How to train a kestrel: the original notes from the making of Kes

Realism is the spur for much of Ken Loach’s work across film and television and that has driven a particular approach to his use of actors. Rather than showcasing virtuoso performance, Loach and his many important collaborators over the years have sought to have their screen characters played by people who are close to and can convincingly embody a role. This was certainly true of Kes (1969), made in collaboration with producer Tony Garnett and writer Barry Hines who had authored the original novel upon which the film was based. 

Hines’s novel A Kestrel for a Knave centred on Billy Casper, a teenage boy in a Yorkshire mining community, finishing his Secondary Modern education, and being readied for the world of employment. His unrealised potential, and his capacity for loving investment in something he truly cares about, are explored through his relationship with a kestrel he rears and trains. Hines drew on his own experiences as a teacher but also his brother Richard’s experiences of self-taught falconry.

David Bradley, who had never acted before but who happened to be a pupil at the school Barry Hines used to teach at, was cast as Billy. The filmmakers wanted to cast their film from within the community they were representing, and as Loach later recalled of the film’s school scenes, they were “anxious to use kids in their natural environment”, which is how they found Bradley. Loach described him as “perfect for the part” but deflected any whiff of star-making mythology by reminding us of the bigger picture: “There were a lot of children there with undiscovered talent that nobody knows about.”

It was important that Bradley didn’t only play Billy but understood him, so Richard Hines was brought on board to help Bradley learn how to train a kestrel. They worked with three kestrels for the film, named Freeman, Hardy and Willis after the famous shoe shop of the era.

These notes from the production file on Kes are read aloud in the film itself, in Billy’s voiceover. It shows how he takes the knowledge he’s gleaned from a stolen library book, Manual of Falconry by M.H. Woolford (my thanks to David Forrest, author of the BFI Film Classic book on Kes for supplying the reference), and painstakingly follows its guidance for his own incremental training of Kes. Formal education has written off Billy, but this scene powerfully demonstrates his autodidactic abilities, moving through each stage of training until he can achieve the marvel of having the kestrel fly to his hand.  

These notes, which are preserved in the BFI National Archive, serve a double purpose: a text to be read in the film to accompany a training montage but also a reminder of David Bradley’s own steep learning curve in falconry, aided by Richard Hines, who in the words of his brother Barry “did wonders on a tight schedule”. 

The training process is divided into three stages which merge with one another. The first is the stage of training, the second is the stage of calling to the fist on a creance, and the third is the stage of calling to the fist when the bird is flying free.

Three good meals a day are given for about a fortnight. If a piece of meat held between the finger and thumb of the gloved hand is offered to the hawk, it will probably bend down and pull at the meat with its beak.

As soon as the hawk will come a leash length indoors, she may be tried off a fence or gate post out of doors. It is quite likely that although she was coming to the fist promptly indoors, she will now refuse to come at all. She will stand looking fearfully around her and ignoring the meat on the fist thrust in front of her.

When she will come a leash length out of doors, she can be called greater distances by means of a creance, a long cord which is attached to the hawk to prevent her escaping. With luck she will not attempt to fly away.

Produced with the support of the BFI Screen Heritage Fund, awarding National Lottery funding.