Time to Fly

Time to Fly is the memoir of Gary Cope, whose dream was to become a professional falconer. And he did. But it is far more than an interesting tale about falconry and hunting with birds of prey. It’s a book about the peaks and troughs of life, about people and relationships, failure and success, dark dramas and comic events.
For a falconer, losing a bird is devastating and radio telemetry usually the only hope. Missing falcon Morgan is traced by the medium Araminta’s psychic powers rather than modern technology. But the falconry thing all started with Gary’s fascination with a pair of wild kestrels circling a church spire. He persuades his parents to let him take a falconry course at the centre in Newent and then the adventure really begins. His first bird dies and his second disappears, but is saved by Aunt Avril’s presence of mind, despite her lack of experience and the ignominy of her trousers falling around her ankles.
Career prospects loom in the shape of a desk job but underwhelmed by life in the Civil Service, Gary resigns, determined to follow his dream. His first major break comes with a falconry display at Sudeley Castle at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. Subsequent displays delight Sudeley’s Lord Ashcombe, who takes Gary ‘under his wing’!
Life as a falconer at Sudeley has many twists and turns. Burglars foiled by ‘eagles’, being photographed by Lord Lichfield, selling hawks to Mohammed al Fayed, curious grouse hawking in Yorkshire and breeding falcons are just some of the features on the landscape.
The next step on the ladder is the position of Royal Falconer with Saudi Arabian Prince Khalid, hunting and breeding both on the menu. The Prince’s desire for white gyrfalcons takes Gary to the mountains of Wyoming and the deserts of Nevada to buy birds from two breeders. Naturally a little hawking is included but other entertainment includes hunting moths on the porch, butterflies in the mountains and watching super pigeons elude the talons of a turbo-charged gyrfalcon.
Lord Ashcombe accompanies Gary on a second visit and gives his fascinated hosts an insight into the life of British aristocracy, including Princess Diana and his niece Camilla Parker-Bowles.
Back in England, the birds imported from Nevada show their true colours: Magnum produces semen like a porn star, while Tino is as barren as the desert from which she came.
The grouse hawking season is on the horizon. The cottage on the Yorkshire moors is not the idyll that Gary and his wife Joy imagined. And when Prince Khalid arrives at his newly purchased Preston Moor, it’s in a Bentley and he’s wearing a suit.
Falconry can be a solitary career: Joy and Gary are drifting apart. After dealing with wild fires back up in Yorkshire, Gary returns home to find that the rift is permanent.
He submerges himself in work, and several hawking seasons cycle by before Gary meets Helena. Not only does romance bloom, but his new lady proves to be an able assistant in the gentle art of artificially inseminating birds of prey.
Life looks rosy until the ripples of 9/11 indirectly affect Gary’s career. When Prince Khalid announces that Gary’s breeding project is to be shut down, the dominoes start to fall. As well as losing his job and his home, both of Gary’s dogs die and his beloved falcons are rehoused elsewhere. Is this the death knell to Gary Cope’s career?