Falconry

Falconry is the hunting of wild animals in their natural state and habitat by means of a trained bird of prey, typically taking small animals such as squirrels and rabbits. A person who flies a falcon is traditionally called a falconer, while one who keeps Eurasian goshawks and other accipiters for hunting is called an austringer, and the practice is also known as hawking or gamehawking, though the terms falconer and falconry now cover most use of trained birds of prey to catch game since hawking and hawker came to refer mainly to traveling traders instead. Birds commonly used in modern falconry include the red tailed hawk, Harris's hawk and the peregrine falcon, and in early English falconry literature the word falcon referred specifically to a female peregrine, hawk or hawke to a female hawk generally, and tiercel to a male of either, so called because a male is roughly a third smaller than the female. Falconry grew into a widespread traditional sport across Europe from its origins in Arabian culture, where it remains an icon of the culture and where the saker falcon, used in the Arabian Peninsula since ancient times and known there as Hur, or free bird, is the national bird of the United Arab Emirates. Falconry is a distinct hobby from the live Hawkwatching entity on this atlas: hawkwatching is the observation of wild hawks in flight, while falconry is the training, keeping and flying of a captive bird of prey to hunt.