falconspace

The entrance to the orchard was flanked by trees laden with plump apricots, their downy orange skins sun-kissed with flecks of red. Further in, the sun glistened off dark plums and little green apples. The fruit looked good, but standing on a stout wooden perch, low down in the shade of a pear tree, was something better. It was a very large golden eagle.

The eagle squawked as we approached, twisting its neck to look at us. The head moved through 180 degrees, while the rest of its body didn’t move at all. I found the effect unsettling. Had a man been sitting there instead, any reaction to our approach would have involved a twist of the shoulders at the very least. Not the golden eagle. Its head just swivelled round like the gun turret of a tank, only much more smoothly and infinitely faster. It sat there and looked at us menacingly, its body still facing the other way.

“This is male golden eagle,” the director announced. “His name Akbalak.” Akbalak squawked again, just to con-firm his presence, but I was already being moved on. A second bird, larger than the first, was perched on another wooden block a little further into the orchard.

“This is female golden eagle. Her name Karager.” Standing beside Karager, stroking the smooth feathers on her head and chest, was her keeper.

Karager appeared not to dislike the attention, but she was also interested in our arrival. She did a similar head-swivelling act and fixed us with the same impassive stare.

The art of falconry has a long history in Kazakhstan, where nomadic herders and their livestock have shared the steppes with birds of prey since time immemorial. The Kazakhs soon realised that these birds could be trained to help obtain food and furs. Several species of falcon were used, but golden eagles have always been considered the best. A tomb excavated in the east of the country revealed the body of a man flanked by four eagles, one at each of the cardinal points. The tomb is thought to be at least 2,000 years old.

In recent times the falconer’s expertise has given way to the more prosaic rifle, but an attempt to conserve these ancient skills has been made at the otherwise unremarkable town of Nura. It was my interest in how people interact with nature that had brought me to the small falconry complex consisting of a museum and a training centre.

Before seeing the birds, I’d been shown round the museum, guided diligently by the dir- ector wielding a long metal pointer. The museum wasn’t large. It consisted of just one room, but it was filled with exhibits. We began with a detailed catalogue of the contents of the glass cases. There were ancient leather gauntlets and neat little leather hoods, used to calm the birds when at rest. Next to these was a display of small felt bags covered in embroidered fabric. These bags were used to keep scraps of meat in, the director explained, tapping the glass with her pointer. The scraps of meat, usually rabbit, were used to attract a flying bird during training, she said.

The museum walls were covered in bad oil paintings and grainy black-and-white photographs. The photos, of famous birds and their owners, served as starting points for some epic stories. There was the tale of the falconer who had lived to the age of 103. When he passed away, his eagle flew round the grave for two days before finally lying down on the tomb to die with him. Another old photograph showed a figure swathed in a heavy topcoat and a fur hat, standing ramrod straight with an eagle on his forearm. The animals that this man’s bird caught fed an entire village throughout the second world war.

Outside in the warm sunshine, I was escorted past a series of large cages towards the orchard on the other side of the courtyard. Most of the cages were empty, but one contained a display of pelts. These were creatures caught by the resident birds in recent months, the director told me. There were two different types of fox fur, some hares and a range of small wildcats.

Bekmuhan, the female eagle’s trainer, was wearing a long leather gauntlet on his right forearm. Still stroking the bird with his left hand, he bent down to untie a leash attaching the eagle to her perch and held out his gloved hand for her to stand on. The eagle glanced down at the arm and hopped on board, to be raised up so that man and beast stood eye to eye. The golden eagle was the size of a small child, maybe a four- or five-year-old. She had brown plumage, with flecks of white on her wings and tail feathers. The feathers on her head were a lighter shade of russet.

The eagle seemed relaxed yet totally focused, alert to everything going on around her. I had the feeling of being in the presence of a perfectly tuned machine, sleek and graceful, but at the same time full of power and danger. Bekmuhan was still stroking his bird as you would a pussy cat, but her bright yellow talons were huge and kneading his tough leather glove. She was more like a flying lioness.

