Blood Ties

by Crane, Ben;

  *

  Getting my son changed and ready for school is not difficult. He likes being at school. He has an imaginative grasp of human history and human potential. He is interested and inquisitive in all subjects and gets ready without fuss and with excitement. I recognize these qualities as my own. Until I moved to the cottage, I had never left the educational system. School, college, university, Winchester School of Art for an MA, then Cambridge, finally becoming a teacher. I am proud he loves school.

  I help him get his vest and pants on, then accidentally put his trousers on back to front. Once they have been readjusted, we get his shirt, jumper and socks on. He instructs me on what we need in his bag and where it should go. Running a little behind time, we get in the car and drive to school. Halfway there I tell him I have forgotten his packed lunch. He scolds me with a giggle and I try to wriggle out of it, blaming the dog, blaming the weather, blaming the pixies. I lose the argument and we turn the car and head home, arriving at the school late. My son is worried and begins to panic. He runs through the gate without his bag or his lunch. I call him back and he sprints across the playground, his oversized bag swinging and bumping around his legs as he tries desperately to wave goodbye.

  Throughout my childhood I had various tricks played on me before school. Once, as I was going to remove English homework from my bag, I found that my books had been swapped for a turnip and a flip-flop. I was humiliated, and the homework was significant and I got into trouble, my explanation met with grim looks and not laughter. My shoelaces were once tied in knots to a chair before school. Being late, I had to cut them free with scissors and go to school without laces. On another occasion I had slept in and was once again late. I was told to hurry up and get going. I cycled the two miles like an Olympic athlete, only to find that it was a Saturday. These stories became family legends, stories told to make people laugh. I tell my son about them, trying to make him laugh; he doesn’t find it funny. Watching the way my son panics about school, these stories begin to take on a new meaning and I see them for what they were. I cannot imagine playing these sort of tricks on him. I am not sure why I would want to and, if I did, what sort of lesson he would learn.

  *

  Boy’s last kill is delivered in such a way that it shows me he has learnt enough, that he is ready to go. Scuffing my feet through a patch of errant potato plants, ‘moochers’ in a field of oil seed rape, the folded green leaves form an oasis for insects and those further along the food chain. As we brush past, a bird breaks from below the canopy and flies fast in to the sky. Boy snatches the air, his quickness to kill caught in a strange, still, suspended magic. He checks and swings back around. I smile and watch him float about for five or ten seconds. I lift my arm in silent salute. Boy passes me, then turns full circle and lands on my glove with his prize. This has never happened with any other hawk. I dare not move. I cannot move. A trusted perch must never move. He begins to pluck and plume, and soon the little bird is bald. I close my glove around its bandy rubber neck and secure Boy to the glove. This is number ten. The magic number. He is now so fit and calm he chooses, and gives consideration to, the safety of where he lands. I am honoured. In a field surrounded by trees with protective foliage he has selected me as the place to be. I sit down in the dirt and help him tear up his final kill, feeding him small pieces by hand.

  Boy is easily the best hawk I have ever flown, the personification of pure falconry. With a bond like this, my thoughts move into dangerous territory and I fool myself into thinking I should keep him. I am not bothered by laws: I could hide him, keep him as a secret hawk. I will go on the run, be a hawking outlaw and hide myself in the woods for another month in his company. My mind tacks back, taking a more sensible direction. I am aware of the responsibility I owe him. My last act of kindness must be his release and not continued containment. I swing back once more, trying to find a justifiable way around my desires over his freedom. I know Boy would endlessly keep giving moments of intimacy without asking anything in return. Such generosity is heavily tempting. I try to convince myself he is too friendly, too domesticated to be released, my mind spinning in a devilish small-scale version of the modern world. It is easy to take from nature, a lot harder to give back. When we get home, with a permanent marker I draw three simple words all over my hands and arms: Let Him Go.

