are about as heavy, awkward, and unwieldy as you can get-butthe pictures they took were great.

When I read this book againrecently-for the first time in 25 years-I was amazed how well it held up. Ihighly recommend it. ... Read more

Product Description
This Elibron Classics book is a facsimile reprint of a 1859 edition by Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, London. ... Read more