ABSTRACT
How are living beings with different perceptual abilities learning to attune to each other and their environments? The author explores this issue through detailed ethnographic observations of the taming and training of falconry birds that will eventually lead to a cooperative hunting companionship. The airborne constitution of birds draws our attention to the atmospheric forces of the weather that powerfully influence their lines of flight as much as the movements of the earthbound humans. The human-bird encounter, moreover, requires an attention to the moods of birds and humans that are experienced as spatially tangible as well as reaching beyond the subjective experience of the individual. Atmosphere here appears as dynamic, temporal milieux in and through which humans and birds of prey learn to communicate with each other.