That impression stayed with me into the evening, when I accompanied the two eagles and their keepers on a training session. We drove out of Nura to the Charyn canyon, a spectacular series of chasms that have been eaten into a sandstone plateau. I drove in a 4WD with the director, but the eagles travelled by motorbike and sidecar. They sat on the arms of their keepers quite contentedly, wearing their little leather caps over their eyes to calm them. The headwear made them look like executioners on their way to work.

TRAINING a golden eagle is a lifelong commitment. The first requisite is for the bird to grow accustomed to its keeper. In the initial phase, this means spending several days and sleepless nights together. Both fledglings and adult birds are habituated in this way. The process is faster with a chick, but it’s worth persevering with an older bird, because it usually makes a better hunter in the end, having already learnt its predatory skills in the wild. The eagle is taught to accept food from the hand of its keeper and thus trained to jump onto his arm to get at the meat. After a mutual trust has been established, he will take his bird for walks in crowded places, such as a bazaar, to cement the relationship. The hunting itself, which often takes place alongside a horse and a dog, sometimes starts with stuffed foxes before proceeding to the real thing.

The display I witnessed was more of an obedience test than a hunt. The larger, female bird, Karager, was taken along a spur that looked out over one of the canyon’s yawning gorges while I accompanied her handler, Bekmuhan, along a similar spur that ran along the other side of the ravine.

The position we took up was a good 200 yards from the bird’s starting point and perhaps 50 yards lower.

Bekmuhan was wearing a plum-coloured tunic and a fur hat. The top of the hat was made of the same colour felt as his tunic, and sewn onto it was a cutout motif in a lighter colour, depicting an eagle standing with wings folded. This was his training uniform, Bekmuhan explained, an outfit he always wore because his eagle was used to it.

Bekmuhan took a small pouch from his belt and selected a fresh piece of rabbit to lure the eagle. He pulled on his leather gauntlet, positioned the rabbit titbit between the fingers, and held out his arm. Across the ravine, I could make out Bekmuhan’s assistant unhooding the golden eagle.

With a few flicks of his wrist, Bekmuhan showed the distant bird that he had meat in his hand. Far away, I saw her drop off the assistant’s arm and glide towards us with a few effortless flaps of her mighty wings. The eagle swooped momentarily down into the ravine, then up again, on a beeline towards Bekmuhan’s outstretched arm. With her wings spread, the huge bird appeared, talons first, over the crest of the gorge to land on the gauntlet, where she set about the morsel of rabbit with her fearsome hooked beak. Bek- muhan stroked her bent head as she tucked into the snack.

After another similar exhibition flight, Bekmuhan suggested I might have a go at holding the scrap of meat. He told me that if I wore his hat and kept my gloved arm steady, there was no chance of the eagle doing anything other than what I’d just seen. I had nothing to fear, since she was only interested in the meat.

The eagle had been taken back up to the other side of the canyon, a lengthy walk up one spur and down the other. I extended my arm and flicked a new bit of rabbit back and forth in my armoured hand. Time seemed to stand still as I watched the eagle swoop down once more. Her flight was almost lazy. An easy swish of great wings brought her across the ravine in a smooth arc and, before I had time for second thoughts, she had landed on my arm to devour the meat.

I’d never really understood the phrase “poetry in motion”, but this was it. The golden eagle alighted with no more impact than a fly. If my eyes had been closed, I’d have barely noticed. There was the slightest brush of feather-tips in my face, and no sound but for the faintest rustle of wings as she settled on my gauntlet. It was pure power and grace, a creature of beauty and splendour shot through with exhilarating precision and spine-tingling menace.

Better than that, she was sitting on my arm to eat her supper.

# You can see Nick Middleton in Kazakhstan tomorrow in Going to Extremes: The Silk Routes, on Channel 4 at 9pm. His book Extremes Along the Silk Road is published by John Murray at £20 — available from The Sunday Times Books First for £16, excluding p&p, on 0870 165 8585

Travel details: the best option is to visit Kazakhstan with a tour operator. Regent Holidays (0117 921 1711, www.regent-holidays.co.uk) can tailor-make trips to the region. For example, five nights in Almaty start at £840pp, including British Airways flights from Heathrow and B&B accommodation. Local excursions to the Charyn canyon and other sights can be arranged. Or try Silk Road and Beyond (020 7371 3131, www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk).

