Abu Dhabi, United Arab EmiratesThe rising sun spreads pale light over the desert sands, illuminating a scene at once common and unexpected: a solitary falcon, hooded and still atop its perch, ready for hunting practice.  

While people in what is now the United Arab Emirates have trained falcons for more than 4,000 years, more surprising is the falconer—a woman, with a young daughter working beside her. 

Historically used as hunting companions, falcons captured meat that couldn’t be killed with an arrow or trapped in a snare to augment the low-protein diet of the nomadic Bedouins on the Arabian Peninsula. Falcons are keen-eyed—they see eight times farther than a human—and capable of plummeting from the sky at over 200 miles an hour to catch small prey