I think it takes a very, very special sort of person to live happily with psittacine parrots. I couldn’t handle it, and would be a terrible parrot owner.
I meant that a hawk, as a predator, would be interested in a parrot.
On second thought, though, I saw a parrot on TV open a brazil nut.
I know that a lot of people who buy a parrot eventually chance their minds. A friend had one of the big gray ones. It was like having a kid. Him and the bird, Petey Boy, loved each other.
As a point of clarification, this is in complete opposition to what you worry about with parrots. A macaw can break your wrist with a hard bite but I wouldn’t worry all that much about their feet.
My birds will react to both images of other birds, and sounds of other birds. They respond most strongly to images/sounds of their own species (not surprising). The cockatiels, for example, will get very excited to hear/see cockatiels on TV. They will ignore ostriches, penguins, crows, seagulls, etc…
One of them also gets very excited about forklifts, for some odd reason. I think if he ever saw one in real life he’d have a nervous breakdown or panic attack, but scooting around on TV they don’t look threatening.
My parrots - of various species - have also been very interested in video games, even to the point of attempting to “help” by using mouse or keyboards. They will the action, the mouse pointer, react to explosions, and so on.
Ah, yes… I’ve had my parrots outside in cages, usually while traveling (when we stop to rest in the summer we can’t leave them in a closed up car). They DO instinctively fear hawks. I have to keep a towel over part of the cage not to keep out breezes but to give them something hide under when there is a hawk aloft. They will see them LONG before I ever will. I don’t even have to see the hawk, I can tell by their behavior that they detect one.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill describes normal parrot flock behavior in the presence of hawks.
My cockatiels, in particular, have a firm grasp on the concept that they are basically snack food for other creatures in the natural order of things. The lovebirds, on the other hand, are more like the velocioraptors in Jurassic Park, except a lot smaller.
So, what are the bad depressing parts?
That sounds somewhat like a starling we rescued from being trapped in a wall of our building. After an initial burst of panic he became quite passive and allowed my husband to put him in one of our spare cages. We pretty much left him alone, intending only to allow him to rest and get some food and water into him before releasing him back into the wild. We avoided touching the bird, not wanting to acclimitate him to humans at all. We did notice that he was observing us interacting with our pet birds, and he seemed less tense after seeing our pets interact with us freely without fear or harm, to the point that the next morning he stepped up onto my husband’s hand voluntarially and allowed him to carry him to the back door for release.
I don’t know if you have other hawks or not, but have you ever noticed the birds observing you with other birds? Does that affect how quickly they adapt to human presence? Or are they all too much rugged individualists for that to have an affect?
I’m actually pretty impressed by that. Even domestically raised parrots frequently take days or weeks to get to that point with humans - my birds will not only let me scratch the back of their necks, they’ll demand it, but they would probably attack a stranger who attempted it. Likewise, most of our birds take a day or two to take food from our hands.
Of course, part of the trick with parrots is to remember that they aren’t really domestic animals like cats and dogs are. Parrot species haven’t been reliably bred in captivity for even a 100 years yet. They’re wild animals that are (one hopes) impressed on people as well as birds at a very, very young age, they can be quite tame, but they are not completely domestic. They have their wild armament and their wild instincts intact.
Even my very affectionate, very tame parrots - the ones that not only come when I call but they do NOT want to leave me alone, they’d spend 24/7 on my shoulder if I let them - will not let strangers handle them as I and my husband do. They are reluctant to stand on a stranger’s finger, and most will not take food from a stranger unless they see us take the same food and eat it, and not even then sometimes.
Our female lovebird would full-out attack anyone other than my husband or me, to the point the vets had to anesthetize her for medical care and that’s rarely done for such a small bird. They had a note in her file to treat her as a completely wild animal unless we were handling her ourselves.
So, needless to say, I’m not at all surprised that hawks are all business and quite picky about even business relationships. Even tame parrots can react quite strongly, and sometimes for reasons we just can’t fathom. They are NOT humans, they’re not even mammals.
Now, see, that’s very different from parrots. You can certainly train parrots with food rewards, but we never have - we give our parrots attention. But then, parrots are flock animals and social interactions are very, very important to them. Our parrots would almost rather have attention than food. When we’ve had guests and they’re hamming it up and getting all the attention we sometimes have to put them in a quiet room so they’ll eat and drink and get enough rest.
