Bird nails
A bird barn was a dropping place for falcon hunting , which was a popular pastime of the aristocracy in the Middle Ages.
During the hunt, the falcon was thrown into the air by a rider on horseback. For this purpose, the terrain of a bird barn had to be flat, treeless and of a certain size; the mean area was considered to be around 1000 square meters. The bird races have two basic forms with one variant. The most common are threshing floors that are surrounded by a ditch on both long sides and one narrow side; the second narrow side is designed as a ramp. Some of these systems have a roughly square pit on the ramp side, which is likely to be the remains of the shelter for the bird . Systems with a surrounding ditch are rarer. The threshing floors enclosed by a low wall are atypical. Due to these walls, bird lanes are often mistakenly misinterpreted as castle grounds. Often a bird barn also had a spring or a pond for heron hunting. Not only falcons but also hawks (sprints) were trained for hunting .
The falconer's house (the so-called high - rise ), in which the falcon enclosure was housed, stood next to or below the bird barn . The house also served as accommodation for the hunting party. This building was not allowed to exceed two floors and was surrounded by a trench nine feet deep and seven feet wide. The earth excavated in the process was thrown up into a wall surrounding the ditch of the bird barn.
Other birds were hunted ( partridge , crane , heron ), but also "standing game", e.g. B. deer , more rarely hares ; rather, hawks were used for the hare dressing .
From the 17th century, some bird dish was a bird-catching place , a Vogelwaide or a Vogelherdhöhle was being made to edible songbirds using lime twigs or so-called fur trees hunting. For example Krammetsvögel were attracted with juniper twigs, starlings with earthworms and ant eggs, larks with fruit kernels or pigeons with a salt lick; also came decoys used. A beating net was mostly used for catching, which the bird catcher pulls over the hearth by pulling the pull line.
literature
- Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon in sixteen volumes. Sixteenth volume. FA Brockhaus, Leipzig, 1895.
- Norbert Grabherr : Falcon hunting, bird races and high-rise buildings in Upper Austria. Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter, 1959, vol. 13, pp. 382–386, online (PDF) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at
- Marianne Pollak; Adolf Stelzl: The archaeological survey in the VB Braunau am Inn. Activity report for the years 1985-1992. Find reports from Austria, Vol. 31, 1992, pp. 203-250.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Market history of Gallspach.
- ^ Marianne Pollak and Adolf Stelzl, 1992, p. 238.
- ^ Market history of Gallspach.
- ↑ Brockhaus' Konversations-Lexikon, 1895, p. 373.