THE FLYING COLOURS OF HEMP

Image above is painted with hemp oil, which, along with linseed and poppy oils, is one of the most useful painting oils known to man. It depicts a Laggar Falcon chasing sandgrouse, which are cousins to pigeons. The are swift fliers and usually evade the falcon's talons, but one caught unawares, usually at a wadi, or drinking spot, can find itself a meal to this predator. As they are cousins to pigeons, it may well be they are fond of hemp, as are most birds. This image, and other images painted in hemp, and mostly depicting falconry, can be found now at the new blogspot Lure of the Falcon. I have been drawing and painting these now for 20 years, so this is like a retrospective. Presenty I am working on a painting of a Saker hunting a Houbara in the desert. I don't know if houbara eat hemp, but they have been noted for eating poppy seeds as they migrate through Afghanistan. As there has been a sighting of hemp fields in Afghanistan, I am starting to work on a sketch of houbara in the hemp fields of Helmand.

OF HAWKS AND HEMP

The image above is the painting I am working on, its revelance to hemp is that I used hemp seed oil, along with linseed oil and poppy seed oil to paint it. Previous posts on this site will have more technical information on the drying of oils. The hawk is a Red-tailed Hawk, mature male, Buteo jamaicensis. They are often mobbed by crows, and they can well hold their own against a flock of these birds. In Central Park I once watched Pale Male, the famous resident Red-tailed Hawk, non-chalantly scatter a few of these pests. The next day, I found the carcass of the corvid rotting in the bushes.

I am nearly finished with this, and am offering the original for sale at £11,000, and giclee limited edition prints, each signed, numbered and hand finished, for £100. Size is roughly A2 on archival paper for the prints, same size as original, which is painted on Belgian fine portrait linen.

SHOOTING THE BIRD

As pigeons are fond of hemp, it is no surprise that hemp farmers have their run ins with these birds on occasion. A recent posting on Pigeon Watch Forums is from a hunter who has been asked to shoot at pigeons who are bothering a field newly sown with hemp in the UK.

I might suggest an alternative to shooting, that is use birds of prey. A US gov report recommends one hawk for 200 acres. Most hawsk however are not good at taking pigeons, the falcons are a bit more adept at this, but some hawks do well. In London, a Harris Hawk is employed in Trafalgar Square, and Red-tailed Hawks are famous for this in New York City, though these raptores more usually take large rodents, along with the occasional snake.

HEMP FOR THE BIRDS

Today I take a break from the controversy brewing here in London and turn my attention to a very pleasant subject indeed, falconry. This is the sport, or some might say the art, of keeping a bird of prey and hunting with it. Part of this art is maintaining the environment - most falconers are also environmentalists, such as the ones who researched DDT in the '60s and made it illegal to use in many countries. Were it not for them, we might not have the Peregrine Falcon or the Bald Eagle in the US.

Birds of prey are of course carnivores, their niche in the system is keeping down rodents and avian pests, but hemp ties in to all this as well. Specifically, hemp has been used in raptor medicine for centuries, by both Mughal and Anglo-Indian practicioners - the former being Raja Rudradeva, of the latter, Col Phillott and Maj Ewing. A book published by the Eryr Press, which uses hemp paper in its titles, mentions all of these (pp. 44,121,128,130 of One Thousand Years of Falconry). Another book by the same press, Musings of an Afghan Falconer, makes further note on p. 210.

Perhaps more indirectly, hemp figures into their diet in that hemp is a favourite food of many prey species, such as pigeons, quail, partridge, finches, crows, etc. One finch is named after hemp - the Linnet, whose Latin name is Carduelis cannabinis. Hemp is rich in protein and GLAs, so not surprising that birds love it. In 1970, James Vance lameted the depletion of feral hemp from the landscape in North America because it was a loss to the hunting community. His article was titled "Marijuana is for the Birds" - but that may be misleading, as hemp is not marjuana; both are Cannabis sativa, but marijuana is only C. sativa whose leaves and buds contain a high percentage of THC. Most hemp does not, and it grows tall and thin rather than short and bushy. Any variety however is good for birds, it is not thought that they have cannabireceptors in their brains as do humans.

Another aspect of falconry into which hemp may figure is the ubiquitous hawking bag, most of which are made of cotton. For those browsing this site, they will see that I object to cotton as it is a monocrop which uses lots of pesticides and depletes the water supply. Hemp is a tough fibre and can easily replace cotton for our field gear. One also might mention that falconry can be used for avian pest control, US government literature on the subject estimates that one hawk can patrol 200 acres. For areas where birds pests such as Quelea quelea devestate fields and occasion the use of harmful chemical avicides, this is good news.