If I've been missing around here for the past couple of weeks, it's because I've been spending an inordinate amount of time observing streaming video of a pair of hawks raising their chicks in a nest that they have built on a window ledge of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia's wunderbar science museum. You can see the hawks at

www.fi.edu/hawks

There is also an excellent blog about the hawks here

In the process, I've learned some strange, new words. The "eyasses" are the chicks. They actually have a pecking order. The parents are called "haggards." The female is the "formel" and the male is the "tiercel." He is out hunting constantly. It is pretty amazing to see how much "bacon" he brings home in the form of pigeon, rabbit, squirrel, mouse, rat and other yummy edibles, which the eyasses were able to digest from day one.

For anyone inclined to become addicted to such things, the same streaming video site also has links to other nests of owls, eagles, hawks and hummingbirds.

Wordmatic

I have been thinking about raptors a bit, since learning three new words in Japanese: 鷲 washi 'eagle (Accipitridae family)', 鷹 taka 'falcon (Falconidae family); hawk', and 鳶 tonbi 'black kite; Milvus migrans'. While looking into idioms and words derived from tonbi, I ran across a word I have heard before but never knew what it meant, steeplejack; they are called tonbi in Japanese. The most famous idiom using tonbi is tonbi ni aburaage wo sarawareru (literally, "to have the deep-fried tofu carried off by a black kite", figuratively, "to have something stolen which was almost in one's hand; to have one's share snatched away at the last moment").

The word eyas is one of a small number of words, e.g., adder, where a word originally beginning with an n was reanalyzed (a nadder to an adder). Eyas is from French niais 'nest'. Haggard 'a wild female hawk captured when in her adult plumage' is from the adjective haggard 'wild, untrained; gaunt'. Formel 'female hawk' is from formal and tiercel 'male hawk or falcon' is from Latin tertius 'third' via French. I would not be surprised if all of the words of falconry in English had not been borrowed from French.

[Fixed typo.]

This message has been edited. Last edited by: zmježd,

Interesting. I noted you spelled the female hawk term "formal," and the blogger at the Franklin Institute site spelled it "formel." Then I tried to look it up. I found no dictionaries online listing a noun meaning "female hawk." Then I searched "formal--female hawk" and came up with this from the Webster's Unabridged 1913 dictionary:

quote:

Formell (Page: 587)

For"mell (?), n. [Dim. of F. forme the female of a bird of prey.] (Zoöl.) The female of a hawk or falcon.

Dang! I should have saved this word for a bluffing game, it is so obscure! So I can find "formell" listed in 8 dictionaries on Onelook. I really must get up out of this chair and go consult the dictionaries on the shelf, I guess.

Back to my hawkcam...

WM

I noted you spelled the female hawk term "formal,"

That's cuz I unintentionally 'corrected" its spelling. It should have been formel (which is how it was spelled in the OED online (which I just got access to finally from a local library) when I looked it up). I thought you'd call me on the haggard definition, which you had as both the parents, but which seems to mean a female hawk captured in adulthood.

quote:

Originally posted by zmježd:
I would not be surprised if all of the words of falconry in English had not been borrowed from French.

]

Since falconry is much older than French, I'd expect them to have even earlier antecedents.

Anything's possible. I just figured since the language of the aristocracy was Norman french for a while, and they were the ones doing the hawking that most of the terminology would come from French. Giving a glossary of falconry (link) a quick look, I see a lot of French terms, but some of the words like fledgling are English in origin. Do you know of an Old or Middle English falconry book?

quote:

If I've been missing around here for the past couple of weeks, it's because I've been spending an inordinate amount of time observing streaming video of a pair of hawks raising their chicks in a nest that they have built on a window ledge of the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia's wunderbar science museum.

I've heard excuses before, but this one definitely wins firsts prize.

Oh, thank you! Is there money involved????

Zmj, I couldn't have called you on "haggard" if I'd wanted to. I'm no kind of expert at all. I've only been quoting the blogger whose link I gave above.

WM

Only one added word here, "mews," (where they keep hawks) but a good falconry history: http://www.matrix2000.co.uk/falconry.htm

The term "mews" originated as the building where hawks were kept, as Geoff says, but with the decline of falconry they were almost all converted to stables. Later they were converted to garaging for cars and often in towns and cities the buildings were converted to housing, especially in London. The term was applied to a narrow street of such buildings rather than to the individual blocks. There's a mews at the rear of my garden at home. I hasten to add that they weren't built to service my street but the much grander buildings in the next block.

Geoff, interesting article, especially at the end where it references "codger," "hoodwinked," "mantled," and "boozer" as having their origins in falconry. A lot of it was mews to me.

The Franklin Institute Hawk Nest streaming video page has a chat window, where hawk watchers pass comments back and forth. Some of these people are falconers and there's been a lot of chat about the various grades and stages of falconry. I was surprised to find that there are so many falconry enthusiasts in the U.S. today. I would have thought that anyone who practiced falconry would have to go to the U.K. to learn it. One woman said she went to a training school for falconry in West Virginia.

Oh, and Kalleh, I just want you to know that today I visited Wordcraft before launching the hawkcam on my computer!

There's probably a prize for that, too, isn't there?

Wordmatic

quote:

Oh, and Kalleh, I just want you to know that today I visited Wordcraft before launching the hawkcam on my computer!

Just to let you know, I've been spending an inordinate amount of time gazing at my navel so I haven't been on Wordcraft as much lately.

LOL! And what did you see in there?

Sometimes I can't believe what things remind me of, but your comment reminded me of this thread, from long ago, where I was looking for a word for "naval lint.

quote:

The most famous idiom using tonbi is tonbi ni aburaage wo sarawareru (literally, "to have the deep-fried tofu carried off by a black kite", figuratively, "to have something stolen which was almost in one's hand; to have one's share snatched away at the last moment").

Wow, that's a great idiom. I suppose we don't have anything similar.

quote:

to have the deep-fried tofu carried off by a black kite",

Which neatly returns us to the subject of the thread since kites and hawks are in the same family.

Thanks for linking to that old thread, Kalleh. It was great fun to re-read it. Shame that so many participants no longer post here, though.

quote:

Shame that so many participants no longer post here, though.

Yes, but remember some of them were sock puppets.