An advanced and more specialized look at the modern forms of the high flights of classical falconry.

In this fully revised edition of his classic guide to falconry for beginners, lifelong falconer Tony Hall presents the most comprehensive information available to newcomers to the sport. Falconry Basics is specifically designed for novices and covers the basics, from different types of birds and their individual characteristics, to acquiring the proper equipment and the care and handling of the birds themselves. Covering all aspects of training, hunting, and maintenance, Falconry Basics addresses every possible scenario a newcom- er may face when training their first raptor, from illness and injury to escaped or overconfident hawks. Hall also provides a wealth of supplementary information for beginners, including notes on anatomy, terminology, and a list of additional resources. Accompanied by diagrams and detailed line illustrations throughout, this book will become a standard manual for future generations of falconers.

Birds played an important role in the ancient world: as indicators of time, weather, and seasons; as a resource for hunting, medicine, and farming; as pets and entertainment; as omens and messengers of the gods. Jeremy Mynott explores the similarities and surprising differences between ancient perceptions of the natural world and our own.

A “well-written, engaging detective story” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) about a rogue who trades in rare birds and their eggs—and the wildlife detective determined to stop him. On May 3, 2010, an Irish national named Jeffrey Lendrum was apprehended at Britain’s Birmingham International Airport with a suspicious parcel strapped to his stomach. Inside were fourteen rare peregrine falcon eggs snatched from a remote cliffside in Wales. So begins a “vivid tale of obsession and international derring-do” (Publishers Weekly), following the parallel lives of a globe-trotting smuggler who spent two decades capturing endangered raptors worth millions of dollars as race champions—and Detective Andy McWilliam of the United Kingdom’s National Wildlife Crime Unit, who’s hell bent on protecting the world’s birds of prey. “Masterfully constructed” (The New York Times) and “entertaining and illuminating” (The Washington Post), The Falcon Thief will whisk you away from the volcanoes of Patagonia to Zimbabwe’s Matobo National Park, and from the frigid tundra near the Arctic Circle to luxurious aviaries in the deserts of Dubai, all in pursuit of a man who is reckless, arrogant, and gripped by a destructive compulsion to make the most beautiful creatures in nature his own. It’s a story that’s part true-crime narrative, part epic adventure—and wholly unputdownable until the very last page.

Birds pervaded the ancient world, impressing their physical presence on the daily experience and imaginations of ordinary people and figuring prominently in literature and art. They provided a fertile source of symbols and stories in myths and folklore and were central to the ancient rituals of augury and divination. Jeremy Mynott's Birds in the Ancient World illustrates the many different roles birds played in culture: as indicators of time, weather and the seasons; as a resource for hunting, eating, medicine and farming; as domestic pets and entertainments; and as omens and intermediaries between the gods and humankind. We learn how birds were perceived - through quotations from well over a hundred classical Greek and Roman authors, all of them translated freshly into English, through nearly 100 illustrations from ancient wall-paintings, pottery and mosaics, and through selections from early scientific writings, and many anecdotes and descriptions from works of history, geography and travel. Jeremy Mynott acts as a stimulating guide to this rich and fascinating material, using birds as a prism through which to explore both the similarities and the often surprising differences between ancient conceptions of the natural world and our own. His book is an original contribution to the flourishing interest in the cultural history of birds and to our understanding of the ancient cultures in which birds played such a prominent part.

A beautifully illustrated tour of the visual culture of medieval falconry in Europe and beyond. Medieval falconry was not just about hunting; the practice also signified sovereignty, power, and diplomacy. In The Art of Medieval Falconry, Yannis Hadjinicolaou describes the visual culture that sprang up around these practices, tracking how imagery, equipment, and even the birds themselves moved through the medieval world. Indeed, Hadjinicolaou shows that falconry has been a global phenomenon since at least the thirteenth century. This beautifully illustrated book offers a unique glimpse at how cultures across the globe adopted and adapted the visual culture of medieval falconry.

This book examines the resources required for using falconry in hunting wild game as well as how falconers must attend to a falcon's needs, how to hunt, and the sport's regulations and responsibilities.

For the first time under one cover, the author has assembled the results of the renewed interest, extensive experimentation, and technological progress that have advanced falconry over the past three decades. The Hunting Falcon is a fresh approach to the sport of falconry. For the first time under one cover, the author has assembled the results of the renewed interest, extensive experimentation, and technological progress that have advanced falconry over the past three decades. Falconer and wildlife biologist, Bruce Haak, details the techniques for training falcons in the classical, game hawking style. Through well-defined chapters, he establishes the fundamentals of care and handling of captive falcons and legal means of acquiring them. Successful strategies for hawking a wide variety of North American quarry are analyzed and laced with entertaining and informative anecdotes. Time-honored techniques for training wild falcons are restated in modern terms. In addition, the education of imprinted and captive-bred falcons, classes of falcons without historical precedence, is concisely outlined for the reader. In a break with tradition, the author uses North America's only indigenous falcon, the prairie falcon, as the primary subject and promotes it as an outstanding hunting partner. His training philosophy and comments on the use of radiotelemetry are added enrichment's to the text.

The Tang dynasty, lasting from 618 to 907, was the high point of medieval Chinese history, featuring unprecedented achievements in governmental organization, economic and territorial expansion, literature, the arts, and religion. Many Tang practices continued, with various developments, to influence Chinese society for the next thousand years. For these and other reasons the Tang has been a key focus of Western sinologists. This volume presents English-language reprints of fifty-seven critical studies of the Tang, in the three general categories of political history, literature and cultural history, and religion. The articles and book chapters included here are important scholarly benchmarks that will serve as the starting-point for anyone interested in the study of medieval China.