O’Brien, Dan. The Rites of Autumn, New York: Doubleday, 1988.
Man’s venerating association with birds of prey reaches back to the earliest stages of civilization. The dynastic houses of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia engaged in falconry, or the art of hunting with semi-domesticated raptors, and Mesoamerican emperors kept eagles and hawks in vast aviaries for their respectful enjoyment. In an extreme form of practical entertainment, Kirghiz nomads on the Asian steppes hunt wolves with golden eagles (Aquila spp.), thus thinning out the ranks of potential sheep raiders while continuing a cultural heritage that spans millennia. But nowhere was the craft of falconry as evolved and meaningful as in Europe, where the richest noble families fanatically hunted with falcons and accipiters to the exclusion of other activities; indeed, royal and noble obsession with falconry and other forms of hunting was later blamed (by the peasantry) for the inadequate preparations of the French forces when the English came knocking in the opening phases of the Hundred Years War.
Not that falconry’s delights weren’t shared by nobles across the Channel, as well. There survives an old English folk song called “The Three Ravens” which details the death of a knight “slain under his shield,” and of the hunting hounds and falcons that refuse to leave his body, the later keeping away scavengers like the narrating ravens:
The waves of English immigrants who came to America in the latter 17th century, contrary to the puritanical religious zealots who preceded them, were chiefly looking to escape the stifling post-feudal socioeconomic confines of English society. Generally of the lower-middle classes, the pioneers were eager to begin life anew in the “fresh green breast of the new world,” free of the strictures and confining social caste system of Europe. For many of the rural escapees, a major attraction of what had then been reported of America was its boundless wildernesses—great forests and riverbanks where free men and women could roam and hunt at will, unchecked by the vicious gamekeepers and hired thugs of the noble estates that in England enclosed most of the remaining wild lands. Falconry was viewed by European nobility as its exclusive domain and was actually subdivided by Accipiter and Falco species in an elaborate hierarchy according to social position: kestrels (sparrow hawks) for squires and knights, goshawks for barons and marquises, peregrines for dukes and earls and the mighty gyrfalcon reserved for the royal family. This avian caste system was quickly abandoned in the colonies, and “common” people took full advantage of the natural provender utilizing any and all means available, including the previously elitist enlistment of raptors.
Hunting with hawks is not the most efficient means of securing game; among the wealthy peers of Europe, falconry was an exercise in cementing societal position and standing as much as anything else. The same holds true in America today: few people actually engage in falconry with the expectation that they’ll get a steady flow of meals from their partners. The training of a wild bird to accept intimate human contact and then to allow the trainer to remove killed game from its talons is acutely unnatural, and the result of a necessarily lengthy and mutual education in tolerance. Falconers are therefore a unique breed of hunter, as specialized in and responsive to the fragile beauties of their craft as the most sensitive fly-fisherman. By removing a wild bird from its native world, the hunter is accepting a tremendous moral responsibility; possessed of an intense love for his charge, he realizes at the offset that the hawk will never be “his” in the sense of a bird dog’s complete devotion to his owner, and that at best he can hope for a few seasons of nervous and sometimes reluctant partnership before returning his captive to the wild.
Dan O’Brien is one of those few outdoors writers who perfectly characterize the essence of how Americans should respond to the land. O’Brien’s reverence for untrammeled spaces and unbounded wildlife is evident in every page of this book, and he has made innumerable personal sacrifices to remain in close proximity to the world of sweeping sky and the roaring stoop, or dive, of an attacking peregrine falcon. The female falcon named Dolly, co-protagonist of The Rites of Autumn, was one of several peregrines the author had helped to “hack”, or raise and release, in the course of a reintroduction program following the ban on DDT, but as he points out, “the system that has evolved in nature for the raising and selection of birds of prey is complicated and, in human terms, cruel and severe. The idea that we can improve on this system is a classic case of hubris.” Complications arise when the falcons are first released; a golden eagle abducts two of the three young peregrines, and the survivor is too traumatized to be re-released at a more distant hacking site. The fullest extreme of sensory and muscular evolution, the peregrine falcon exists in a rarified state of being so easily distressed that any shock or upset of their hacking routine sets the program back significantly. Realizing that it was now too late in the year for Dolly to be released, O’Brien commits himself to educate her in the artistry of killing. An endangered species biologist by trade, O’Brien is fully qualified—if any man can be—to provide custody and protection to Dolly as they journey from O’Brien’s ranch in South Dakota to Montana, then down the Plains through Colorado and Texas, hunting ducks and grouse along the way, to Padre Island, where he hopes to release Dolly among the plentiful shorebirds.
Another of the growing number of books that accurately portray hunters as conservationists foremost, The Rites of Autumn gives us a searing glance at the divine manifestation of truth and beauty that is a bird of prey. O’Brien pulls no punches in describing the widening gyre of habitat destruction and pollution that threatens to undo the earth’s splendid evolutionary heritage, but his personal courage and resolve to perpetuate the fiery life temporarily in his care inspires us with its strength, grace, and love.
