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View Full Version : questions about Hawkes and Hawking - Bert



roscogruen
04-12-2014, 01:23 AM
using argue's book,
p66-67 where he explains how to break the bird of gorging (seems impossible to me) - does line mean creance? what does he mean pin her down? controlled with creance or leash?
what does he mean by plane and plain? i'm thinking both express open ground.

i will pull my bird out of a bush so she doesn't gorge if she is deep into it. or if she goes down a pipe, i'll rip her out. by rip i mean, pull out as gently as i can but it usually ends w/ her hanging upside down. if on these occasions, i'll let her gorge in hopes she'll think she can gorge in the bush or out of it. she'll do this when a stranger is near sometimes. i've thought there'd be a better way. it seems he is trying to explain how but i can't follow him here. please explain if you understand what he is saying.

if a threat isn't around she usually waits for me to hold the rabbit down and then waits for food on the glove.

p70. i'm completely lost from "i could never meet with any pheasant," about halfway down the page. is he restraining the hallux using a bewit? why does he say don't do it so that she can't grasp a partridge.

maybe the dust storms, aridity and high winds have clogged up or weathered my cognition.

one thing i still don't understand after reading this book, again. our dachsund has been popped a few times by hawks. his instinct to grab the hawk still sets in. i'd trust our pointer but never the little dachsund.

carlosR
04-18-2014, 04:06 PM
Hi Curt I'm shooting from the hip here but yes line means creance. I think to pin down is to hold the jesses or creance with your foot or hand or something. As for plane, he does mean open country.
I don't have a copy in front of me but that's my recollection.
You might try googling Elizabethan or Shakespearian English words and there are some sites that have words and phrases.... translated? Anyway it was a glorious time in English literature with the use of language. Enjoy and don't get frustrated just reread and try to picture what the author is writing about, it will become evident. Or I've given up and thrown the book down then days later it pops into my head. Bert was and is the man!
I'll look up page 70 if I remember. I kind of enjoy figuring the language out.

roscogruen
04-22-2014, 12:35 AM
why does he use the words plane and plain?

what is up with him peppering as punishment? campbell wrote peppering is known to have killed many birds. i only have 3 or 4 years experience but can't remember one instance where negative reinforcement did anything but make the bird dislike their experience with humans. and having his friends dunk his birds is, well, not something i'd do to a bird fearing it would end up twenty miles away the next opportunity it got.

it is either in the first or second treatise that he says training on pigeons is a bad idea. it teaches them to rake and source a pigeon to take. am i right? and would his advice include not training falcons on pigeons.

I'll agree, Carlos, that his description of himself makes him a good falconer and definitely had some good secrets. still not sure i agree with the peppering though.

hcmcelroy
04-22-2014, 10:09 AM
Curt,

I've avoided training with pigeons over the decades to avoid the problem of endung up at someone's loft. When hawking I can often see pigeons in the background.

Harry.

goshawkr
04-22-2014, 11:17 AM
why does he use the words plane and plain?

what is up with him peppering as punishment? campbell wrote peppering is known to have killed many birds. i only have 3 or 4 years experience but can't remember one instance where negative reinforcement did anything but make the bird dislike their experience with humans. and having his friends dunk his birds is, well, not something i'd do to a bird fearing it would end up twenty miles away the next opportunity it got.

it is either in the first or second treatise that he says training on pigeons is a bad idea. it teaches them to rake and source a pigeon to take. am i right? and would his advice include not training falcons on pigeons.

I'll agree, Carlos, that his description of himself makes him a good falconer and definitely had some good secrets. still not sure i agree with the peppering though.

Pepprering is definitely best left to history.

Its been a few years since I read Bert cover to cover, but I don't recall him advocating using peppering as a punishment. It was definately used as a medical treatment though.

If you really want to understand the writings of someone, you also have to understand their times. In Bert's world, the cutting edge science was that all things were made of four basic elements {fire, water, earth and air}, in differing amounts. Illness was caused when one of those elements was out of balance. For example, if a person had too much fire, they would manifest a fever, and usually develop an intense thirst because they needed more water to balance out the fire.

To our way of thinking, with our current scientific theories, this is all ludicrous, but it made sense to the people of that time. The theory fit the pattern of life experience very well, although one would often have to stretch the theory to make it work. stretching theories to fit facts really isn't all that different from how we act today with many of our modern scientific theories, BTW. We do that even today until a better theory comes along.

In Bert's time, if you ate a peppercorn, your tongue felt hot. So they thought peppercorns had a lot of fire in them. They thought it would help a hawk who lacked fire and spark in their spirit to be given pepper.

And BTW, punishement can work great in training hawks. The sort of punishment where you smack them will not work in most situations unless your goal is for them to hate you and fly off. In training any animal positive experiences work much better than negative ones to encourage them to do what you want, but all animals also understand the concept of "that didn't work out like I wanted, I should do something different." Punishment can be putting the hood on and going home instead of hunting if they are goofing off. I have had hawks "fight" me on a few occaisions, and a mild but forceful shove teaches them that I fight harder than they do and they need to try something else to get what they want. I'd call that punishment too.

As a rule of thumb with across the board training of critters (and people), if your ever using punishment more than 10% of the time you really need to figure out whats gone wrong in your training. I keep 0% use of punishment as my goal, and adjust my program if it creeps up to 5%.

roscogruen
04-24-2014, 04:17 PM
Curt,

I've avoided training with pigeons over the decades to avoid the problem of endung up at someone's loft. When hawking I can often see pigeons in the background.

Harry.

Harry,
Thank you. did you just avoid using them with accipiters or did you also not use them with falcons?
Curt

hcmcelroy
04-25-2014, 12:18 PM
Curt,

Yes, the whole thing. In Mexico I often saw pigeons at homes in the background so my aplomados were never tossed pigeons. Nor were tiercel prairies in the US.

Harry.

roscogruen
04-25-2014, 03:04 PM
Curt,

Yes, the whole thing. In Mexico I often saw pigeons at homes in the background so my aplomados were never tossed pigeons. Nor were tiercel prairies in the US.

Harry.

Thank you, Harry.

carlosR
04-28-2014, 10:09 PM
In Elizabethan England pigeons were commonly kept as a food source like poultry. So Bert's aversion to training with them. He seems to have had ready access to young partridges though.

roscogruen
05-03-2014, 02:45 AM
i didn't see that he prefaced the peppering instructions with a warning that it might make some upset.

roscogruen
05-07-2014, 05:49 PM
my second book is posted. https://librivox.org/berts-treatise-of-hawkes-and-hawking-by-edmund-bert/. that is all i'll be doing during this off season. i'd guess i spent one hour for every five minutes of published audio.

if anyone can read aloud better than i, there are tons more falconry books to be read. it helped me. I hope at least one falconer in the future finds it helpful.

feel free to pm me for my phone number if you want the skinny on doing a book. the instructions are bewildering at first.

carlosR
05-11-2014, 11:14 PM
Thank you for doing this. Now I can study Bert and do office work at the same time. Good job.
Carlos

goshawkr
05-12-2014, 02:50 PM
Thank you for doing this. Now I can study Bert and do office work at the same time. Good job.
Carlos

Ya, ditto....

roscogruen
05-16-2014, 01:49 AM
Thank you. That made the effort worthwhile.

Wish I could read aloud better.

I'll do a few next year. any suggestions? Maybe I'll re-do the Campbell Introduction