falconer

As William Butler Yeats famously told us at another precarious moment in history, “The falcon cannot hear the falconer ... the centre cannot hold.”

Central Park was a “target-rich environment,” in the words of James Eyring, a falconer and a retired Pace University environmental sciences professor.

Highland falconers are training two Maremma sheep dogs to look out for the large birds of prey in the sky.

Courtier Robert Cheseman, Henry VIII’s falconer, gives the same look in a 1533 portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, one of several magnificent Holbeins on view in “The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England.”

GPS tracking devices also help falconers avoid losing their birds: The best racing falcons are worth millions of dollars.