About 10,000 Americans hunt with a bird of prey, an activity virtually unknown to the rest of us. Perhaps that's why Rachel Dickinson wrote "Falconer on the Edge: A Man, His Birds, and the Vanishing Landscape of the American West" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24).
In her book, Dickinson, who is married to a falconer, sets out to explore this unusual sport by focusing on a hard-core falconer, a man who spends all week hunting with his falcons on the Wyoming prairies, then going home to his family on weekends.
As Dickinson accompanies Steve Chindgren on hunts, we begin to get a sense of the powerful lure of being outdoors searching for prey and the beauty of the soaring and diving hawks. We learn that falconers most often buy hybrid birds from breeders (usually a gyrfalcon/peregrine cross), but train the birds themselves. Man and bird are partners in the hunt: Humans scare up birds, the hawks spiral down from the sky to make the kill. (The sport requires a hunting license; falconry seasons vary from state to state.)
Falconers tend to be dedicated, some to the point of obsession, like Chindgren, and secretive. This book offers a rare glimpse of an ancient sport that still holds many in its grip.
