A van pulls away from the Sandy Creek Barn, past the pond out back, and into the thick forest beyond. When the van’s wheels stop in a small clearing, five Reynolds Members burning with questions step outside. This is nature in its purest form, unvarnished and unscripted, the most reliable way to find answers about life here — specifically, birds of prey.
These Members are about to be amazed.
During the next two hours at the Falconry Experience, these serious birds and these curious guests will encounter each other on the birds’ turf and terms, and in ways none of the participants thought possible. The chain of command appears to be established as soon as the van’s doors open and the birds announce the presence of humans — or could they be … prey?
“That’s a wild sound,” a man mumbles.
With one arm covered by a gauntlet glove, Linda Spence steps forward.
“No, that’s an exciting sound,” she says.
With those words, Linda has offered two things an AI overview cannot — confidence from first-hand experience and calm from her presence. She is one of just 70 master falconers in the country, which required her to complete a two-year apprenticeship, build a mews, and find her own bird of prey, catch it, and take care of it for at least one year. That was 16 years ago.
“Falconry isn’t a hobby,” she says, clearing up another misconception. “It’s a way of life. I’m with these birds at least six days a week, sometimes seven. But I’m still doing it so I must enjoy it.”
A hawk interrupts with a squawk!
“Good morning, Remi,” Linda says in the direction of the mews, which is like a wildlife condo with separate units for each of her three Harris hawks and one Eurasian eagle owl. Linda provides them living quarters. She gives them food and names. She talks to them. They scream at her.
It’s a special bond, or so it seems.
“There’s no love here,” Linda says. The guests did not expect her to say that. Perhaps the main reason Linda’s insights about birds of prey are so riveting, so unforgettable, is that she does not sugarcoat any of them.
“These birds don’t even like me. They tolerate me because I’m a source of food. People ask how intelligent they are. If you base intelligence on the ability to have compassion, do tricks, or please others, then no, they have none.”
A cool flying demonstration is still to come, but this clearly is not a birds-of-prey circus. Linda reminds everyone of the reality they are now a part of.
“Why do you use tethers and keep the birds separated?” a guest asks.
Linda walks toward a large enclosure where three of the birds are just as the guest has mentioned: tethered and separated. “They’d like nothing more than to kill each other,” Linda says bluntly.
It’s a lesson birds of prey learn early. When her chicks are three months old, the mother will kick them out of the nest. They’ll fly at least 10 miles away to start a new home. If they don’t?
“They’ll become prey of their own parents,” Linda says.
Back when she was a child herself, Linda learned about outdoor life by stacking dams, climbing trees, and building forts in a coal-mining region of West Virginia. She’d shoot nonliving targets, like cans, with BB guns.
“I can say I’ve never shot a bird.” She says this loud enough for the hawks to conceivably hear — except they don’t use hearing for much of anything. They hunt with those menacing eyes, which are capable of seeing 10 times better than a human with impeccable vision. Nearby, a humongous Eurasian eagle owl, Molly, can hear everything — even a mouse tiptoeing through the weeds 100 yards away.
How much do you think Molly weighs?” Linda asks the group, unconcerned about insulting the emotionless owl.
“Fifteen pounds.”
“Twenty. Maybe thirty.”
“Some people guess as high as fifty pounds,” Linda says, “but she’s only four pounds. What you see is all feathers and fur. Just imagine being a chipmunk with this big beast diving toward you at 40 miles per hour.”
And with that, she makes an announcement that has stoked a thrill among humans for millennia: “Let’s go hunt.”
Linda’s bright demeanor is unflinching, even when a hawk with fighting in its eyes and no love in its heart flies from the roof of the mews straight toward her face before suddenly putting on the brakes and landing on her gloved arm. This, up close, is Remi. We’re about to take this hawk for a walk. Remi surveys the surroundings, including us, looking for something edible.
“She’ll go after anything that moves with no thought of it being too big or too small,” Linda says, while discreetly reaching into her shoulder bag for a tiny hawk delicacy.
Satisfied and untethered, Remi flies up to a branch and angelically suns her wings. Despite popular belief, she is not drying herself or trying to intimidate the kingdom below.
“She’s preventing vitamin D deficiency,” Linda says. Such instincts do not fend off every potential disease, so Linda gives the birds supplements like cod liver oil and raptor vitamins. They might not care about Linda, but she cares about them. In the wild, juvenile birds of prey have a mortality rate of 80% and the average life expectancy is about 12 years. With Linda’s provisions of food, shelter, and vitamins, they live an average of 30 years.
Remi turns her head 180 degrees in each direction. When we’re 40 feet away, she flies from branch to branch to catch up.
“Do you want to see something really wild?” Linda says. She tells a couple to stand with their shoulders 18 inches apart and holds food on the opposite side of the gap from Remi, who swoops down and miraculously threads her wings between the couple.
The guests take turns donning the gauntlet and feeling the strange sensation of a bird of prey landing inches from their cheeks. Pictures are taken before the gauntlet is returned to Linda’s arm. With all of the questions and answers flying around, an obvious one for Linda hovers in the air: Why falconry?
“Because this is the truest art of hunting,” she says. “I enjoy the challenge of getting a wild animal to work with me, even if it doesn’t like me.”
They might be heartless, bird-brained, and ungrateful partners, but to her that’s part of the constant allure: “I come back every day because I want these birds to live long, healthy lives while watching them be wild animals at the same time.”
