How a boyhood fascination led to a man’s connection with a red-tailed hawk.
Nikki was a moderately large hawk with “an intense golden glare, a hooked beak and sharp talons.”
Even as a boy, my husband loved hawks. Sharp-shinned hawks, Cooper’s hawks, red-tailed hawks—he admired them all and saw them often in the woods near his McDowell County home. To some people in Western North Carolina, hawks are perceived as a menace, especially threatening to chickens. But Steve always saw hawks as creatures of beauty, speed and agility.
As a boy, he spent a lot of time in the woods, and one day when he was walking with his dogs, a hawk flew across the trail and lit in a tree. He and the hawk stared at each other for a few seconds.
“I instinctively raised my hand and whistled,” he recalls. The hawk looked at him quizzically, bobbed its head, and flew deeper into the woods. This moment had an indelible effect on him.
As an adult, he grew more interested in birds of prey and wanted to become a licensed falconer. He learned that he would need to find a licensed, established falconer who had a general or master’s license to serve as his sponsor. In the fall of 2006, Steve took the 100-question examination for his falconer’s license, and passed with a grade of 98%.
The next step would be building a mew to house his future hawk.
Steve Duncan and Nikki the Hawk were companions for more than two years.
We had an ample horse barn in a large field behind our house, and Steve had the back side expanded to accommodate a hawk. Barred windows, perches and a screened-in weathering area were added. An inspector with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service came and approved the mew.
Steve wanted a red-tailed hawk and had been looking for one. His search was over on December 24—Christmas Eve—when a telephone call came from a falconer in neighboring Buncombe County. The falconer had received a call from a farmer who had discovered a red-tailed hawk whose foot had gotten hung in chicken wire while it tried to get to his chickens.
Excited about the news, Steve called me at my mother’s house, where I was busy getting ready for our Christmas Eve celebration in the evening.
I put my Christmas preparations aside for the moment, and Steve, our daughter Annie, my mother and I piled into my Jeep and headed to Black Mountain to meet the falconer and pick up the red-tailed hawk.
This being Christmas Eve, Steve thought of St. Nicholas and thus named the female hawk Nikita, whom we quickly began to call Nikki.
Nikki was a first-year bird, around five months old, and when Steve brought her home, he began the process of “manning” her—a necessary first step to get the hawk used to being around him to lose its fear. On the first day, he sat with her for a couple of hours. The next day he sat with her for four hours. On that second day—Christmas Day—she began to feed. As part of her training, he would offer her small bits of meat—beef heart or chicken liver—until she looked at him as a food source. Soon she began feeding on his gloved fist. In time, he moved back away from her to make her fly to him, and within about two weeks, she began free-flying outside.
“She was an easy bird to train,” he now reflects.
Admittedly, I was afraid of Nikki and warned Annie not to get close to her. I kept my distance, too.
Nikki was a moderately large hawk who had an intense golden glare, a hooked beak and sharp talons. Though my husband wore a leather gauntlet when he held her on his fist, I worried about his safety. But he had bonded with her and seemed to trust her as she trusted him.
Yet Nikki could be willful, and one day she got herself into trouble. Steve had her on his fist in our back field when she saw something, jumped off his glove, and jerked the leash—connected to her leather ankle jesses—out of his hand. She flew and lit in a poplar tree, getting her leash hung in a limb. He had to untangle her with a long stick.
Another challenge with Nikki occurred when Steve was free-flying her in the field.
Nikki’s encounter with a snake turned out to be with a water snake rather than with what was initially feared—a copperhead.
“I released her, and she flew about a hundred yards and lit in a tree,” Steve recalls. “I waited around for a little while to see if she spotted any game. Then I raised my fist and whistled. She started to fly back and suddenly closed her wings and hit the ground in the high grass. I could see that there was some commotion going on. I walked up there and discovered that she had captured a big snake, and was in the midst of clawing and pecking it, and it was striking at her, trying to defend itself. I must admit that trying to take an angry snake from a mad hawk is pretty scary.”
Especially since it was a water snake, which looks a lot like a copperhead.
Steve kept Nikki for a little over two years, after which a female red-tailed hawk reaches sexual maturity, and gets testy and independent.
“Their natural instinct to nest and raise little hawks kicks in,” he explains.
This instinct, along with other circumstances, affected Nikki, and Steve remembers the day when everything changed between him and his hawk.
“She’d been free-lofted—flying inside the mew without being tethered—for a week while we were on vacation,” he says. “And I fed her a lot before we left because I knew I wouldn’t be able to feed her for a week. When we got back from vacation, I noticed that one of her jesses was worn and about to come apart. So I was changing the jess, and she pitched a fit and clawed me pretty bad on the right wrist. An overweight bird can be difficult to handle. So I decided to hack her back to the wild—slowly introduce her to the natural environment—because I realized that she wanted to go and find a mate.”
Steve understood why she attacked him and has never held any ill will against her, nor been discouraged from wanting another hawk someday.
While Nikki was my husband’s hawk, I observed the hard work that he invested in her. I also realized how much a part of our family she became for those two years. I know he missed her after he released her, and we all—Steve, Annie and I—looked up to the sky when we heard the familiar red-tailed hawk’s cry, thinking Nikki might have come home again. Though it’s been over a decade since Nikki flew away from us, I still look up when I hear that distinctive sound.
A falconer’s connection with his hawk is like no other relationship, and I’m glad I was witness to such a connection.
The story above is from our November/December 2019 issue. For more like it, subscribe today or log in to the digital edition with your active digital subscription. Thank you for your support!