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Frederick was a passionate hunter and a great lover of nature. His court records testify to the purchase of birds of prey, brought over from Malta, as well as cheetahs trained in Lucera for hunting with falcons, following an Eastern custom. More than just a pastime in full courtly fashion, hunting with birds of prey (such as hawks, goshawks and sparrow hawks) was a veritable science for the Emperor. He published a famous book, in fact, entitled On the Art of Hunting with Birds (De arte venandi cum avibus), for which he procured treatises on ornithology and the art of hunting, some specially translated from Arabic, to be appended as a preface to the book.
The version of the book that survives today was handed down to us by his son Manfred. Although it is considered unlikely that Frederick wrote the treatise himself, he committed at least thirty years of his life to comparing literature on the subject with practical experience and observations of reality, enlisting the help of experts from all over the world, from England to Egypt. The emperor actively participated in the redaction of the book and openly expressed his personal views on the various topics.