  *

  On her penultimate kill I place Girl in a tree near a stream. It flows 300 yards towards a lake with two small islands. I slip over a fence and run back along the field, hop back over and begin beating the cover towards her. A pair of teal rise, moving fast in the wrong direction. The soft, black-grey and brown flash of a rabbit enters a log pile to my right. The usual small birds break randomly and skim back behind me. A moorhen takes flight, its legs hanging below its body in an odd, rickety style of flight. Near optimum weight for release, Girl is less than enthusiastic and watches it for the first forty or fifty yards. The moorhen slows, plops down and walks, its little head bobbing. This change in movement, its complacency, stimulates the hawk, and Girl skims low over the floor in fast pursuit. The moorhen tucks into the safety of the weeds and Girl curls up in a tight arch on to a branch above. She shuffles up and down straining her neck over into the cover looking to kill. I run to re-flush the moorhen and it skitters across the water. Catching up, Girl’s downward draught leaves circular ripples on the surface as she clips the moorhen and carries it across the lake to the centre of an island.

  On a lake similar to this one, my first sparrowhawk, Daisy, caught a coot over water before tumbling in. The coot lashed out and paddled down, pulling Daisy below the surface. She let go but became tangled in weed, her head just visible above the water. I tried to wade out and fell through a foot of water, right up to my chest in thick silt. A sucking, swirling, black cloud of sub-surface flotsam rolled out in thick clouds and putrid, gassy bubbles popped all around. I grabbed a handful of reeds, pulled myself back to shore, ran to an old boat and pushed off. Scooping up the hawk, I dropped her into the bottom of the boat. By the time we reached home, in a weakened, wet state, she slipped into an epileptic shock. In a darkened room I threaded a thin plastic pipe past her tongue, into her throat and down to her crop. Filling a syringe with liquid glucose, I pumped it into her digestive system. Fifteen minutes later she stood strong and erect. I gave her some fresh meat soaked in glucose and a few drips of Red Bull. The combination acted like a tablespoon of peanut butter or a banana for a long-distance runner. An hour later she ruffled her feathers and let out a scream as if to say, I am not doing that again.

  Fearful the moorhen may have pulled Girl into the lake, I walk into the water, the sediment in this lake thankfully thicker and firmer. The dogs follow, swim beside me, chuffing and coughing in circles, carrying bits of broken stick and lily pads in their mouths. As I reach Girl’s island I climb up the bank and realize it is thick with metre lengths of curling bramble, nettle, whippy saplings and blackthorn. With bramble this dense it is easier to crawl. I push through the brown, crunchy thorns, losing my hat on a recalcitrant branch. Through dark shadows I see Girl’s chalky pale plumage. She is glowing. The moorhen is dead. The flesh and skin are tough and fatty and Girl struggles to create an opening. I reach in and, using my knife, cut a small hole in the chest. Girl breaks in easily and I let her feed for a few minutes. Girl’s desire to carry, her ability to avoid water, to feed on dry land, are assured. Clever Girl! Once she has half a crop, I slide her back towards me on the carcass, twist on my back and sit up with her in my lap. She keeps feeding, oblivious and unconcerned about the difficulties she has caused. I wade back through the water, Girl held high on my fist.

  *

  Several hours ago Girl ate a small bird at the very top of a huge lime tree. When finished, she considered me for several seconds, almost goading, then turned and fell into the air, loaded her wings, built up sweeping speed and disappeared. The wind, high overhead, and the gilded golden clouds of a nearing sunset kept scudding, kept going and going in the same dir
ection as Girl.

  She takes me back and forth across the fields, refusing to return. In total frustration I launch clods of earth at the dogs and, cursing the world with increasingly wicked words, continue to follow her across what feels like the whole county. When I get close she takes off and flies round and round, height and the sky the enemy. Now at dusk, and at the end of another two-mile run; bile and breath fight for space in my throat. I am tiring; I have the empty, dizzy feeling that comes with lack of food. She moves a final time, to the bottom of a steep hill in thick woodland. I have climbed up and down this hill three times today. Dutifully, I follow and stand no more than fifty feet below her position. Once again she refuses the lure. On the edge of darkness, I check the signal from the telemetry, note her silhouette and turn tail. She can bloody well stay out overnight for all I care!

  Despite my restless hatred towards Girl’s behaviour and cramp coiling through my legs before sleep, the drive to reclaim her before dawn is fast and far-reaching. I rise fully clothed, do not wash or brush my teeth; there is no coffee. At 3.30 a.m. I am back on the land in total darkness, a fox-like falconer moving silently through mist-grey, worm-sodden steam and shifting shadows. I arrive at her roosting site, step over fallen trees, drop down into the valley, disturbing strange thermocline bars of warm and cold air. I flip a switch and the dawn chorus I create is a single synthetic beep from the telemetry. She is still here, I just cannot see her. So I wait.

