Keen Falcons

Keen falcons are a species of domesticated falcons that have become increasingly common everywhere touches by the Mist. Bred from ordinary falcons, keen falcons are bred and trained to be especially adapted to spotting and tracking prey in the Mist.
The training of keen falcons is a highly specialized skill which relies on more than just the breeding of the birds, and a skilled trainer will never experience a shortage of clients due to how sought-after and prized these birds are.

Keen falcons and hunting

Keen falcons are used for hunting in several different ways. The most common is akin to that of traditional pre-Mist falconry, where the bird is trained to spot and fell smaller prey like rodents or in some cases fish and carry these back to their masters. However, some falcons are also trained to fell, or at least incapacitate, prey too large for them to carry and then call to their master to lead them to where the prey has fallen or hover in the air to mark the location of the prey.
Finally, some keen falcons are trained as 'spotters', which lead a group of human hunters to a prey by finding them in the mist and marking their location by hovering to mark the location or calling to guide their master through the Mist.
Keen falcons are often trained with a technique called two-diving, wherein they initially preform a mock-dive accompanied by a loud call to scare a prey into motion. The movement of the prey animal causes it to be more easy to discern in the mist, after which the falcon them makes a second, lethal dive.

Keen falcons and magic

There are those that say that keen falcons get their preternatural ability to see through the mist not from breed or training but from magic. However, these claims are dismissed by most.

Cover image by Brett Sayles at Pexels.