Man’s venerating association with birds of prey reaches back to the earliest stages of civilization. The dynastic houses of Persia, Egypt and Mesopotamia engaged in falconry, or the art of hunting with semi-domesticated raptors, and Mesoamerican emperors kept eagles and hawks in vast aviaries for their respectful enjoyment. In an extreme form of practical entertainment, Kirghiz nomads on the Asian steppes hunt wolves with golden eagles (Aquila spp.), thus thinning out the ranks of potential sheep raiders while continuing a cultural heritage that spans millennia. But nowhere was the craft of falconry as evolved and meaningful as in Europe, where the richest noble families fanatically hunted with falcons and accipiters to the exclusion of other activities; indeed, royal and noble obsession with falconry and other forms of hunting was later blamed (by the peasantry) for the inadequate preparations of the French forces when the English came knocking in the opening phases of the Hundred Years War.
Not that falconry’s delights weren’t shared by nobles across the Channel, as well. There survives an old English folk song called “The Three Ravens” which details the death of a knight “slain under his shield,” and of the hunting hounds and falcons that refuse to leave his body, the later keeping away scavengers like the narrating ravens:
The waves of English immigrants who came to America in the latter 17th century, contrary to the puritanical religious zealots who preceded them, were chiefly looking to escape the stifling post-feudal socioeconomic confines of English society. Generally of the lower-middle classes, the pioneers were eager to begin life anew in the “fresh green breast of the new world,” free of the strictures and confining social caste system of Europe. For many of the rural escapees, a major attraction of what had then been reported of America was its boundless wildernesses—great forests and riverbanks where free men and women could roam and hunt at will, unchecked by the vicious gamekeepers and hired thugs of the noble estates that in England enclosed most of the remaining wild lands. Falconry was viewed by European nobility as its exclusive domain and was actually subdivided by Accipiter and Falco species in an elaborate hierarchy according to social position: kestrels (sparrow hawks) for squires and knights, goshawks for barons and marquises, peregrines for dukes and earls and the mighty gyrfalcon reserved for the royal family. This avian caste system was quickly abandoned in the colonies, and “common” people took full advantage of the natural provender utilizing any and all means available, including the previously elitist enlistment of raptors.
Hunting with hawks is not the most efficient means of securing game; among the wealthy peers of Europe, falconry was an exercise in cementing societal position and standing as much as anything else. The same holds true in America today: few people actually engage in falconry with the expectation that they’ll get a steady flow of meals from their partners. The training of a wild bird to accept intimate human contact and then to allow the trainer to remove killed game from its talons is acutely unnatural, and the result of a necessarily lengthy and mutual education in tolerance. Falconers are therefore a unique breed of hunter, as specialized in and responsive to the fragile beauties of their craft as the most sensitive fly-fisherman. By removing a wild bird from its native world, the hunter is accepting a tremendous moral responsibility; possessed of an intense love for his charge, he realizes at the offset that the hawk will never be “his” in the sense of a bird dog’s complete devotion to his owner, and that at best he can hope for a few seasons of nervous and sometimes reluctant partnership before returning his captive to the wild.
Dan O’Brien is one of those few outdoors writers who perfectly characterize the essence of how Americans should respond to the land. O’Brien’s reverence for untrammeled spaces and unbounded wildlife is evident in every page of this book, and he has made innumerable personal sacrifices to remain in close proximity to the world of sweeping sky and the roaring stoop, or dive, of an attacking peregrine falcon. The female falcon named Dolly, co-protagonist of The Rites of Autumn, was one of several peregrines the author had helped to “hack”, or raise and release, in the course of a reintroduction program following the ban on DDT, but as he points out, “the system that has evolved in nature for the raising and selection of birds of prey is complicated and, in human terms, cruel and severe. The idea that we can improve on this system is a classic case of hubris.” Complications arise when the falcons are first released; a golden eagle abducts two of the three young peregrines, and the survivor is too traumatized to be re-released at a more distant hacking site. The fullest extreme of sensory and muscular evolution, the peregrine falcon exists in a rarified state of being so easily distressed that any shock or upset of their hacking routine sets the program back significantly. Realizing that it was now too late in the year for Dolly to be released, O’Brien commits himself to educate her in the artistry of killing. An endangered species biologist by trade, O’Brien is fully qualified—if any man can be—to provide custody and protection to Dolly as they journey from O’Brien’s ranch in South Dakota to Montana, then down the Plains through Colorado and Texas, hunting ducks and grouse along the way, to Padre Island, where he hopes to release Dolly among the plentiful shorebirds.
Another of the growing number of books that accurately portray hunters as conservationists foremost, The Rites of Autumn gives us a searing glance at the divine manifestation of truth and beauty that is a bird of prey. O’Brien pulls no punches in describing the widening gyre of habitat destruction and pollution that threatens to undo the earth’s splendid evolutionary heritage, but his personal courage and resolve to perpetuate the fiery life temporarily in his care inspires us with its strength, grace, and love.
