Of Harris's Hawk and Hamnet

There are different ways to be ornithologically correct.

(Listen to the radio version here.)

In December 1978, Russ and I took a road trip to southeastern Texas. Starting on January 2, he had a meeting in Aransas, so we decided to make it into a birding and tent-camping trip up until then. Starting December 24, we followed I-35 from where it starts in Duluth to where it ends in Laredo. While we were still on the interstate, about 30 miles north of Laredo, I spotted out the window my lifer Harris’s Hawk, #283 on my life list. It’s a spectacular bird, with rich rusty thigh feathers and large rusty shoulders, a white-tipped tail, and white undertail coverts, all of which made it easy to identify at 55 mph—the national speed limit back then. I saw Harris’s Hawks several more times on that trip and other trips to south Texas, and have also seen them in Arizona and New Mexico here in the United States, and in Mexico and Costa Rica .

Of all the birds of prey, Harris’s Hawks are notable for their extraordinarily sociable natures. They hunt cooperatively—I’ve watched that myself a few times in nature, and also saw it on an episode of Wild Kratts, my grandson Walter’s current favorite TV show. That sociable nature is so innate that when Harris’s Hawks are raised by humans or taken into captivity, they bond easily. Many people believe that legends and rituals regarding the Thunderbird or Sacred Bird of several Native American societies are derived from the people’s interactions with Harris’s Hawk. The charming Kratt Brothers are clearly delighted with all their animal encounters, but seemed especially delighted handling a Harris’s Hawk, probably because Harris’s Hawks who are accustomed to handling are so personally engaging.

I’ve been thinking about Harris’s Hawks a lot recently, because so much attention has suddenly been focused on the wonderful, Oscar-winning movie, Hamnet. I read the book several years ago, and remembered that Agnes, the main female protagonist, had a falcon in the story. The book made it clear it was a Eurasian Kestrel.

Eurasian Kestrel

But in the movie, even as they used the term “falcon” at least once, the bird portraying the kestrel was a Harris’s Hawk. I of course noticed this—how can a birder possibly look at any recognizable bird and not know what it is?

Movie producers are seldom birders, and fact-checking about bird issues in TV and movie production is woefully inadequate. Even Russ noticed when Special Agent Alden Parker, on NCIS, showed a photo of a male Ruby-throated Hummingbird but called it a “she.” Since the word “it” works perfectly fine as a pronoun for birds, and because Parker is ostensibly an active birder, his specifying that this one was a female was simply unacceptable. And it drives me nuts when a soundtrack includes species of birds that could not possibly be heard where a scene is supposed to be taking place. NCIS actually does a very good job with that.

But in the case of Hamnet, I instantly understood why they made the choice to use a hawk, not a falcon, and a Harris’s Hawk at that—a species not only in an entirely different taxonomic order but also impossible to be found anywhere near England during the time of Shakespeare.

Falconers have trained plenty of birds of prey for use in public performances and in movies and TV. But raptors are not like dogs—in just about all cases, well-trained raptors respond to just one handler. A falcon might do some cool flight maneuvers to communicate that Timmy fell down the well, but no way would it then rush to the rescued boy and give him a slurpy kiss.

Performing on a movie set is stressful for just about all birds of prey; a falcon could deal with this if the hander it was bonded to was the only human it had to deal with. The Humane Society monitors animal use in movies now, and I’m sure they watch out for how comfortable birds of prey are with their handlers. So there were strong ornithological reasons NOT to use the species mentioned in both the book and movie.

But why a Harris’s Hawk, which isn’t simply in the wrong taxonomic order but also a species that never could have been found in Shakespeare’s England? Because of their intrinsic and unique social natures, Harris’s Hawks who have bonded with one person can fairly easily adapt to being handled by others—an important point when a bird must convincingly interact in a gentle, benign way with an actor rather than its handler. So although it was momentarily disconcerting for me to see Agnes holding a Harris’s Hawk rather than a Eurasian Kestrel, I quickly understood that this was a good thing for the well-being of both the bird and actress Jessie Buckley, which was far, far more important than strict taxonomic and biogeographical accuracy. The behaviors and quirks that make each species unique are also important ornithological elements that must factor in when selecting a bird of prey for a movie scene.

But naturally, ever since the movie came out, some pedantic birders have been ridiculing the use of a New World hawk where an Old World falcon was called for. The bird was an important figure in the book and the movie, but how could anyone be sidetracked for more than a moment by an issue so relatively insignificant in the face Hamnet’s emotional power and intensity? It was as perfect a movie adaptation of a book as I’ve ever seen, Harris’s Hawk and all.