Insights into Flying Lanner Falcons
(This article was originally published in the 1995 Virginia Falconer's Association Hawk Talk)
Many people have flown lanner falcons, but few have had good results taking game with them. The primary reason for this poor showing, in my opinion, is that many falconers expect the lanner to fly like a peregrine, and they train the bird accordingly. If you want a bird to fly like a peregrine, then start with a peregrine.
Lanners are desert falcons, while peregrines are found near water. Lanners have slower metabolisms than peregrines. A peregrine is the easiest falcon to fly because it is almost always hungry unless it has been well-fed the pervious day. Not so with a lanner. A lanner must stay within 10 grams of its proper hunting weight in order to hunt effectively. If you use a spring scale rather than a balance to weigh your falcon, you are already at a disadvantage.
Lanners occupy territory in pairs, and they hunt in pairs. A falconer in California once sent me a male lanner he no longer had time to fly. This lanneret had been flown in a cast with a female lanner which his wife flew. The two falcons flew together at a sod farm after sparrows and starlings. Since the female caught the majority of the birds, the couple decided to keep her, and to send the male to me to use for breeding. Several months later they sent me the female. She had not caught a single bird since the male had left.
Having flown seven or eight different lanners, I believe that they are more intelligent than peregrines, and therefore, somewhat harder to fly on game. Most falconers like their birds to stoop from a high pitch, like a peregrine, and to strike the game hard in the air. I believe, though I cannot prove, that the lanner can hit prey even harder than a peregrine can. Hitting prey from a height may not be the most successful hunting strategy, hoever, especially for a lanner in the wild. A lanner likes to come in low, surprise its prey, follow the prey to cover, and then grab it. The lanner also likes to hit prey on the ground while the prey is running or sitting.
The lanner's natural instinct can translate well into falconry. A lanner will wait on beautifully. It will stay straight over your head most of the time, often for hours. I once kept a lanneret up for four hours (actually he refused to come down, but that is another story). The problem with lanners is they do not like to go much above 100 feet up, just above tree-top height. Balloon training may be useful to increase that altitude. There are several reasons for this low pitch. Lanners are not as fast as peregrines. Also, they are smart, and they compensate for their relative slowness by using intelligence. For example, the lower to the ground they are, the closer they will be to the flush. They like to hit the prey before it can build up speed. If the first stoop fails, the lanner will follow the prey from behind while keeping slightly above it. This keeps the prey from climbing. The prey, thinking it cannot outfly its attacker, will try for the nearest hedgerow, tree, or other cover, where a falcon ordinarily would not go. Good plan for escaping a peregrine, but a poor choice with a lanner in pursuit as a lanner loves to grab prey through cover, especially when the prey slows down to enter the cover. If you fly a lanner on pigeons, the lanner will catch every one it chases, either on the first stoop, or when the pigeon goes to cover.
The reason for their success against pigeons has to do with wing surface area. Although the male lanner is about the size of a male prarie falcon, his wing is more the size of the female prarie's. This is on a body that wighs 8 ounces less than the prarie female. Therefore, they carry a lighter wingload and seem to "float" more than other falcons. In eighth-grade meteorology you learned that warm air is less dense than cold air. Humid air is less dense than dry air (remember, water vapor is lighter than air -- clouds float). Therefore, hot, humid air is thinner than cold, dry air. A lanner will actually fly faster during the summer, because it has less lift, and will pump its wings faster to keep aloft. In winter, the lanner uses its superior lift, compared to the peregrine, to float, and actually fly slower. Also, because the lanner is lighter than the peregrine, it will go slower, according to the principles of physics.
A basic truth in falconry is that you cannot make a bird do anything that it will not naturally do in the wild. Falconers sometimes forget this basic rule. Raptors trained for falconry are only doing "what comes naturally". The difference is that we falconers train the birds to hunt in our presence. When training a lanner, cultivate its innate abilities and you will be a happier falconer.
The following are some tips on training lanners:
1. Remember, lanners are smart, and they learn fast. If you make a mistake in training a lanner, you will have taught it a bad habit that is difficult to break. For example, if you are out flying the lanner, and it decides to sit in a tree and not move, do not throw out the lure to get the falcon flying again. You will train it to sit in a tree, or, more accurately, the bird has just trained you to throw out the lure when it sits! If your lanner sits in a tree, take out a book, start reading, and do not use the lure until the bird starts flying agian. Keep in mid, you are training the bird to fly with you.
2. Lanners get fixated on certain types of game, and do not switch easily to other types of game. If all you use to fly your lanner is bagged game, you will only succeed at hunting bagged quarry. Some lanners become so programmed that, for instance, they will hunt only bagged pigeons. I mentioned my lanner that waited on for over four hours. Well, he was holding out for a live pigeon lure instead of the artificial lure. He was certainly stubborn! I was flying him over a 200 acre cut corn field that bordered my home. I even went inside and had lunch while he flew over different parts of the field. I won that day.
That lanneret was death on bagged pigeons. He caught just about every pigeon he was offered. He waited on perfectly at about 100 feet and hit over 50% of game on the first and only stoop, and hit most hard enough to kill. If he missed, he always caught the game at the tree line. One day in May, at three years of age, he grazed a low-flying pigeon on one of his stoops and the momentum carried him into the ground. He seemed to recover, but the next morning, I found him dead. By the way, the pigeon suffered a broken wing.
3. Lanners get better as they age. I believe they reach their peak around three years of age, which is after they are sexually mature. Lanners take longer to train than peregrines. On the other hand, lanners have great personalities which makes the longer training period a pleasure. For example, if a lanner will sit on the fist, it will accept the hood. Such excellent temperaments make them a joy to fly and to own.