100goals
is now over
To find out what comes next
see my new website at:- IanUsher.com
Current status: 93/100 goals - 100/100 weeks
Have a hawk land on my hand and eat
5 - Completed
Wagoner, Oklahoma United-States - No specific date
Legend:
Birds are fascinationg to me. I guess my interest in flying sports means that I am interested in the lives birds lead. I once saw a documentary about a guy with a trained hawk, who wanted to see how fast it could fly and dive.
they went up high in a hot air balloon, and with a lure in his hand the guy jumped out of the balloon (with a parachute on of course!) The hawk followed him in freefall, and had no trouble keeping up with him, tiny movements of the tips of its winks making small movements to adjust it's dive. It easily took the lure at over 200kph.
I don't imagine I would ever get the chance to do this, but I would love to have one of these magnificent creatures land on my hand and take some food.
Related Blogs
Where Eagles Dare! Saturday, October 4, 2008
One of my favourite movies is "Where Eagles Dare". My father used to love old war movies, and we watched loads of them together when I was young. Some of these are still among my favourites, but "Where Eagles Dare" is definitely in my all-time top ten!
It starts Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood, and is a taughtly scripted thriller with several intriguing plot twists and turns. Most of the story takes place in the aptly named "Schloss Adler - The Castle of the Eagles" high in the Alps, which is an amazing-looking place.
During the ALife4Sale period I watched the movie again on DVD, and was interested by the "making-of" documentary on the disc too. When I started thinking about the 100 goals I would like to achieve, going to see the spectacular location that the movie was shot was added as a potential to the list.
I already had 95 goals selected, and opened up the selection of the last five to anyone reading my website. Twenty possibles were chosen, and voted on for a period of a week. Visiting Hohenwerfen - the real Castle of the Eagles, in Werfen in Austria - was one of the final twenty, but did not make it to the final five. More about the final five goals at the "Add 5" page.
However, as I was in Munich, and found out that Werfen is only a couple of hundred kilometres away, I thought it would be good to go and visit the castle anyway.
Peter had contacted me through the website about coming to meet me in Munich for a beer or two at Oktoberfest, and when he found out I was interested in going to Salzberg in Austria, and on to Werfen, he very kindly suggested he could take me, as he was driving down to Munich anyway, and would have his car there.
So Peter arrived at the hotel this morning, by which time I had managed to eat breakfast, but was still feeling a bit queasy from last night. I quickly packed my bags and checked out, and we set off for Austria. By the time we got there I was feeling a bit better.
The castle is quite magnificent, and we headed up and had a quick look around before the guided tour started. I spent most of the tour trying to spot "Where Eagles Dare" locations.
Later in the afternoon there was a falconry idsplay in the castle grounds, and afterwards Peter asked them if I could have one of the falcons on my hand. I comes pretty close to achieving my goal of having a hawk land on my hand and eat something, but not quite!
Another excellent day. Thanks again to Peter for offering to make this trip a possibility.
Goal 13 comes swooping in. Saturday, November 1, 2008
I was a bit worried about finding the location for trying to achieve my next goal, as I hadn't heard from Aaron, my hawk-flying contact. He had emailed me a few months ago and told me of a hawk-flying event he would be attending on 1st November in Wagoner, Oklahoma, just off Route 66. So after a few emails back and forth, I arranged to set off on my Route 66 journey in time to reach Wagoner for the event, and last night made it to town.
But in the days leading up to today, I hadn't heard from Aaron, and I only had an email address, no other contact details at all. So when I woke this morning I searched through the emails from Aaron for a clue as to when and where to look in Wagoner.
After a bit of rudimentary detective work I found the right place, and introduced myself to the first guy I found with a hawk on his hand. It turned out that Michael had been expecting me, and he introduced me to Sifin, his Krider's Red- Tailed Hawk, an beautiful bird. Before long he had a glove on my hand, and Sifin was sat there quite happily.
I met a couple of other members of the group, and was introduced to Bob, the leader of the day's activities. We chatted for a while, and he asked what my goal was specifically, which was to have a hawk fly to my hand, land on it and eat something.
"Okay, let's make that happen now," he said, and set me up about 30 metres away with a glove with some meat on it. His majestic female Harris Hawk, Valkyrie, flew from his hand, and swooped low to the ground towards me, rising up at the last second to land on my hand and eat the meat. What an incredible sight to see such a large bird coming straight towards you.
After that we headed out into the bush to go hunting with Valkyrie. This involves the hawk flying along on it's own above a group of people beating the undergrowth with sticks to try to flush out any rabbits or othe small game hiding in there.
It was wonderful to watch the hawk and handler work together as a team, with the hawk somtimes following just behind the beaters, or sometimes flying ahead to sit high on a branch and watch the ground in front of the line of beaters as we approached.
Valkyrie did not catch anything on that run through as we did not find any game, but later in the morning CB's young Passage Red-Tailed Hawk, possibly called Heather, but name not quite decided on yet, caught a small snake and a rabbit.
What an amazing experience, and what a privilege to be able to go along and take part. Thanks to all who helped out and made me feel so welcome, particularly Bob, Michael, James, Aaron (in his absence), the guys with cameras whose pix I have used (links below), and everyone else who made this such a memorable experience.
Wagoner, Oklahoma United-States - No specific date
