What does falconry have to do with ecology?

Dominating nature to exploit its resources has been a constant throughout human history. One only has to look around us to realize the excesses committed in the name of a so-called "progress."

With the Neolithic Revolution , a radical change in society took place, and with it, a transformation of its economic organization. The development of tools such as stone hoes and hand mills for grinding grain show us the Neolithic as a significant historical period in terms of obtaining natural resources through the mastery of nature. In this sense, we can also include the domestication of animals such as dogs, horses, and birds of prey, the latter used for the type of hunting known as falconry, which has been maintained over the centuries and is practiced today for ecological purposes.

This is a sustainable alternative that involves training birds of prey to deter turtledoves, seagulls, and pigeons from large urban areas, birds that represent a reservoir for multiple zoonotic diseases . Falconry thus becomes a possible tool for bird control in cities.

But to master a bird of prey and gain its trust requires a certain amount of skill. This is the subject of the book written by T.H. White, the author who best recreated the Arthurian myth and whom we previously discussed . The book is titled The Goshawk (Attic) and is written in the style of a diary. T.H. White offers an enjoyable and varied read where the descriptions of the landscapes are combined with the progress he makes in his falconry.

T. H. White takes us into the world of birds of prey, following the progress of the goshawk he has undertaken to train himself, day by day, beginning with the first light that filters through the veil of mist that covers the mornings in the English countryside. Through the pages of his book, we begin to understand the essence of his writing: a clean style, stripped of flourishes, where ecology lies in its purest form, that is, as an organic relationship between humans and their environment; in this case, between the writer and a goshawk named Gos.

To train him effectively, to tame this Gos, T. H. White first feeds him from his hand, covered with a special glove. Then, unable to avoid "the secret cruelty of training," he follows the technique used in the Middle Ages, which consisted of keeping the goshawk awake. To do this, to keep it from falling asleep, White recites Shakespeare to it, although, when the time came, according to his account, "he felt like an executioner (...) as if the black mask should have hidden his face, while he worked by the dim light of a wick, amidst the shrieks of his victim."

But T.H. White, like the ancient falconers, loved his bird. The passage where he describes how he communicates with Gos is endearing, as he does so by whistling the melody that accompanies the biblical psalm entitled "The Lord is my Shepherd ." "I wanted to avoid calling Gos with the mechanical shrillness of a policeman," says White, with that typical British sense of humor. of which he boasts.

The book was written in the early 1950s, and although not that much time has passed since then, it remains a curiosity today that takes us back to a time that no longer exists; a time when nature had not yet suffered the rigors of our current greed. Ultimately, The Goshawk by T.H. White is a pleasant read for this holiday season.

The Stone Axe is a section where Montero Glez , with a desire for prose, exercises his particular siege on scientific reality to demonstrate that science and art are complementary forms of knowledge.