[Closed] I met my mate's new bird today

Stunning!

what a beauty 😀

Lovely breast markings

At least she wouldn't even bother boiling the bunnies.

Quite a beak on her.

I take it she's got her claws into him?

Maybe she'll turn her beak up at all these lame attempts of wit. 😛

don't get in a flap about it

Does he exercise it over the council tip?

Apparently she only has two brain cells (not unusual for a female!) One says, 'fly as fast as you can' & the other says, 'kill anything in sight'.

Beautiful..

Better wild though.

"Can it fly?" "Its flying now Sir"

Goshawks make awesome hunters. I wanted one to replace my Harris Hawk but they need to be flown, preferably, three times per week and I just couldn't commit the time so would've been unfair on the bird.

I bought a Giant Trance instead ...

Goshawks make awesome hunters. I wanted one to replace my Harris Hawk but they need to be flown, preferably, three times per week and I just couldn't commit the time so would've been unfair on the bird.

Luckily (?) Sam is 65 & retired, he'll spend more time this winter flying the Goshawk than he will with his Mrs!

he'll spend more time this winter flying the Goshawk than he will with his Mrs!

I'm 38 and still working, but on the basis of that comment, where can I get one of these Goshawks?

I envy him. Flying birds of prey is so exciting.
Will he hunt with it?

Fence wants treating.

Will he hunt with it?

He will. He's already got permission to fly it on a golf course which has loads of rabbits, & some farmland.

I'm 38 and still working, but on the basis of that comment, where can I get one of these Goshawks?

I would.

Goshawks are amazing things - there was a bbc documentary once about how they fly so quickly in forests, including how they can 'fold up' into a neat torpedo shape to fit through gaps in trees... Absolutely brilliant things - I have never seen one in the wild, but would love to.

Birds are awesome.

My parents used to leave their budgie in its cage in the conservatory.
A bird of prey had obviously been eyeing it up and decided to attack.
Flew slap bang into the conservatory.
That budgie never spoke but I'm sure I heard him call his attacker a ****er.

Flown Harris Hawks a few times, not tried Goshawk. Was astonished a few few weeks ago when I was out riding locally there were 3-4 occasions when I met people out with Hawks, just randomly out and about. All very friendly and keen to chat about their birds.

I caught Mrs NBT messing around with a good looking bird at the weekend

[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/759/20459600783_3489cd4d50_z.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/759/20459600783_3489cd4d50_z.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
[url= https://flic.kr/p/xaWNvD ]Harris Hawk[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/n_b_t/ ]Notoriously Bad Typist[/url], on Flickr

Want.
Always wanted a bird of prey since since handling golden eagles in Scotland. We live in the right property but our lifestyle isn't perfect so still waiting.
(wwas/will be starting with a HH as supposedly easier to 'learn' with, but the Gos looks amazing)

If anyone's interested in goshawks specifically, and enjoys reading, then you should find 'H is for Hawk' by Helen MacDonald. It's not a simple piece of science/nature writing but is more in the poetic form of Robert MacFarlane etc. I read it late last year and it's stuck with me since - powerful writing.

From the blurb:

‘In real life, goshawks resemble sparrowhawks the way leopards resemble housecats. Bigger, yes. But bulkier, bloodier, deadlier, scarier, and much, much harder to see. Birds of deep woodland, not gardens, they’re the birdwatchers’ dark grail.’

As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T. H. White’s tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White’s struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest.

When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. Then she fills the freezer with hawk food and unplugs the phone, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

‘To train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk, and so gain the ability to predict what it will do next. Eventually you don’t see the hawk’s body language at all. You seem to feel what it feels. The hawk’s apprehension becomes your own. As the days passed and I put myself in the hawk’s wild mind to tame her, my humanity was burning away.’

Destined to be a classic of nature writing, H is for Hawk is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. At the same time, it's a kaleidoscopic biography of the brilliant and troubled novelist T. H. White, best known for The Once and Future King. It's a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to try to reconcile death with life and love.

I tried reading that last year ..... too much personal stuff for me.