Copyright 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd.

# posted by Unknown : 9:24 PM

It's a Jungle Out There!

RABID RACCOON PUTS THE BITE ON BX. WOMEN

A rabid raccoon bit two women in The Bronx, the first confirmed cases in which a sickened animal has bitten a human in the Big Apple in almost five years, health officials said yesterday.

A foaming-at-the-mouth creature clamped down on a woman earlier this week in her back yard in Riverdale, city Health Department Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said.

The animal was captured and later tested positive for rabies. The woman, who was not identified, and her husband, who was scratched by the raccoon, both received rabies shots, Frieden said.

A second woman, who lives two blocks away, was bitten earlier the same day by a raccoon believed to be rabid — and perhaps the same one from the later incident — and was also being treated.

Before the confirmed attacks, 10 rabid raccoons had been found in The Bronx.

# posted by Unknown : 8:56 PM

It's a Jungle Out There!

A fierce species of Amazonian ant has been seen building elaborate traps on which hapless prey are stretched like medieval torture victims, before being slowly hacked to pieces.

With cunning and patience, Allomerus decemarticulatus worker-ants cut hairs from the stem of the plant they inhabit, and use the tiny fibres to build a spongy snare, Nature magazine reports.

This ingenious feat of engineering has only ever been observed in one other species of related ant, French researchers say.

What the ants do is cut hairs to clear a path under the plant stem, while leaving some hairs standing to form "pillars" on top of which the lethal platform will sit.

Using the plant hairs they have harvested, the ants weave the platform itself, which is bound together and strengthened using a special fungus.

When the ants have completed the chamber they puncture holes all along its surface, each just big enough to poke their heads through.

Then, hundreds of worker ants climb into the chamber and wait for an unfortunate victim.

Ancient sacrifice

"Workers will hide inside the platform, with their mandibles just inside the hole and they will wait there for prey to come," co-author Jerome Orivel of the University of Toulouse, France said.

Anything with legs slim enough to fit through the carefully constructed holes will meet a miserable fate if they are foolish enough to enter the trap.

The ants trapping an insect

"They will catch almost anything that goes on the trap," continued Dr Orivel. "And they will grab anything they can - legs, antenna, anything."

Once the prey is well secured by jaws fastening all its extremities, it is stretched over the platform like an ancient sacrifice to the gods.

Scores of worker ants then stream out from inside the trap and sting it vigorously to cause paralysis.

Once the creature is dead or fully immobilised, the ants will carry it to their nest, where they will dismember their prey before carrying it inside.

"Small insects will be immediately dismembered and transported to the nest," said Dr Orivel. "But bigger insects will stay on the trap for up to 12 hours."

There is no limit to the ants' ambition and they will attempt to catch any mammoth of the insect world - so long as it has slender legs.

"Their success depends on the type of insect," Dr Orivel told the BBC News website. "The insects' legs have to be smaller than the holes otherwise they cannot get hold of them.

"The ants must have something to catch - for example, caterpillars will have nothing to get hold of so they will not be preyed upon."

# posted by Unknown : 12:11 PM

Today's stunning blog entry shall be about Falcons and Fashion.

Falcons-The Good

While I was walking Little Miss this morning, a bird swooped down at me, followed by another bird. This being Spring, I just imagined that it was two horny birds trying to get some early morning freak on. Well, then I saw the second bird hit the first bird and the first bird was down in her gown (I'm assuming it was a female bird for the gown part). She was writhing and such in the street on her back, flopping her wings. The second bird, Mr. Falcon (of course the predator has to be male), was perched on a limb of a tree, watching the death throes of this other bird. So much for mercy in nature.

I've never seen a falcon before and I certainly have never seen one attack another bird before. Well, no shit, Sherlock. If you haven't seen a falcon before, how could you have seen one attack another bird before.

Damn blog! Anyway, back to my story. I thought it was pretty cool. Beautiful bird. As we were walking further away from the scene of the murder, a bunch of birds flew out of these bushes that Little Miss sniffed. I guess they knew the Big Guns were in the hood and all hid from Mr. Falcon.

Fashion-The Bad and the Ugly

I have two comments on fashion I saw today....

# posted by Unknown : 10:26 PM