by Crane, Ben;
I spend the rest of the day converting her aviary, constructing an impromptu indoor perch fixed to a shelf six feet off the ground. Inside the mews she will be protectively surrounded on all sides by solid walls, will feel less threatened, less vulnerable and less exposed than out on the lawn. From now on, when I approach her I will be at eye level and not tower over her. I screw a mesh screen over the doorway, which provides her with an interesting view on to the garden while keeping her safe if she snaps her leash or jesses. By the time I’ve finished it is getting dark and I transfer her to the shelf. She takes to it immediately, remains standing still on her perch. I close the mesh screen and bolt the door.
I bring Boy indoors and put him his perch next to the fire, slump down on the sofa and look at him. The inadvertent duality of the situation is not lost on me. Two wild hawks are ready at once. Barring further accidents and illness, Boy and Girl will be trained, hunted and released back into the wild world at the same time.
*
I watch as my son travels easily through the world of technology. He skips between tablets, phones and laptops, able to navigate and glide through Netflix, Amazon and a multitude of other online channels. His passion and interest are tangible. His ability to multitask, watch YouTube tutorials, play online games and hold a coherent conversation all at once is remarkable. He takes great pleasure showing me the details and tricks discovered in the invented inner space of Minecraft and other digital worlds of fun and fantasy.
I used to be passionate about technology. I am of the generation that has lived through the transition from analogue to digital. Long before the Web became a behemoth information-gathering device and long before powerful people ‘moved fast and broke things’, I believed technology to be a panacea, so much so I wrote an MA thesis on cybernetics, cyber culture and identity. As our reliance on technology has grown, I have become cynical and ambivalent about its sly intrusion into our lives. As the poet Gil Scott-Heron said about our greatest technological advance, space travel: ‘Oh that’s just whitey on the moon.’ When pioneering new frontiers, it was ever thus. My choices and thoughts on technology are of no consequence to my son. He regards the whole panoply of gadgets the same way he does breathing: perfectly natural.
He invites me to join him as an avatar, a companion inside his games consoles, playing and participating in beautifully designed adventures. When I was a child, I did the same. I escaped into fantasy worlds, collected and painted small lead figurines, drew comic characters, invented my own mazes, spaces and role-playing games. Our joint quests are familiar territory.
For hours, we fight our way through synthetic, colourful, quick-fire levels, solving quests, unlocking clues and beating multiple overlords and enemies. The slick pull of these platforms and his absorption in their puzzles and complicated rituals are wonderful. He sucks up the information without a second thought.
As I am inside these games with him, a slow truth starts to emerge. Inside a screen with my son, walking around as characters, as a team, I find myself joined in a new world in equity with him. Free from the complexities and the pressure I place on myself to be a good father, free from the guilt and fear, the divide I feel temporarily dissolves. We work together, he helps me rediscover myself, I become a child again and he inadvertently reintroduces me to what first attracted me to technology all those years ago. He is training me to play, to extend myself and connect, and in so doing we build and shape new experiences through his love of technology.
Training
Fear, for a hawk, is the key emotion that enables survival. Most resident indigenous sparrowhawks have regular patrol routes, set routines and a detailed understanding of their world. Any fluctuation in their daily pattern is considered a threat, out of place, and naturally avoided. This heightened sense of fear is a simple, effective aid to longevity. Humans trigger extreme levels of fear in a sparrowhawk. Overcoming this fear using food rewards is the first step in training. Daily rations are marginally reduced until fear recedes enough that the hawk feeds from a small offering on a gloved hand. This reward for trust forms the basis of a positive association between hawk and human.
When they are taken to new locations, unexpected sights or sounds trigger new, elaborate levels of fear. Another slight reduction in rations is normally required until the hawk once again begins to feed confidently. The hawk is then attached to a thin line (a creance) and called from a perch to the gloved hand for a reward. The distance between the hawk, the human and the reward is increased incrementally. When the hawk flies a hundred yards or more instantly, the line is removed and free flight begins. Once free, the hawk will naturally become interested in the movement of prey and hunting can begin. How long this process takes is wholly contingent on the attitude of the hawk and the skills of the falconer in deciphering the moods and reactions displayed at each stage.
