Catching a hawk

Every week, a Harris hawk flies over the shopping centre where I live, to stop the pigeons pooping on the shoppers.  If I hear the jingle of the bells, I go down to chat to the falconer, and greet the splendid bird – who flies much more and much more freely than birds in aviaries. …

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The sound of fear

Roberto Rusconi from Intrasonus asked me to write a about the sound of fear. Here’s my submission:  It’s just after New Year.Yorkshire is blanketed in snowSmothered in silence.Outside, there’s the squeak creak squeak creak of walking on fresh snow. As we get out onto the moors, the silence somehow gets louder, wider, huge-er. In between …

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Natanz 4: Royal hawking pavilion

On the way into Natanz from Isfahan, don’t miss the Gonbad-i Bāz – the unique Safavid hawking pavilion built by Shah Abbas the First as “the greatest tribute ever paid to a single bird”. This unusual survival of a non-religious Safavid building is an octagonal domed tower perched on a conical mountain near Natanz. I …

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