How a Lowcountry falconer’s birds of prey led him to the Middle East

The hawk perched atop the church and, having seen it, the boy and his father pulled to the side of the street.

The boy raised binoculars to his eyes.

It was a red-tailed hawk, a common bird in the Lowcountry, but this particular raptor was a first-year male — harder to find, and its age met the requirements.

Haynes Werner, then 15 years old in October 2007, watched the hawk take off from the small cross on the gable roof of St. Peter’s Historic Catholic Church in downtown Beaufort. It flew across Carteret Street to a nearby neighborhood and settled on a telephone pole.

Werner and his father followed.

They’d been trying to trap a hawk since the summer, when Werner passed his S.C. Department of Natural Resources falconry test. He’d built a mews — where he’d keep a bird, at his home on Cat Island — which had passed state inspection. And he’d been learning from Steve Hein, a master falconer and director of Georgia Southern University’s Wildlife Center.

Now he needed his own bird, one he could train to be his first hunting partner. A hawk in this case, one that would rest on his gloved arm and await the removal of the hood over its eyes, so it could see, fly and kill — what it’s supposed to do.

After setting the trap in the neighborhood, he and his father parked the car some distance from the bird. A rat purchased from Roy’s Aquarium served as bait. The Bal-chatri trap protected the rodent with a cage, to which were affixed small nooses made of fishing line. The nooses were fashioned to snare a bird’s feet as it swooped onto the trap.

Werner watched the hawk through the binoculars.

He waited.

‘What I want to do’

In the summer of 2016, Werner spent four weeks in the dry, 120-degree heat of the United Arab Emirates, where he completed an internship in avian medicine and surgery at the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital.

“I learned a ton from them,” Werner said of hospital staff during a recent phone interview. “I was just awed by the number of falcons they see on a daily basis. I was there during the quiet season — it was Ramadan, it was during the non-hunting season — so they’d maybe see 75 falcons a day. Which to me, I’m like, ‘75 falcons a day? Oh my gosh!’”

Werner, now 24, is in his third year of veterinary school at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee. The Beaufort High School alum is now performing animal surgeries and will start his clinical year in May. Next year he’ll do an eight-week internship at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

“Avian and conservation medicine,” he said, explaining the focus of the crane internship. “Nail on the head, avian and conservation medicine — that’s what I want to do.”

In Abu Dhabi he learned how to collect samples from falcons, administer anesthesia and take X-rays.

He also experienced the pressure of caring for raptors worth thousands of dollars.

And, on a personal level, he came to know more about the birds that, for almost 10 years, have been his hunting partners.

A spooked hawk

Nearly a decade ago on that October day, Werner watched as the red-tailed hawk swooped from the telephone pole to the trap.

It danced atop the trap as it clawed at the rat, but the bird’s feet avoided the tiny nooses.

Werner waited, hopeful. But a woman and her poodles appeared near the trap and spooked the hawk, which flew back across the street.

Werner rushed to the trap, retrieved the rat and tried to explain to the dog-walker what he and his father were up to. She regarded them skeptically — perhaps because falconry is a rare sport in South Carolina.

According to SCDNR, there are about 30 licensed, active falconers in the state — two of them reside in Beaufort County. Hein estimates there are about 4,000 falconers nationwide, half of whom have their own birds.

And while falconry dates “at least to the third millennium BC” in some parts of the world, its history in North America is “brief,” according to the North American Falconry Association. There were less than 200 falconers in North America at the beginning of World War II.

Now the association has about 2,000 members.

Werner and his father followed the hawk across the street, set the trap in the church parking lot and waited.

Raptors on the golf course

In some ways, he’d been waiting to trap his first raptor for seven years.

Werner was 8 when he read “My Side of the Mountain,” Jean Craighead George’s book that many falconers gravitate toward. That, along with his father’s interest in birding, began to pique his own.

A few years later, he attended a falconry demonstration on Spring Island. Hein sent up a peregrine falcon and a pheasant on the 18th hole of the golf course, and Werner watched the bird work.

“Falconry really offers a very privileged perspective on the natural world,” Werner said, when asked what attracted him to the sport. “You’re not just hunting with a gun, you’re not just sitting in a duck blind — you are actively engaged in a battle that has been going on since the dawn of time. You’re flying a falcon that has evolved to hunt ducks, and you’re hunting ducks that have evolved to escape the falcon.”

Hein later served as boy’s sponsor as he apprenticed during his teens and eventually became a master falconer himself.

The men hunted together during the 2016 season, in the Cumberland Gap where Tennessee, Virginia and Kentucky meet.

Some of the mountaintops have been flattened by mining, Werner said, making them ideal places to send up his peregrine falcon, Kate.

As the bird orbits overhead scanning the terrain, Werner and his dog — a German longhair named Deacon — walk the fields or near duck ponds in hopes of flushing game.

When they do, Kate dives — reaching speeds of more than 200 mph — and rifles into her quarry, which plummets earthward. She lands and sits on her kill. Deacon, maybe a couple hundred yards away, races out to her — protecting her from other predators.

Major Tom

On that October day in 2007 in the church parking lot, the hawk swooped onto the trap.

This time the tiny nooses snared it.

Werner rushed toward the struggling bird with a towel, which he would place over its head. Depriving a raptor of its sight calms it.

He neared the bird.

The noose holding the bird’s feet failed — the hawk flew away.

He and parents had put more than 1,000 miles on their car tracking hawks over the past few months. That day alone, before rounding Bellamy Curve onto Carteret Street, they’d scouted along U.S. 17, on back roads and plantations, and near the air station.

Nothing.

And then to come upon a hawk in downtown Beaufort and have it twice slip away ... .

Werner followed the hawk again. Set out the trap. Watched the bird dance atop it.

The nooses held.

He wrapped the bird in the towel.

He smiled as his father drove across the bridge toward Cat Island.

He named the hawk Major Tom.

Which meant the boy was ground control.

This story was originally published January 26, 2017 at 12:01 AM with the headline "How a Lowcountry falconer’s birds of prey led him to the Middle East."