That’s also why we keep more than one parrot. It is almost impossible for a human being, even two human beings, to give a parrot enough attention. Even when our lovebirds were actively nesting/hatching chicks they still sought attention from us, although not as much as usual.
So, what do you feed them then? Rabbits? Large rats purchased from pet stores? (Not pet rats, folks - I’m talking feeders intended for things like snakes that require such food) Popeye’s Extra Crispy Chicken?
We have to pay more attention to our birds’ diet during molting, too, for the same reasons. Our birds also get irritable with the new feathers growing in - how about the hawks?
I know some of the larger parrots have been known to maim or kill humans - I would expect hawks and their relatives to have similiar capabilities.
In my experience all birds are faster than humans are. If you’re within reach don’t provoke them!
I’ve found that to be true of pet birds, too - they don’t really want to start a fight with you. The one exception was when our lovebird hen broke her leg and her mate was defending her - a two ounce bird had NO hesistation about taking on two full grown humans. We had to contain him before we could get to her.
We have heavy gloves for handling frightened/injured birds even if our birds are much smaller than yours. Our “hawking glove”, as we call it, is a full thickness of sheep’s hide with a quarter inch fleece lining. Our little birds have left bruises on skin through it. Budgies and cockatiels don’t require those, but anything larger (and lovebirds, which are actually smaller) do require hand protection under some circumstances.
Which makes parrot keeping sound really hazardous, but really, cats and dogs can injure people pretty badly, too.
I’m glad you realize that. I’m not sure I’d be a very good hawk partner, either.
One of the tragedies of domestic parrots is when someone who shouldn’t be a parrot owner acquires one. If the bird is lucky the person will realize it quickly and find a more suitable home. If not… well, it can get very, very ugly. They aren’t cats or dogs and never will be.
If it was big and blue it was a hyacinthine macaw, one of the largest parrots and a creature that peels brazil nuts like a human can peel an orange. Properly raised and socialized, though, they are very gentle and can use that formidable beak with great gentleness and delicacy. Mistreated, though, they can become quite dangerous.
Actually, I think the biggest macaws can actually take a hand off if sufficiently provoked - they certainly can bite off fingers. Macaws have been known to kill rabbits and small deer in the wild, but as NajaNivea points out their weapons are their mouths, not their feet.
My lovebirds used to pursue, kill, and eat mice. They’d dive on them from above and strike the back of their necks, then bite for the kill. Parrots aren’t really as vegetarian as people think they are. They’ll eat meat if the prey is small enough, and they’ll scavange larger carcasses if they can get them (they’ll also steal the meat from hamburgers, chicken dinners, roast beef sandwhiches, etc.). They also like to eat eggs. Modern parrot diets contain more protein than they used to, and as a result pet parrots now live longer, healthier lives than when they were fed almost entirely on seeds like canaries. They aren’t canaries, and even different parrot species have slightly different requirements.
But that said, although the parrots don’t use their feet as weapons in the same sense that hawks do they do have talons and a strong grip, and can certainly tear your skin up badly. I taught my larger conure to stand on clothed arms because I got tired of having my fingers and hands scraped bloody all the time. They weren’t gashes, but they were deep enough to bleed and get infected.
Then I look at hawk talons and think, no, I don’t want those anywhere near my bare skin…
Well, it starts when you can’t find a sponsor within a hundred and twenty five miles, so you have to wait until you move. After you find one, you go through the licensing process, which takes a year or so. Just when you think you’ve gotten through the last little bit of it, you realize that because of an oversight at the federal level, you’re missing one piece of licensing out of about a dozen official documents you have to have in possession and can’t go trapping until you have that piece. That takes another month to sort out, then another month until it’s cleared through the state and federal agencies. At that point, it’s so late in the trapping season that the juvenile population is 80% dead and half the remaining have begun to migrate. You spend months trying to trap a bird, sometimes having a bird climbing all around and over your trap without being snared before some schmuck in a pickup comes along and thinks it’s a good idea to pick up your trap and you have to bolt out and stop him and lose the bird in the process.
Once, after months of daily unsuccessful trapping attempts, I trapped a bird in full juvenile coloration and we were all ready to band him before my sponsor spotted a single retained juvenile feather in his primary set and we realized he was a second-year bird in disguise and had to release him.
