🪶 Raptor Biology & Terms · 8 min
The falconer's vocabulary
Why this matters
There is no way around this: a meaningful share of the exam is a vocabulary test in a language that is six hundred years old and partly borrowed from Hindustani. Read it once here, then let the flashcards do the work.
By the end of this lesson you will be able to
- Define the terms most heavily tested in the General section
- Distinguish terms that are commonly confused with each other
- Recognise archaic terms and what modern practice replaced them with
People
An austringer keeps and hunts accipiters, from the Latin aster, the old generic name for the Goshawk. It has nothing to do with flying passage falcons rather than eyases.
Actions of the bird
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Bate | To attempt flight from the fist or perch while tethered. |
| Bind | To seize quarry with the feet and hold it, in the air or on the ground. Desirable. |
| Crab | A clash or fight between hawks, in the air or on the ground over quarry. Not desirable. |
| Throw up | To rise steeply on outstretched wings after a stoop, especially after the quarry dodges. Distinct from cast gorge, which is vomiting. |
| Rake away | A flight at quarry or to the falconer that is aborted, the bird changing course away from the target. |
| Carrying | Flying off with food or quarry rather than staying on it. A vice. |
| Slice | Forcible discharge of excrement, done by accipiters, buteos and eagles. Falcons drop their mutes straight down. |
| Bowsing | Drinking. |
Actions of the falconer
- Cast: three separate meanings, and the exam's answer is "all of the above". A casting is the disgorged pellet; a cast is two raptors flown together; and to cast a bird is to hold or wrap it so it cannot move.
- Strike: the moment of impact with quarry or lure, and striking the braces (loosening a hood) and striking the hood (removing it).
- Enseam: to prepare a hawk for flying by removing its reserves of fat, so, when the bird is too fat. Medieval falconers used purges such as rangle; today it may mean feeding washed meat.
- Rangle: small stones given orally to a hawk.
- Gorge: to let a hawk eat all it will until it refuses more.
- Hack: complete liberty given to eyases for a few weeks after they can fly.
- Enter: to introduce a bird to a quarry species it has not hunted before.
States and chances
Keen and sharp-set both mean hungry and ready to kill, and the exam treats hungry, sharp-set and ready to kill as one answer. A slip is a chance at quarry, and also the release of a short wing after quarry, and also the resulting flight: again, all of the above.
This lesson is part of the NY Falconry Exam course. Open it in the course to answer the retrieval checks that go with it, track what you have read, and quiz the whole unit. Lessons, quizzes and the glossary are free.