I have experienced a wide array of sparrowhawk behaviour. Some were calm, some mildly aggressive; others were frightened of post boxes, buses or deflated balloons caught in a hedge. Some bathed openly in streams; others only in private. Some hunted and killed easily; others took their time. Some preferred a particular quarry; others were adept at killing a wide array of species. There is no definitive pattern to a hawk’s reactions when training. Each is unique, an entity with its own internal logic which takes time to unpick and solve.
Boy proves to be an exception. From the outset he is happy to feed on the glove in and around the cottage. On the first day of serious training I pick him up off his perch and place a whole chick in the palm of my glove. With the precise movements of a brain surgeon, he tips forward and pulls and plumes delicately at the soft coating until a small patch of fresh flesh is revealed. With two fast tears he is deep inside, feeding and focused. I call the dogs over and we start walking. As we move further out into the landscape, Boy continues to feed, unconcerned. By the time he has finished we are at least a mile from the cottage. He searches about for any last scraps and morsels. Finding none, he scrapes the edges of his beak along the top of my glove and ruffles his feathers. On the walk back, and without the distraction of food, I expect him to bate from the glove, to find an excuse to react with fear. He does not. We achieve in an hour what would usually take a week or more with any other hawk. His ability to glide through this stage is remarkable.
*
Before her accident and illness Girl was biddable and progressing in a fairly consistent manner. Now she will not countenance feeding on the glove inside the cottage or out. Slowly reducing her weight makes no real difference. In the back of my mind I know that the experience of her broken talon and lengthy seclusion has settled inside her body like a muscle memory. Girl displays deeply disturbed, almost schizophrenic characteristics. I find her almost impossible to ‘read’ or predict. She is a perplexing, confounding rule-breaker, both contrary and complex. She is acutely resistant to trust and now seemingly unable to form a lasting association between me and her reward. Occasionally, she allows herself to be drawn towards me but seems to catch herself and responds with abject resistance and protest. I watch as she lowers her head and feeds, momentarily relaxes, all meek and fearless, then inexplicably puffs up her feathers, leaps forward and hangs upside down under the glove. Her beak opens, and her feet snatch and spring for my hand as I reach in to place her gently back on the glove.
I think through the issue logically and come to the conclusion that the circumstances of her negative beginnings, falling from her nest, her many handlers and, finally, serious injury have been processed into a potentially unbreakable negative association between humans and distress.
I understand her nature.
My father has some exceptional qualities. He does his best, given his own particular upbringing, but remains a complex man. His enduring weakness is volatile anger. He could be fast with his hands, with threats and insults and has not spoken to any of his children for years. For us, the virus of aggression threaded through our lives disguised as loving actions, creating an atmosph
ere where verbal and psychological tension spread like cancer inside our young, sensitive minds. For me, it resurfaces, manifest in nerves, anxiety and internalized anger. For my brother, it took the form of running away, stealing, petty crime and short spells in prison. My sister has worked through her particular pain and is an exceptional and protective mother. In contrast, my brother has rejected his children completely. I fall somewhere between the two.
My grandfather shared similar traits and characteristics with my father. In this sense, generational anger was passed on like a baton, negative learned cycles of behaviour, rolling and repeating as the psychological trips and traps of parenthood open and close. The deep-seated potency of this type of nurture is a twisted snare, making it almost impossible for any of us to escape unscathed. Most men fight with their fathers. I fight to leave this particular aspect of his emotional legacy behind. The biggest fear I have – my greatest fear as a father – is the threat of aggression arriving as a kneejerk, unconscious reaction to my son’s behaviour.
*
The sun beats down, searing hard, as my son and I play on a trampoline. The heat on our feet and bodies is magnified by the black rubber. We sweat and fight and roll. He likes this game of rough and tumble and is remarkably tough, like a tiny cage-fighter. I throw him skywards, he falls back through the air and lands splayed out, bounces up laughing so hard he dribbles. From out of nowhere he catches me with a clear, powerful, left-hand punch to the eye. It hurts and I have to stop.
