The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Birds of a feather
Mcruer enjoys teaming up with his hawk and watching his awe-inspiring skills
PISQUID, P.E.I. — For Dave Mcruer, there's nothing quite like watching his hawk duck and weave through the trees to return to him after a hunt. “It's a thrill. It's a real thrill.” Mcruer, who is a wildlife health specialist, was working in Virginia when he got into falconry and developed an interest after someone brought in a peregrine falcon that ran into a hotel's window while chasing pigeons.
The same bird was back about a year later after doing the same thing.
Mcruer said he was impressed by the falconer who helped rehabilitate the falcon.
After that, Mcruer attended a few falconry meets and said he decided it was something he wanted to get into.
Falconry is heavily regulated, and Mcruer said he went through a two-year apprenticeship before getting his first hawk.
Anyone who is interested needs to pass a written test before they can even become an apprentice.
“There's a lot of hurdles and hoops and stuff that you need to go through in order to do it,” Mcruer said.
About six months after he and his family moved to P.E.I. in 2017, Mcruer got Rusty, a five-year-old red-tailed hawk that was bred in captivity and lives in an enclosure, called a mews, in Mcruer's barn during the winter months.
Rusty will spend the summer months in a second enclosure outside, and Mcruer has plans to build a third in the barn that will be attached to the one outdoors.
Although Rusty spends a lot of his time in the mews, Mcruer said falconers try to fly their birds as often as possible.
“The more you fly them, the happier they are. For sure, you don't want to keep them in a cage their entire lives,” he said.
“It's not really true falconry if you do it that way.”
While Rusty lives in the mews in the barn, Mcruer said a goshawk he is getting in June will start in the house where it will live on a perch in the living room getting used to people, other family pets and everything else that comes with life around humans.
A very understanding spouse is also a necessity, he said.
“It's definitely a lifestyle.” The new goshawk will be only nine days old when Mcruer gets it, and he said he will have to teach it about everything from other animals to the sunglasses he wears so it doesn't see them as something scary later on in life.
Even starting at that young age, the new goshawk won't develop an attachment to Mcruer. However, he said it will “imprint” on him, which means it will know it doesn't have to be afraid of him.
Mcruer said, instead, the bird will see him as a source of food initially and how it will get food once it starts hunting.
“In terms of actually them liking you? No.”
Perched inside his mews, Rusty squawked and screeched as Mcruer spoke, sometimes flying across the enclosure to look out through the wooden slats that kept him inside.
Later, the hawk would sit perched on Mcruer's gloved arm outside, wearing a bell on each leg before taking to the air and soaring across the snow-covered yard to land in a nearby birch tree.
Flight after flight, Rusty sat in a tree, waiting until Mcruer called him back with a whistle and fed him after the hawk swooped low above the ground before his flight path curved up to the outstretched hand.
Mcruer said finding game to hunt is tough, and trying to fly a bird at it when he does find some is even tougher.
When asked if Rusty has been successful as a hunter, Mcruer chuckled.
“He has never caught anything under my watch.”
Although he said it would be nice for the bird to catch something, for Mcruer it's not all about catching game. It's about the experience. “You're basically a hunting partner for them, so being allowed to get that close to what they're doing naturally in the wild is awe-inspiring. I love it,” he said.