Life with a Harris’ Hawk
My journey into falconry has been revelatory, a complete re-appraisal of meaning and purpose in life that has resulted in my first non-fiction book – Be More Bird: life-lessons from a hawk.
It has also given me the confidence to consider the possibilities of non-fiction more generally, and I’m excited now to be working on something new. It has also changed forever my sense of connectedness with the natural world, opening up a limitless sky of possibilities, both in my writing and visually, through larger-scale paintings. To hunt with a hawk is to bring me closer to what I imagine Constable was aiming at in his ‘skying’ expeditions – a combination of technical precision and truth to emotion.
Falconry demands an intense, unwavering focus – an awareness of the wind, the landscape and the subtle cues of the hawk.
This state of heightened observation is identical to the mindset I enter when painting. The discipline of tracking a bird against the vast canvas of the sky directly translates to the brushstroke on a linen canvas. Both are a practice in seeing truly and responding with honest, instinctive action.
A glimpse into the life and world of a magnificent bird of prey. Photography by Jesse Wilkinson.
