Articles | Falconer Blogs

Uninspiring Beginnings Turn Into Something Special


Back in 2011, we imported our first Black Chested Buzzard Eagle. Picking him up at Heathrow airport, the 'pips' on the radio in the van indicated that when we were called to receive the bird, it was exactly Midnight. That was his name already decided!

We have had the best of times with him, including thermalling at tremendous altitude with alarming regularity. Soon after, we decided that we would eventually try to breed the species and soon sourced a young female to pair with Midnight. We called her Oasis (Maria Muldaur fans will understand the name combination). When she reached maturity, we tried to introduce them together. Disaster. Midnight was aggressive and spiteful to the deeply shocked female.

We explored options with other females, but nothing came good, so we were forced to accept that Midnight was the problem. We elected to keep him on flying duties, and bring in another male for Oasis. There is no rush, so we looked for a properly reared young bird in the absence of a suitable available male of breeding age. Our search produced a young bird, captive bred and parent reared in seclusion, before being transferred to an isolation chamber for an extra month once it had become independent, whereupon he was taken up for training. With no new Muldaur lyrics to work with, this new bird was called Freddy.

Initially we considered him uninspiring. No efforts to make height, often vocal, apparently nervous, and frankly a little lazy. Eventually he was persuaded to work with guests to add variety on experience days, but nobody had much enthusiasm for him. We were disappointed to say the least. The species is friendly, buoyant and easy going and in our opinion, underestimated and under utilised.

One of our staff here, Shari, took quite a shine to him, and begun flying him during breaks between guests, in her breaks and wherever time allowed. She hasn't trained any eagles before, and in fact, although involved with many birds, she hasn’t trained anything from scratch.

In an unbelievably busy year, the more experienced falconers rarely had any time to go out with Freddy and Shari, so she had to make do with instruction that the bird should NOT be trained to fly from perch to glove, and everything should be focused on making height. We gave her ideas and a strategy, and further input when she came in each day with reports of the days progress.


Happy that Shari was having fun with him, and that the bird was getting exercise and training, we largely left the rest to Shari to work out. The first encouraging reports were that he was staying in the air for longer and longer, then stories came about making height.

We (rudely perhaps) assumed that height might be a hundred feet, but then we’d ask for indications of references of his pitch, and it seems this pairing was bearing fruit, with the bird occasionally making 5 to 7 hundred feet. Not every day - on days with no lift, he could still be an annoying, frustrating and uninspiring fool, but the potential was showing from time to time. All good so far.


September 24th

Shari was walking on flat ground at the base of a small hill beside a river. Freddy was attempting to stay with Shari, flying circles and following at perhaps 25 or 30 feet high and behind Shari. Unbeknown to Shari, in front of her was a small covey of grey partridge hiding tight in cover. Shari was as shocked as the eagle when she flushed the birds, and even more surprised that after a short stoop, Freddy levelled out and took a partridge about 5 feet off the ground! Everyone was delighted, but if we’re honest, we probably considered it a lucky fluke!

September 26th

This day Shari cast him off the side of a small hill into the wind. He hung around at low altitude for a few minutes before raking off to the south west to take chase at a crow on passage across the field. He didn’t just have a quick shot at catching this crow, he dug deep and put in a hard chase with a good few jinks from the crow before the crow made the cover of the woods. The eagle turned back and landed, panting hard in a small tree. He was only there a few moments before stooping straight down out of the tree, and upon rushing over, Shari found him on his second partridge. Not a classic flight, but after the effort and determination in the crow chase, the reward was well timed and we had to start to acknowledge his new intent.

September 28th

Shari released the eagle again at the top of a small hill. She started heading through a stock field and towards a cliff that looked like it would give lift in the days wind conditions. As Shari walked away slowly uphill towards the cliff base to the north west, the eagle started ranging away out in all directions. He clearly wanted to feel lift and make pitch, but his relative inexperience meant he didn’t ‘know’ where to find it, so he just went foraging for the right conditions.

Eventually he got clear of the turbulent air stirred up by the rolling countryside and got into steady air off the south east. He started turning circles and made a nice 300 - 350 feet over the top of the cliff. Shari was contemplating throwing a lure for him (using a lure to encourage the recent hunting behaviour rather than call him to the fist), when he went into a 45º pumping dive to the south of him which ended in a crash into the long stubble at the edge of the field.

On arrival, Shari found Freddy on partridge number 3. This was now being properly acknowledged as an intentional habit forming in the eagle, and the determination and strategy from Shari.

October 3rd

The weather was mild and the wind from a favourable direction. Shari released the eagle on the small hill again and headed through the stock field towards the cliff to draw him into the rising air. Freddy had learned where to find the lift (on October the 2nd he had made a wonderful 1200 feet, but sadly was not rewarded with a kill) and quickly made his way to the cliff, and rose to a respectable 700 feet.

Five wild buzzards were NOT impressed by his presence and put in a formation attack on him, and although he lost some height, he held his ground. 3 of the buzzards raked away and the other 2 reduced their intensity of attack allowing Freddy to recover his pitch. Shari, now focussed on trying to flush game for him, made her way back down the field border kicking the cover but to no avail. To her delight though, Freddy held pitch, but tracked her progress, holding position and pitch above her as she went downhill.

She was a little disheartened when almost back to the vehicle, she hadn't flushed anything, but as she crossed an old stone wall, she could hear something moving in the grass. She couldn’t see anything at all, but that 'shoosh shoosh' of game scurrying through grass was unmistakable. Grasping her belief in both hands, she gambled on giving the game shout and rushing in. She flushed 3 Red Legged Partridge that exploded out of the grass and powered steeply up and away at massive speed with those unpredictable little jinks of direction change.

Freddy had been directly above Shari still at a comfortable 700 feet. He rolled into a near vertical stoop and gathered massive speed and wonderfully took one of the partridge WITHOUT pulling out into the horizontal, he stooped through the birds, and at about 50 feet off the ground, one long scaly leg extended and the foot pulled the hard flying partridge out of the air, and with barely time to get the brakes on, the eagle thumped quite hard onto the ground with its quarry. The first few partridge in this account were fed complete to the eagle, the last two were traded off for full crop exchanges.

The reason for sharing this is that Shari is a dedicated vegetarian - a lifestyle chosen on welfare grounds. However, taking wild quarry using falconry techniques does not upset her welfare compass at all, and Shari has now enjoyed a meal of both grey and red legged partridge.

The eagle and Shari have been on an exciting journey together in a short time and have learned hugely from each other. It has been great to see, and best of all, a bird that had been uninspiring, and a species underestimated and under-utilised within falconry is showing its massive potential.

avatar