Beginnings

I had a lot of people ask me how I got into falconry. It's been a long journey, that's for sure. 
When I was five or six, my mother showed me the movie Ladyhawke. The main characters are cursed and the man is a wolf by night while the woman is a hawk by day. Her name was Isabeau. It was my favorite movie as a child and I swore that I would one day have a red tail hawk named Isabeau. 
When I was fifteen, my father dated a woman who was friends with a falconer. She took me to his house and he showed me his mews (the house for a hawk) and his birds. I was entranced! I began to do research but my parents weren't really enthused, so I had to wait. As I grew up and real life began to happen, I maintained my interest in it, but the time was never right and I finally accepted that it wasn't meant to be and moved on to other hobbies. 

Natty, adult female red tail hawk.

Then, in the late spring/early summer of 2013, I met a woman who was a falconer and she allowed me to meet her bird, Natty, and invited me hunting once the season started. I spent the entire summer sitting on her porch talking about falconry, learning about falconry, and dreaming about falconry. I was obsessed. She introduced me to the other falconers in the area and I realized that I was finally in a place where I had the means, the space, and the time to pursue my lifelong dream. Thus began the long search for a sponsor.
My friend didn't yet have the four years' experience required in order to sponsor an apprentice and so I had to find someone who was available. It took over a year. In the meantime, I spent the fall and winter traipsing through the woods with falconers and their birds, learning everything that I could, and studying for the exam. Once the season was over, my fiancé (who is also an apprentice now) and I set about preparing for our permits. We built a mews, made most of our equipment, and bought what we couldn't make. 
When the time came to take our test, we thought we were prepared. By page two, I was almost in tears! We went home convinced that we failed. Three long days later, we got the news that not only did we pass, we did it with flying colors! Our inspection came the next week and a few days later our permits arrived in the mail. Finally, my dream of 25 years was coming true!