Finger Falcons - But No Hoods For Them

Here we have the Peregrine Falcon as 6 inch long ‘finger falcons’, I only made up a few, preferring to do the larger birds instead.  At the time I was using grey velour and white velour, with yellow velour for the feet.  However with velour virtually disappearing from the fabric stores about 8 years ago, at this point I’d probably use that stretch type white and gray panne velour for the body, though it’s more like a knit when you look at the back of the fabric.  And grey felt for the wings and tail, black felt for the beak and yellow felt for the wired feet.

The feet are made with a 14 gauge wire about 9” long that’s been looped at each end, inserted in the yellow ‘sleeve’ and folded twice, to make up the feet.  They’re sewn on once the body is stuffed, usually after the wings and tail have been added.  8mm black bead eyes are then sewn on, the curved beak is sewn by hand to the head (with a tiny bit of stuffing in it) and grey acrylic paint is applied for the under eye markings and the chest markings.  This is applied with the end of a toothpick so it can get into the fabric cleanly. Brushes are useless when working with small areas like this.

Since the birds don’t have a ‘neck’, making a little hood out of felt and feathers would not work out well, you couldn’t get the hood to stay on properly.  After trying it for a few birds, and having all the hoods get lost very quickly, they were just sold ‘as is’.  They sold without leather jesses or little bells on the back of the foot area.  They were just the falcons themselves