  A canopy of trees before first light is compact, a smooth sheet of black in front of dark blue. As dawn breaks, the entropic qualities of light begin to work. At first the trees are a dense tessellation of leaves, a thin, threading lace doily. Then jutting sticks appear left and right like black cracks on a sheet of ice. Less angular shapes arrive: an acorn, a pine cone, a nest, a pigeon, a hawk! To my left the real dawn chorus starts with a single note from a wren. Girl joins in and calls, says hello and moves. Then moves again. Restless and ready to hunt, she flies around in a squashed square. I follow beneath her bell, tripping, tangled, cutting myself and stumbling. She ladders down different trees and makes several stabbing flights at unseen birds below. I get within fifteen feet and throw out a whole dead quail. The pale, bald pink flesh is exposed, the guts and slivers of liver a black rope over bramble. Girl pauses then makes the reluctant choice to return. Watching her feed, I am very weary and slightly ambivalent. It is time for her to go. She is ready.

  *

  Release

  A week before release I rest Boy and Girl and feed them the highest human-grade meat available. On a diet of duck and pigeon, they spiral to their highest weight. The extra few ounces will give them a week’s grace before they are too weak to hunt. It is critical that they kill and feed in this time. Given their joint performances, it is unlikely they will fail. Leaving them to feed alone, I cease interaction unless it is necessary. Without the twang of appetite and with only brief human contact, by the end of the week both hawks are fidgety, more alert and fearful. They gradually become less enamoured of my presence. Girl was never that keen in the first place and I have no concerns she could ever be too friendly. Watching Boy disappear, reverting back to his natural state, is a relief.

  On the final night I bring them indoors and spend a couple of hours looking at them, smelling their feathers, remembering. When darkness arrives the fire flickers, casting dull shadows of birds across the wall. I toast them in a happy, sad celebration. I feed Flash and Etta roast chicken. I take Boy and Girl to their night quarters for the last time.

  On the morning of release I move quickly. Casting Girl in an old pair of tights and wrapping masking tape around her shoulders, I cut off her anklets, remove her bell and place her in the back of my Land Rover. Although he is reluctant and stroppy, I carry Boy on my gloved hand while driving the quarter of a mile to the release site.

  I have invited a small group of locals to witness the moment of their freedom. Nervous with energy, I turn up early and they have yet to arrive. I place Boy on a portable perch then move to prepare Girl. Opening the back of the truck, I feel a flutter and a line of pale grey passes on the outer edge of my vision. A light breeze rolls the empty tubed tights to the floor like the shed skin of a snake. Ever wild, the Houdini of hawks, Girl has done it her way. Girl sets herself free. The fierce, clever, angry Girl is gone.

  When the others arrive they tell me that on the walk up they saw her for a nanosecond, passing down the path, skimming over their heads on into the woods.

  I laugh.

  ‘That’s my Girl!’

  Lifting Boy from the perch, I ask the youngest child of the group to hold him while I cut away his anklets and bell. We all look at him and I give a nod. Boy is set free. I expect him to bolt fast, to strip away quickly into the distance. Instead, he twists up and lands in a tree just above our heads. He remains in the same place for twenty minutes. I wave my arms and make a ‘shooing’ noise. I tell him to piss off. He doesn’t listen. Short of throwing twigs, I have no idea how to make him leave. It is a little bit embarrassing. I stare at him as my guests take photographs and videos. The release of Boy and Girl is not panning out how I imagined. It certainly isn’t the ending I envisaged, not the type of ending described in the delightful books about released otters and lions I read as a child. Then again, what did I expect? Soft-focus cinematography with both hawks flying into the sunset as end credits roll? If so, in their anarchic reality, Boy and Girl have not read the script. The collected group do not care and are rightly in awe at being this close to a wild hawk. Thanks to Girl, I have had a lifetime of staring at hawks in trees. Getting bored, I make my excuses, say goodbye and drive home.