We continue to bounce and do battle. He is relentless, and the rules we have agreed on begin to slip, the more excited we become. He suddenly bites me hard on the back, leaving teeth marks and a bruise. I flash pure anger, a white-hot rage. I have never shouted at or struck my son before, and I do not do so this time. It is very close. I hold myself back. I have had enough. I climb off the trampoline and go indoors. His mother takes over and I calm down.
The distraction works. A space opens where I can explain how I feel. It was my fault for getting you overexcited. He is sorry he bit me. I know in this moment of calm communication that if I had gone too far, crossed the line, there would be no way back, no space left for my son to return trust.
We agree to take the dogs out.
On the top of the hill a dozen skylarks are high overhead. They drop and ascend with beauty and skill. I point them out to my son and we watch in silence. He slowly moves ahead of me to a distance of two hundred yards or more and walks alone. After a while he asks to be lifted on my shoulders. I kick up dust and the dogs weave and twist between the apple orchard we are walking through. He clamps his hands under my chin and the bones of his bum hurt my shoulders.
In the silence, my mind wanders and I think it would be wonderful to walk like this across Europe, through the Middle East and up through Mongolia and Russia. Cross the Bering Strait from East Cape to Prince of Wales, walk down through North America into Mexico, arriving in Costa Rica in time to watch turtles lay eggs on his eighteenth birthday. I tell him about my dreamed journey:
‘Don’t be silly, I have school on Monday.’
I tell him we could just bunk school.
He considers it for a while: ‘OK, but only if Mummy can come.’
I start making up silly rhymes about the names of countries and doing funny voices, impersonations of the dialects we would hear along the way. He laughs hysterically. I watch a thin line of dribble slip to the ground in front of my face as we walk home.
*
Walking Girl to the training ground takes an inordinate amount of patience and effort. She looks for any excuse to become startled and throw herself from the glove, with or without a reward. I have to hold back my own frustrations. When I eventually tie her to the creance she flies to the fist, but only up to a certain distance. If I move further than thirty feet, she hits the glove, snatches her reward and flies off, landing on the ground some distance from me. Normally, this would indicate one of two things: either, she is overweight and not focused on the food, or she is simply scared. I know from watching her eat, from her body shape and posture, that she is at the right weight. To lower her any more would be unwise. I give serious consideration to waking her, to push her beyond fear through the lens of a trance, but I have no one on hand who can help. Instead, I take a longer, circuitous route and begin spending all my time with her, carrying her around inside and out for the whole day. To keep her occupied, I let her pull and tug on the fleshless bones of an old pheasant. This begins to work, but only to a degree. The behaviour she displays cannot be adjusted with negative responses. I know the futility of shouting at her. I am unable physically to force her to perform. In an attempt to remedy the problem, to remove myself from the equation and lower her levels of intense fear, instead of calling her to the glove I need to put distance between myself and her reward. My plan is a simple one. I attach the chick to a padded leather lure and swing it out on a long string on to the ground in front of her.
On the first day of trying, Girl looks at the lure lying in the grass and remains resolutely on her perch. Distracted, moaning and complaining to Flash and Etta, I briefly turn my back. Girl moves fast and silent and I do not hear her bell. She hits the lure with tremendous velocity. The creance cord whips off the reel and spins across the floor, and Girl takes off over the field with the lure, her full rations and the creance. As she attempts to land in a tree, I watch a section of the creance catch on a branch, and Girl spirals around and around midway up the trunk. It’s too high to climb, so she hangs struggling and flapping for the half-hour it takes to co-opt a friendly farmer’s JCB digger and be lifted up in the bucket. Once untangled and brought back to earth, she is incandescent with rage. It is a total disaster. It takes two days before Girl even remotely trusts me again.