That’s all before you even get a bird.
After that? Having a bird go belly-up for any one of a million reasons. Having a bird go belly-up for no apparent reason. Having a bird fly off into the wild blue yonder. Having a bird get picked off by someone higher up on the food chain. Accidentally getting yourself hurt doing something really stupid. Accidentally getting your bird hurt doing something really stupid. Being unable to get your bird to respond despite all your best attempts. Having to accept that your bird just isn’t a falconry bird and having to release it and start over from scratch. Not finding any prey. Not catching any prey. Failing your bird in a million possible ways.
I could go on… and on… 
I’ve never noticed whether this is true or not, but to be honest, if the situation is right the actual manning happens very, very quickly.
One interesting thing about raptors is that an imprinted eyass can be extremely dangerous, and if you hand-raise one you must be very careful to avoid imprinting at all costs. A wild-raised bird trapped as a passager is generally safer and more reliable to handle.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I’d be a rotten parrot parent.
Quail, rabbit, duck, pheasant, goose, grouse, ideally. In a pinch nutria, muskrat, rats, mice, ten-day-old chicks. Ideally you’d have banked enough in the freezer during the hunting season to carry you through the moult so you don’t have to resort to rodentia.
Yup, we don’t even really handle them during the active molt, other than health-checks.
Oh man, I have been bitten by more than one parrot, and I keep my fingers to myself when there are psittacines in the room. Those suckers hurt!
Back at the pet store, we had a gorgeous aviary with dozens of different parrots, from budgies and lovebirds to lorikeets, conures, cockatoos and an african grey. We had a really extensive process to allow folks to take one home, including classes they had to attend and a home visit. We turned down a lot of people, refused to sell them a bird because we thought they were impulse-buying or because we didn’t think they’d be a good match. Sometimes people were pissed, but sometimes they were grateful for the honesty too. Keeping a parrot happy and healthy is a BFD and we weren’t going to be responsible for placing an animal with the mental capacity and personality of a perpetual two-year-old and a sixty-year lifespan in the hands of someone who wasn’t going to provide the kind of home they need.
These guys are amazing. And terrifying! Handling an eagle doesn’t faze me at all, but those big psittacine beaks freak me right out.
It’s amazing how gentle they can be with those wicked toes.
This is a truly enlightening thread! I had no idea that dealing with raptors was so different than dealing with parrots.
It sounds like you have a huge amount of responsibility on your shoulders, and it takes a strong, committed person to undertake such a ‘hobby’.
Would you be willing to post any pics of you and your raptors?
Is that a common problem?
Fascinating thread, by the way. Ever since I read Katherine Neville’s novel The Eight in which she described her female protagonist hunting, catching and training her falcon, I have wished I could do it, too. 
Hey, thanks for the nice words!
It does take a rather insane amount of commitment, it’s true.
I don’t have any photos of me with the hawk because, despite his numerous talents, the NajaHusband is an astoundingly rotten photographer.
However, here’s a couple shots of Arion in the mews and one from the back so you can see his juvenile plumage–note the barred brown tail instead of the bright red of a haggard bird. Also note his speckily head and all-over mottling, as well as the greenish tint to his cere (the nostril area right above his beak). He’s identified as a male only because of his weight and the fact that his beak and cere, feet and talons are proportionately pretty small.
He looks a little roughed-up because it’s really windy and raining and we just got back in. The difference in color in his feet that you see in the first photo is due to an injury in the pad of his foot, I’d just swabbed the whole thing out with betadine before putting him up.
I wouldn’t say it’s a common problem, although someone in my general area of the state recently had a couple birds swiped. It happens from time to time, and I keep my mews locked just in case, but I don’t lose a lot of sleep over the possibility. Besides, I fly a passage red-tailed hawk with zero resale value. The folks that really need to worry are the ones with the $50k arctic gyrfalcons.
So there’s a black market?
I’m pretty sure there’s a black market for just about anything.
Fascinating thread! I’ll go back and read it more thoroughly later, but for now, my question: I am aware that, as you said, falconry is a very intensive hobby. Is there anything you can do, short of dedicating your life to t, to get involved in the sport? I’d love to see what it is like and what it involves, but I wouldn’t devote myself body and soul to something without knowing everything about it first. (The last time I did that, I spent three years in seminary!)