  Back in the cottage I make a cup of tea and go about my business. The time arrives when I would usually go hunting. It is quiet, I hear no bells, there is an emptiness of sorts. My routine has changed, but that is all. I feel no sentimentality, no loss or the expected sense of sadness. Ultimately, Boy and Girl did not belong to me, they were only ever a temporary loan. I decide they are not lost, just relocated. I have the keys to their world any time I wish to visit. All I have to do is open my door, sit quietly, watch and wait. This knowledge is enough.

  *

  I am sitting in the soil digging with my son. I have an hour or so left before I have to go. I feel anxious, distracted. I always do. Maybe he picks up on the energy. Maybe he doesn’t. Either way, he looks straight at me and says in a voice almost too quiet to hear:

  ‘I am sorry for making you stay.’

  His logic is a razorblade of guilt.

  ‘You’re not making me stay, mate, but I do have to go. I’ll be back soon.’

  It is not enough.

  What choice does he have, anyway?

  *

  Boy and Girl are eventually seen at different locations in the village. My neighbour knocks at the door. She tells me there is an injured sparrowhawk on the path. I walk down to the stream and take a look. There is no hawk. She describes it as ‘a small hawk, like the one you had. Its wings were spread open and it was lying flat on the floor looking at me.’ An untouched wild musket will not tolerate a human being that close. There is no doubt in my mind that it was Boy on a kill.

  Girl keeps her distance too. I only ever see her ghosting through on evening patrols. At other times I find pigeons on the ground for me to eat.

  *

  Soon after the release of Boy and Girl I receive a text:

  ‘It’s hatched, thin head, stumpy legs, ugly… looks like ET.’

  Roughly thirty-six days before this text arrived, in the early dawn, a perfect, pure white egg was laid in the north of England. Three more followed. Each of the eggs was marked delicately with a pencil by the breeder: A B C D. Mine, third in line to the throne, was labelled with the letter ‘C’.

  There is only one indigenous hawk powerful and capable enough to consistently supply food for free. The little chick with the thin head, the one that looks like ET, is a male goshawk: the same sex and species as the one flown by Haider in Pa
kistan. Now that Girl and Boy are free, I will use this goshawk to return to the source of all falconry, to its baseline, its original purpose and point. The only meat I will consume from now until the end of the season will be caught by this hawk.

  5

  ‘CC’

  Summer

  I am sitting at a small wooden table, eating ice cream with my son. He has strawberry. I have mint choc chip. His mother has gone off to get a cup of tea. I tell him about my egg and the chick that has just hatched. I tell him about Pakistan. He talks about learning about different religions at school, and we get sidetracked by different ways of life, cultures and people.

  ‘Are people born religious?’

  ‘No, we are born animals and pretend to forget.’

  ‘What’s a Mohammed?’

  ‘A prophet. A bit like a Jesus, except he flew falcons and didn’t go fishing or bake bread.’

  ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Not really. God seems a bit obvious. It’s not nearly beautiful enough to explain it all. I don’t really believe in anything religious, to be honest. Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Not any more, but I believe in heaven and hell.’

  The questions keep rolling. His mum returns and we eventually get back to my egg and chick. I ask him to think of a name beginning with ‘C’. Without hesitation he bounces back, ‘Chief,’ and I reply, ‘Catcher.’ The little chick has a name: Chief Catcher, or CC for short.

  This is the first bird of prey my son has named. It will be the first hawk he has seen in flight and the first hawk he has seen hunting.

  Imprinting

  There are a variety of different ways to raise a hawk. Some are easier and more commonly understood than others. The history of falconry, its literature, novels and a large proportion of the falconry hawks used in the West are parent-reared. These hawks arrive at the falconer’s fully formed, having spent the first part of their lives raised by adult parents either in the wild or bred in captivity. The isolated nature of their formative weeks, without any form of human interaction, creates high levels of fear. Locked away through this fear, a hawk’s true nature is muffled, skewed and partially hidden. Similarly to Girl, parent-reared hawks possess an ‘otherness’, a separateness that remains difficult, if not impossible, to bridge. They have no real sense of loyalty or attachment, and very few falconers manage to overcome this barrier. Even the most observant human will only ever understand or relate to a parent-reared hawk through an opaque veil, guesswork and the prism of misplaced anthropomorphism.