The Falconers

August 11, 2022 10:55 PM

The Falconer

‘You care for birds, and they heal you’: film profiles world of a Black falconer

Rodney Stotts Used to Hustle Drugs in Southeast DC. Now He’s One of the Few Black Master Falconers in America.8

Hunting with Falcons: How One City Man Found His Calling in the Wild

Game Hawker: A Wild Journey to Falconry

Facebook: Shawn Hayes Falconry

Upon Review: Well, dang! a big hat tip to drlith who beat me to it: Previously - The Black Falconer

Which is what I get by composing a mega post in Notepad before testing the links. Oh well...

posted by y2karl (10 comments total)

I should add this: Trigger warnings for accounts of violence and death to loved ones -- Mr. Stott led a hard life before taking up falconry.
posted by y2karl at 11:03 PM on August 11, 2022

There's also Falconry Finance for those willing to take a risk with both their money and their sanity.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:57 PM on August 11, 2022

Barry Hines’ novel Kes is an excellent read.
posted by cenoxo at 6:16 AM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

fascinating!
posted by Wretch729 at 7:42 AM on August 12, 2022

Thanks for these links! I can also recommend Sy Montgomery's 'The Hawk's Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty.'
posted by box at 9:43 AM on August 12, 2022

drlith's post caused me to pick up Stotts' book Bird Brother: A Falconer's Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife from my library, but that post closed before I'd read it, so I'm glad you posted this, both for the new links and for the opportunity to revisit the previously.

His memoir is a good read. The narrative kind of jumps around between his life before falconry, the process of becoming a falconer and his efforts to help his son become a falconer and to establish his own sanctuary. So there is plenty of heartache, and he doesn't shy away from the violent elements in his past, but the more uplifting elements are always there as well.
posted by the primroses were over at 11:56 AM on August 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

I bought Stotts’ book on the strength of the previous FPP. Sadly I haven’t read it yet.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2022

Shout out to my former employer, BART, and the Falconer, Ricky Ortiz, and his falcon, Pac Man, they hired to deal with the long-term problems with pigeons at BART.
posted by agatha_magatha at 9:20 AM on August 13, 2022

Falcon Vs. Skydiver | Ultimate Killers | BBC Earth (YouTube). After six months of training, a peregrine falcon named “Lady” chases a pair of skydivers jumping from a hot air balloon at 10,000 feet and exceeds 180 mph.
posted by cenoxo at 3:59 AM on August 14, 2022 [1 favorite]

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker. "From autumn to spring, J.A. Baker set out to track the daily comings and goings of a pair of peregrine falcons across the flat fen lands of eastern England. He followed the birds obsessively, observing them in the air and on the ground, in pursuit of their prey, making a kill, eating, and at rest, activities he describes with an extraordinary fusion of precision and poetry. And as he continued his mysterious private quest, his sense of human self slowly dissolved, to be replaced with the alien and implacable consciousness of a hawk. It is this extraordinary metamorphosis, magical and terrifying, that these beautifully written pages record." [emphasis added]
posted by neuron at 9:10 AM on August 16, 2022