The arcane world of falconry is infamous for a snobbery that dates back to the medieval period, when different raptors were pegged to a hierarchical list of feudal stations. So the noble peregrine was for princes, the dainty merlin was milady's bird, and as we know from Barry Hines's novel it was just a kestrel for a knave. The northern goshawk, however the largest and most powerful among a group of shortwinged hawks called accipiters has long been considered a creature apart.
In the literature of falconry, goshawks enjoyed a ruffian's reputation and, in the words of Helen Macdonald, were viewed as "murderous, difficult to tame, sulky, fractious and foreign". Perhaps the challenges in her own life predisposed this noted falconer to switch from a lifelong sequence of high-class birds to the one noted for trouble.
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