Absolutely! You might consider as a starting point volunteering at a raptor rehab center in your area. This isn’t the same experience as falconry, but it will give you a huge amount of experience handling birds of prey of various species and will give you a taste of what interacting with these birds is like. Be aware if you do this that some (not all, some) rehabbers really dislike falconers and the sport of falconry.
I said to Gulo Gulo, and the same is true for everyone else, my state falconry association posts our seasonal field meets on the website and issues an open invitation for anyone to come. Folks are absolutely welcome to come to the meets, watch the activities, come hunting, and just generally see what falconry is like. We know that it’s a very few people who have the time, energy, desire, and accommodating partner that allows them to actively fly a bird, and there are a lot of folks that are friends of the community who attend meets and go hunting with us but can’t, for whatever reason, actually fly a bird themselves. We encourage them to become members of the club and hang out as much as they like. It’s fun for us, too.
There are, I think, around eighty licensed people in the state, but well under half that number actually fly birds. It’s okay to know that at this point in your life with a new job or new baby or health problem or whatever you can’t actively fly–so people will release their bird or transfer it to another falconer and return to the sport when their life allows. What’s not okay is not being able to admit that to yourself and keeping your bird shut up in the mews because you can’t bring yourself to step out. Getting involved doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life as an active falconer, but when you are in possession of a bird your life sort of revolves around it.
For example, here in the Pacific Northwest it’s raining a good part of the year. I’m fortunate enough to work from home and can drop everything in a second if I see a break in the weather that allows me to take my bird out, but if you work 8-5, five days a week, you may not be able to catch a narrow window of opportunity, or see daylight hours for several months during the winter. This alone means you may not be able to fly a bird, unless you’re able to negotiate work hours that get you home before dark or allow you an hour or so in the morning. It’s not a weekend hobby by any means; you have to be willing and able to go hunting a minimum of four to five times a week, and preferably daily. This is year-round if you hunt a broadwing as I do. Falcons are limited to gamebird and upland waterfowl season windows.
Also, for anyone considering getting actively involved in falconry, please be sure your partner whole-heartedly supports the notion. My husband fortunately doesn’t mind the time it eats up in my life, doesn’t mind losing garage and yard space to the facilities, doesn’t mind having to yield a wide berth to a large and unhousetrained bird in the bedroom on occasion, doesn’t mind snowdrifts of paperwork lying around the house or finding chunks of dead animal in my pockets* from time to time, and generally thinks the whole thing is pretty neat.
Many spouses and partners don’t, and that’s not a minor consideration by any means.
You also have to be comfortable killing things, which is also not a minor consideration. There are folks who go through the entire process convincing themselves they’ll be okay with that, then the first time they have a successful strike end up vomiting and sobbing when they have to help the hawk finish the kill. It’s okay to know that about yourself, and it’s absolutely okay to not be comfortable with being instrumental in another animal’s death, but you can’t be a falconer.These folks still love the sport, still come to meets, and are still friends of the community, and in some cases still hold licenses, but they don’t keep birds. Keeping a healthy bird of prey out of vanity or for any other reason isn’t falconry. It’s stupid and it’s cruel.
*He was teasing me about this the other day, when I pointed out to him that it could be worse… I could have a hobby of fake tanning, expensive manicures, and high-end clothes. “So which is it, dear, meatpockets or manicures?” “Meatpockets” he agreed, laughing.
One other thing: the California Hawking Club publishes some really, really good starter books on the subject.. The apprentice manual has an excellent introduction that gives a good talk on falconry and what the sport entails. It’s an indispensable text that covers raptors in general, husbandry, equipment, health, training, hunting, regulations, laws, and has a hefty bibliography for further reading. That is the very first place to start if you’d like to learn more about what being a falconer is all about.
Also, I bet your local library has at least one or two books on the shelf on the subject!
Speaking of book recommendations:
Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia by Stephen J. Bodio follows the author on his quest to Mongolia to meet the men who trap & hunt with eagles. Very good book.
I have some ideas as to why that might be so, but I’d like to hear your take on why there’s a conflict between some rehabbers and falconers.
The reasons are legion, but (ahem) debatable. This has been friendly so far.
I’ve been waiting for a chance to use the term “legion”.
Peace,
mangeorge