*
Boy is a long way further forward and ready to fly short distances to the glove. I place him on a post, turn and walk away. At fifteen feet I fumble for the reward in my right pocket. I hear the sound of his bell, feel a light, soft gust of wind and a sudden pressure on my head. Boy has flown to me without a reward and landed on my hat. I begin to giggle and reach up to grab the thin cord keeping him secure. It is not there. I turn and see it is unattached, snaking through the grass up to the post. More by accident than design, Boy achieves free flight under his own volition. The feeling is reminiscent of narrowly avoiding a car crash. A sickening mixture at the terror between what could have happened (his loss) coupled with the explosive joy at what actually happened (his safe recall). I wait a few minutes for my heart rate to reduce, then return Boy to his post. This time I face him and walk backwards to roughly eighty yards. I am pushing him, doubling, tripling, a distance reached only after several days of flying on the creance. A large tractor passes along the lane, heavily laden with bales. Too far away to reach him in time, I freeze. If startled, he will take flight, and I need to be ready to run after him. The roaring noise, smashing branches and swaying load of stacked straw hits trees as it moves along the lane. Alert and bobbing his head, Boy’s focus remains directed entirely on my actions. I hold a chick leg in my glove and raise my arm. The speed of movement, the tight thrum of his wingbeat and the brief time it takes to cover the distance are astonishing. Once the leg is eaten, I sit with him in the grass and let him eat his full rations. He drops tiny morsels to the floor, accidentally rewarding the dogs. They come in quickly, shunting and sniffing the floor like steam trains, lick their lips, then my face.
Boy continues to relish the feel of flying free. He returns consistently from trees and long distances like a sublime feathered dart. The added exercise triggers his rapid-fire metabolism and the little hawk’s deeper instincts begin to emerge. He shows an acute interest in anything that moves, then makes contact with his first wild animal.
Walking the uncut edges of a hayfield, Boy spins from the glove, intent on catching the invisible. Forty feet out, he flips over and disappears into the long grass. A bucking bronco lifts up out of the cover and my heart stops dead. Boy is atta
ched to the back of a full-grown rabbit. No more moved than if a fly were attached to its fur, the rabbit careers towards the bottom of a fence. For a six-ounce hawk to try to kill a four-pound rabbit is utterly wrong. In this split second I know Boy has never hunted. He is a blank slate, he has no idea what the correct quarry is. The rabbit reaches top speed and zigzags back and forth towards a tightly strung wire. If he hits it, Boy will be killed instantly. He adjusts his grip, lets go and glides up on to a post, touches the top, pauses then volleys back to my raised glove. His hedonism is beyond question. It was close, far too close. There is nothing more to learn today, no more risks to take. I feed him his full quota and we head home.
Crossing a little bridge near the cottage, Boy becomes transfixed by the reflected light of the stream running underneath. He bates towards it, so I let him go and follow. He lands gently on a wedge of sand, walks over a small patch of gravel, dips down, sips then steps in. The late-afternoon sun splinters the canopy in shafts of mottled auburns and pale yellows. Petals of white hawthorn fall free from their branches, cut across the warm breeze and land on the water like the tipped contents of a hole punch. Boy vigorously begins his first wild bath. Exposed and with wet feathers, a bathing hawk makes an easy target for predators. Confident in my company, this rarely seen, secretive behaviour is a joy to witness. Photographers and film makers could wait a lifetime to see it. The vaulted spray from his feathers scatters, arches over in tiny droplets and tings my skin. I reach down to throw water on his back. His vibrations and contortions become even more frenzied. Scooping up a handful of water, I raise it over his head. He follows my finger tips and opens his beak. I trickle water into Boy’s mouth and he drinks deeply and swallows. When he’s finished he walks up on to the sand and wriggles off the excess water like a tiny, wet dog. I hold my glove towards his chest, he hops over the ground and steps up. The water has parted his feathers and his crop, as round as a golf ball, is tissue thin with threading capillaries over a taut, flesh-coloured surface. On the side of his head his ears appear as two holes drilled and disappearing into his skull. In his drenched state, Boy is the oddest, ugliest and most beautiful little hawk in the world.
