Falconry

Falconry brings the old art of hunting with birds of prey to Minecraft. Catch a wild hawk in a baited trap, earn its trust on the glove, and fly it at quarry. A well-trained bird hunts for you, guards you, and scouts the land. In time you can breed your own birds and raise their chicks.

There are 21 real species, each in its own country: red-tailed hawks over the plains, peregrines on sea cliffs, owls in the woods at night, vultures circling over the badlands and harpy eagles deep in the jungle. Each one looks, hunts and calls like the real bird.

What it adds

• 21 birds of prey: hawks, falcons, eagles, owls and vultures. Males and females differ where they do in life, some species come in colour morphs, and young birds wear their juvenile plumage. Each species hunts its own way: falcons stoop from on high, accipiters dash in low, kestrels hover and owls drop from a perch.
• Real bird calls. Calls, alarms and begging chicks are real recordings, so a red-tail screams and a goshawk cackles like the real thing.
• Trapping. Bait a Bal-chatri trap with a live mouse, sparrow or cricket from your Critter Cage, then hood the bird it catches. Owls are claimed with jesses, and vultures are drawn in with carrion.
• Training and trust. Feed your bird on the glove, hunt with it and teach it tricks (the Lure Pass, Long Recall and Perch Hop). As its trust grows it goes from Wild to Manned, Bonded and finally Partner.
• Hunting. Send your bird after whatever you are looking at. A manned bird brings back its catch. Wild prey animals live in the world for it: mice, rats, quail, sparrows, crickets, beetles and more.
• Abilities. Manned birds warn you of nearby monsters (Sentinel), Bonded birds hunt alongside your wolves (Pack Hunt), and Partners spot treasure and ore for you (Keen Eye). The rare species each have one of their own:
  • Peregrine: Stoop, a crushing dive that downs phantoms in one blow.
  • Goshawk: Ambush.
  • Golden eagle: Big Quarry.
  • Bald eagle: Fisher.
  • Snowy owl: Whiteout.
  • Eurasian eagle-owl: Owl's Eyes (night vision for you).
  • Gyrfalcon: King's Falcon (better villager prices).
  • Bearded vulture: Bone Breaker.
  • Harpy eagle: Canopy Strike.
• Breeding. Two Bonded birds with the right nest lay eggs, take turns sitting on them, and raise downy chicks that feather and fledge. Chicks inherit their parents' stats (speed, power, sight and vitality), so careful pairing breeds better birds over the generations.
• Wild nests. Treetop stick nests, crag eyries, tree hollows, cliff ledges, burrows and snow scrapes appear across the world. Some have a pair raising young, and some parents will defend their nest. Feed a wild chick yourself, in its parents' place, and it becomes yours.
• Vultures. They gather at carcasses, gorge, and sun their wings. The bearded vulture drops bones onto rock to crack them, and stains itself rust-red in the red earth of the badlands.
• Gear and a mews. A Falconer's Workbench, a Tanning Vat for leather, the glove, vest, whistle, hood, jesses, lure and transport crate. For your birds' quarters there are perches, branches, snags, stumps, boulders, a bath pan and nest boxes.
• The Falconer's Journal (press H). It lists your birds and their stats, trust, parents and nesting, and has a field guide to every species: where it lives, what it hunts, where it nests and what food brings it into breeding.

Getting started

1. Craft a Falconer's Workbench (leather, an iron ingot and planks). Everything else is made in it.
2. Tan some leather: fill a Tanning Vat with water, add bark (strip logs with an axe), and soak leather in it. Then make a glove, a whistle, a hood, a Critter Cage and a Bal-chatri.
3. Catch a small animal in the cage, use it on the Bal-chatri to bait it, set it down where raptors live, and walk well away. When a bird is caught, hood it within a minute.
4. Put the glove on and press B to whistle your bird in. Tap R to send it hunting or to feed it, hold R to choose a bird, and press H for your journal.

Requirements

• Minecraft Java Edition 1.21.1
• Either Fabric Loader with Fabric API, or NeoForge 21.1
• Install on the server and on every player's game.

Sound credits

The birds' calls are cut from recordings shared under open licences (CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA) on xeno-canto, Freesound and Wikimedia Commons. Thank you to Jonathon Jongsma, MichiJung, Doug Hynes, Sonothèque ADVL, Jonas Katona, Thomas Signeau, Christian Kahle, Alvaro Ortiz Troncoso, soundmary, Pichard Olivier, Luis Gracia, abrub, craigsmith, Pascal Christe, Lionel Triboulin, Gabriele Magurno, HEtonis2, Diana Doyle, Adrienne Eaton, Noé Ferrari, Michael and Katie LaTour, and Benoît Van Hecke.

Every sound file, with its recording, licence and the edits made to it, is listed in CREDITS_Falconry.md inside the mod's jar. The sound files are shared under the licences of the recordings they were cut from. Four species (the black vulture, lanner falcon, African pygmy falcon and harpy eagle) use Minecraft's own sounds, pitched to match the real birds.

Feedback

Found a bug, or have an idea? Leave a comment. Please say whether you use Fabric or NeoForge, and include your log (.minecraft/logs/latest.log) if something went wrong.