Cully

Cully is the second goshawk T. H. White trains, a female bird whose impaired flight makes her brief hunting career a test of both his skill and his judgment. He repairs her damaged feathers and eventually flies her free, but his decision to hunt with her late in the season puts the desire for success ahead of the rest she needs. Her capture of a European rabbit brings White’s longed-for achievement—and a disturbing recognition of the intensity of his response to killing.

Identity and Historical Context

White names the goshawk Cully after collecting her in Croydon in April. She arrives in poor condition: trapping has damaged her tail feathers and left much of her left wing’s flight feathers broken. The book places her within a longer history of contrasting attitudes toward falcons and goshawks. Falcons were often praised as noble birds, but flying them properly required access to large expanses of land associated with wealth and privilege. Goshawks, which hunt in quick dashes at closer range, could be flown in more varied settings. Their solitary trainers, the austringers, and the hawks themselves were nevertheless often disparaged. This history gives Cully a place in a tradition whose judgments of birds were entangled with judgments of class and social standing.

White’s Preparation and Cully’s Training

White prepares for Cully’s arrival with detailed plans for training, drawing on falconry books and the expertise they describe. He attempts to repair her damaged feathers by fitting replacement feathers into the trimmed quills, a technique known as imping. The repair is unsuccessful: after eight weeks of training, during which Cully repeatedly bates, she is left with a shortened tail, a partly feathered wing, and very limited ability to fly. The narrative makes the mismatch between White’s plans and the bird’s condition concrete; his preparation cannot undo the difficulties with which she begins.

Free Flight and the Rabbit Hunt

Despite Cully’s limitations, White flies her free. The moment brings him within reach of a goal he has associated with training a hawk himself and hunting with her. Yet the season is already late, and he knows she should be put down to moult. During the moult, hawks are not flown; they are kept in a spacious enclosure and fed freely while their feathers are replaced. White postpones that necessary pause because he wants one successful hunt.

After several days of unsuccessful stalking on The Ridings, he flies Cully at a European rabbit on Tofield’s Riding. Her flight is ragged, and at one point she runs after the rabbit rather than flying. She nevertheless catches it by the head. White rushes over and pins the rabbit’s skull to the ground with his hunting knife. He later describes the intensity of his response to the killing in terms of bloodlust. The success is therefore double-edged: Cully has made a catch, but White has pursued it despite knowing that the proper seasonal course was to stop flying her.

Narrative Significance and Ending

Cully’s account turns a training milestone into a scrutiny of the trainer. Her free flight appears to fulfill White’s ambition, but her impaired condition and the delayed moult complicate any simple triumph. The rabbit hunt reveals how the pursuit of self-sufficiency can become bound up with a desire to kill, a connection White recognizes in his own response. Cully is not given a further outcome in this account; her narrative ends with the hunt and the force of what it awakens in White.