Reports on Helen’s work in progress– here and here. A quote from the first: ” I’m busy writing that book. The one about grief and goshawks and death and love and landscape and home and, well. All the things.” And from the second: “It is the story of a journey into wildness with a creature …
Tag: Falconry
Variations on a Theme
Lauren In Kazakhstan
Lauren McGough is in Kazakhstan now, studying, handling birds, shooting a VEPR (thanks Darrell) at marmots and eating them, running hounds bred by Kostya (who bred our Taika) and of course drinking vodka (it’s mandatory). She is in the Alatau in the southwest, where the mountains end and run down to the Caspian Basin; fascinating …
“Dirtwinger” videos
Warren Spencer, seen here at the wedding below, has been putting up videos of our falcon- tazi- lurcher teams at “Dirtwinger”. Most if not all dogs here bred by us or “granddogs” of our stock… Here are two of them of Warren’s breeding (we own all grandparents) with Terence’s late Gyr- Prairie tiercel Cog on …
Karen Wetherill & Terence Wright Wedding
A brilliant, beautiful entomologist, reigning expert on the wild bees of NM… …marries a longdogger… … and a fine celebration follows. One amazing thing was the amount of “dog relatives”– I think everyone in the photos but one has a descendant of our hounds, plus many others present–!
Lauren checks in…
Adventuring on; she will be going out to Kazakhstan to learn serious Kazakh soon, then to several other Stans. The Explorers Club has provided some funds but I may just have to run a bleg here… (Need I say more about my friend, protegee who long since surpassed her elder, first female berkutchi, first American …
Birds and Dogs on YouTube
Walter Hingley sent an interesting if rather relentless clip of a 40 ounce white gyr tiercel taking down a 15 pound Canada goose. The tenacity of the “little” falcon shows why eastern cultures, who appreciate a good fight as much as they do a good flight, prefer gyrs and sakers to peregrines. Browsing in the …
Mabel
Helen’s Gos.
News
Pluvialis has been in the Gulf where she saw this huge version of Thesiger’s portrait of Sheikh Zayed. She has two book contracts, one for the Gos book. More soon I hope.
Ronald Stevens
This is not Bertie Wooster with a Gyr, but the great, innovative English falconer, naturalist, and writer Ronald Stevens, who lived for many years on an estate in Ireland and was the first falconer to understand Gyrs since the death of Colonel Thornton in the 1820’s.With then- young John Morris (my generation) he also bred …