About Us
Monadnock Falconry is a partnership between two Master Falconers. The friends make an unlikely pair:
one, a self-taught, salt-of-the-earth New Hampshire
dairy farmer, the other a poet and teacher.
Henry Walters took an unlikely route to falconry. An undergraduate Latin course led him to Frederick the Great’s 13th-century treatise, De arte venandi cum avibus, or Concerning the Art of Hunting with Birds. Here, for the first time in history, a person was taking the lives of birds—their habits, their eccentricities, even their personalities—seriously! After graduating, a traveling fellowship brought him to Ireland’s School of Falconry, where he apprenticed with some of the finest falconers in Europe, flying raptors such as the peregrine falcon, sparrowhawk, Eurasian eagle-owl, ferruginous hawk, and northern goshawk. Working in Ireland, Henry fell in love with a pursuit that could spark the imagination of people from such different places and walks of life.
On returning to the United States, Henry earned his falconry license in Massachusetts before eventually moving to New Hampshire, where he worked as a seasonal raptor biologist for New Hampshire Audubon and co-founded the New Hampshire Young Birders Club. As a teacher, naturalist, and writer, Henry has found ways to make environmental education a creative endeavor. Now a Master Falconer, he lives in the town of Hancock with his young family.
Martin Connolly has been creating a unique relationship with the natural world since childhood. As a boy in the Bronx, he nursed an injured kestrel in his own bedroom and was hooked on birds for life. On moving to New Hampshire, Marty and his wife Lynda built their house in Temple with their own hands and raised three boys on a working dairy farm. As a Master falconer and raptor rehabilitator, Marty and his red-tailed hawk, “The General,” made quite an impression on more traditional pheasant hunters around New England. Whether chasing snowshoe hares with a pack of bassett hounds (the hares always came out on top) or holding listeners rapt with stories of improbable wildlife encounters, Marty has encouraged countless people, young and old, to get out and explore the woods by any means necessary.
Mahood is a three-year-old male Harris’ Hawk (Parabuteo unicinctus) who has flown through the woods and fields of the Monadnock region since September, 2021. His elaborate bathing, preening, and tail-wagging habits have given him a reputation for vanity, but in the field he is all business. Chipmunks and voles are his preferred prey, though they often elude him. Blue jays make his blood boil. Having tried the company of tree swallows, crows, owls, and hawks of every variety, he has also alighted on the glove of many dozens of local residents, from age 5 to age 95.
Aengus, the younger brother of Mahood, joined the team in November, 2022. Easily startled, his list of pet peeves includes strollers, bicycles, thunder, and dogs, even those that are barking a half-mile away! His cautiousness is matched only by his curiosity, which sends him sprinting off to investigate any and all moving objects, including falling apples, snowflakes, and (once) the falconer’s hat, blown off by the wind. This stage in a juvenile bird’s life is jam-packed with education of all kinds: how to fly, where to perch, what game to pursue, and how to work successfully with a human hunting partner. Aengus began flying with the public in the summer of 2023!
Pete is a fourteen-year-old great horned owl who’s never lost a stare-down contest with anyone, human or otherwise. Heavily insulated from top to toe with a thick coat of down feathers, he is prepared for whatever winter might bring. Having been reared by hand after falling from a nest as a juvenile, Pete imprinted on his human rehabilitators and cannot be safely released to the wild. Still, his vast repertoire of hoots, chuckles, and chitters have endeared him to many a visitor. He continues to defend his rather small territory from wild great horned owls nesting nearby.
Pitch is an eight-year-old female red-tailed hawk, just about as large a Buteo as you’re likely to find in New England. Her preferred prey are gray squirrels, which she plunges after with reckless abandon. Having been taken from the wild at too tender an age, she shows signs of imprinting; while she may again fly and hunt successfully in the future, she will most likely always do it in the company of a falconer.
The Grouse Woods at Red Gate Farm, the home of Monadnock Falconry, offers the very best of New England natural history, culture, and landscape. Located on the eastern slope of Pack Monadnock, beech and hemlock stands weave in and out of meadows bordered by birch and alder, as well as old pastures and wetlands that have been cared for by the Connolly family for decades. Conceived as a hunting preserve and maintained for a variety of habitats, The Grouse Woods is home to a diverse array of wildlife, including black bear, bobcat, coyote, and over 100 species of birds in the course of a year. Whether you come when the trillium is blooming in spring or when the leaves explode in color each fall, a walk on this land will make you fall in love with all New Hampshire has to offer.
Connolly Brothers Dairy Farm, adjacent to The Grouse Woods, is a hotbed of activity and a destination in its own right. Baked goods, eggs, meats, raw cow’s milk, maple syrup, and the area’s best ice cream—made on site—are just some of what the farm store has for sale. Even as many dairy farms have disappeared from the Northeast, the Connollys’ beautiful Jersey cows are a testament to an unbroken tradition that links this family to the land.