Fierce in Flight

Md. Falconer and His Hawk Scour Woods for Her Dinner

In the days before Thanksgiving, when friends and neighbors were talking only of stuffing their birds, Greg Dorsch was weighing his to within the gram.

A falconer tracks his animal's mass with metric precision, knowing that every fluctuation will affect not only its flying but its zeal to hunt. And so one recent evening, Dorsch lowered two pounds of very alert Harris hawk onto an improvised scale.

Libby, short for Liberty, settled on the little perch, and Dorsch read out the digital results. "Right at 930 grams," he said, a little below perfect flying weight and hungry. "I think this bird is ready to do something."

With an eager hop -- noble wings out, powerful beak open -- Libby scrambled onto Dorsch's gloved fist, and they walked out to the woods surrounding a nearby suburban Maryland neighborhood. A little beagle frisked around Dorsch's feet, and a group of landscapers paused in their leaf blowing to watch the odd trio disappear into the long autumn shadows. A man and his dog . . . and his highly trained bird of prey.

November started a fall ritual for the roughly 300 licensed falconers in Maryland and Virginia: The Eastern cottontail rabbit became fair game the first day of the month, and all the off-season care and preparation gave way to regular outings such as this one. Dorsch was off to "fly his bird," a hunting routine that is part primeval contest between raptor and prey, part ballet between man and bird.

"I wait all year to get out here," said Dorsch, a sales engineer from Mount Airy, on the Montgomery-Howard county border, who has been a licensed falconer for five years. Falconry is a generic term that refers to keeping and flying all kinds of birds of prey, including peregrine falcons, kestrels, hawks and even owls. "Even if you don't get a rabbit, it's beautiful just being out watching the bird," he said.

Dorsch, 48, flies Libby almost every day at this time of year, often with his daughter Becca, 18. Just about any patch of brambly forest where he has the owner's permission will do, although those unbuilt places are becoming more and more scarce in the booming exurbs of Washington. There's a new house in this field that didn't exist when he last hunted here a year ago.

Libby let out a low screech. She was ready to chase some rabbits.

Dorsch unleashed his beagle, and it immediately plunged wiggling into the brush. Next, Dorsch released his grip on the woven leather straps tied around Libby's fearsome talons, and she flapped up to a nearby branch, bare of leaves and bouncing under her weight.

Dorsch, wearing bramble-proof coveralls, waded in after his dog, beating the bushes with a long stick. Libby followed his every step with piercing intensity.

"She thinks I have magical feet," Dorsch said. "Rabbits just come out of them."

That is the deal between falconer and bird, reached after months of training: Libby will stay nearby, flying from branch to branch as the party moves along, and he will scare up something for her to chase. In this part of Maryland, it's usually cottontails. In other places, it might be quail or pheasant or waterfowl, resulting in dramatic midair dogfights.