Falconry stuff, part deux (allegedly, I'm qualified!)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Yes, initially when you start looking at birds they all look alike, but after awhile you can spot significant differences. At this point I’ve gotten pretty good at sizing up small parrots by eyeball - of course, at the same time they’re sizing you up, too!

Having a bad bird day myself. The family flock has been uncooperative, didn’t want to go in their cages for breakfast, the cocktiels have been twitchy all day and the conure hasn’t helped - she likes to stir things up. In fact, Sydney, normally our sweetest, gentlest bird, bit me hard enough to draw blood today, which is extraordinary, really, both because cockatiels don’t usually bite that hard and Sydney usually doesn’t do anything aggressive or violent. I still don’t know what set him off.

Meanwhile, the conure has spent half her time sitting on my shoulder hissing like a little snake. I can’t tell if she’s making fun of my allergies (I am snuffly today - in fact, the cockatiels might be misinterpreting that, now that I think of it) or is actually pissed off at me. At least she hasn’t taken a piece out of me today.

Don’t you just hate those days when you and the bird(s) are just not hitting it off?

I just showed my husband all the pictures in the link. He, too, was commenting on how wonderful the birds look. He also muttered about getting in touch with our local falconer again. He went on an outing with the guy a couple years ago, just a trip to a field near our local airport. The airport, of course, is happy to have a falcon/hawk chase away some of the birds that hang out there, they only wish the Canada Geese were afraid of the hawks. They certainly aren’t afraid of the airplanes, which hasn’t always ended well for the geese. Or the airplanes.

Well, they’re happy if a hawk visits - they weren’t happy at the pair of kestrels that decided to raise a family in the maintenance hanger. Sure, it took care of the mouse problem, but the customers weren’t happy about kestral krap on their airplanes.

When one of the babies got lost in a tool cabinet I got drafted to go catch it. My use of a large towel to capture it probably wasn’t orthodox, but I got the baby raptor safely out the door where it vanished into some low growth with the parents closely following. Couldn’t leave it in the toolbox, because they’d already had one employee (at least one) kill one of the fledglings, apparently ignorant of the illegality of that or not caring about the illegality. The owner of the place wasn’t particularly fond of birds, and in another time and place might have simply shot the lot of them, but he, at least, didn’t want to run afoul of the law and deal with the consequences of it so I went on a baby kestrel hunt. Also did not appreciate the damage/cost of what else occurred during that prior killing episode. The deed was unwitnessed (at least by anyone who would 'fess up to it) so the killer was never found but the bird had clearly met an unnatural death. Yes, the owner shoveled and shut up, then said that was not acceptable and if he caught anyone doing such a thing, or even injuring a bird, he’d turn them over the DNR himself just to avoid legal trouble himself.

Personally, would have been MUCH happier to have an actual falconer deal with the situation, but I didn’t know of the local one at that time and didn’t have a lot of time. Probably busted a few laws myself, but the birds survived long enough to go into the wild on their own. Still have lots of kestrels around the airport, although someone went and dealt with the holes near the roof the big hangars, which is where they were going in and out. Can’t blame them for nesting inside where it’s dry and the temperature moderate all year round. Raptors do seem have high tolerance for being near human activities.

22

Sorry, hope I didn’t kill the thread with that admittedly rambling post. Let me pose a few discreet questions for the Falconer:

  1. What about days when the bird just doesn’t want to be bothered? I assume this happens, as they are birds and individuals. What signs do you look for that tell you that today is just not a day the bird wants to cooperate? What do you do? Obviously, the bird needs to eat and it’s best if the hawk does it via hunting. If the bird doesn’t want to eat, well, that’s most likely a sick bird.

  2. What sort of arrangements do you have regarding a sick bird? Is there an avian vet nearby?

  3. In a situation such I described above, what would you recommend? Obviously, I did what I thought best at the time. Clearly it is probably a good idea to let the local DNR deal with a problem bird but given an emergency, what does one do?

I had an advantage in that I have some experience in safely (for both bird and human) handling panicked birds larger than kestrels. I must admit, though, I’d rather have a hawk expert do that the next time.

23

So how often does a bird just decide, “enough of this crap” and fly off? Presumably it’s not that common, as people invest a lot of time in the birds, and it would be frustrating to lose them.
Is there a specific part of training that makes it unlikely? Do they ever go AWOL temporarily?

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Nothing to add to the thread other than thanks for sharing - very cool.

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Thanks for starting this thread - Galatea’s a beauty! How did you acquire her?

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Congrats on your license, and your beautiful bird.

I’ve long been interested in raptors - by far my favorite birds. But with the others, I readily acknowledge that I do not have the dedication other than to imagine actively participating in falconry.

I almost always see redtails at the golf courses around here. Do you happen to know why the young ones scream so much and so loudly? I’d think it would let just about all the prey within miles know “Hawk’s in the house!” At this one course, of all the trees around a pair of redtails nested in a little evergreen less than 15 feet tall. Seemed a really weird choice to me. How often does a wild hawk feed?

Just about every day I see peregrines out my window here at work. Way cool. Once I was lucky enough to see one hit a pigeon. WOW!

One time while driving to central IL, I noticed several large hawks sitting on fence posts. I must have seen 10 or more, every mile or so. Tried really hard to remember how the looked, but as is usual, when I got home I could not identify them in Peterson’s.

How much does your hawk weigh? I’m always surprised at how large redtails are when you get really close to them (tho I know even large birds don’t weigh as much as they might appear.) One day I happened to walk quite near a golden eagle on the ground. MAN was that thing huge. Similar for this summer up in WI, some balds were eating fishkill maybe 20 feet from me. They’d stare me in the eye as if to say, “Try anything, and we’ll tear your face off!”

Do you have any favorite books about falconry? Last one I read was Falcon Fever by Tim Gallagher. I really enjoyed it. One of my fave books by my fave author is The Hawk is Dying by Harry Crews. Have you read it? If so, how accurate is Crews’ representation? I believe they made a movie out of it, but I never saw it in theaters or video stores. I believe the hawk in the book was a RTH.

My favorite factoid about hawks was from a book I recently read about the science of vision. It said kestrels can see into the ultraviolet spectrum. Which helps them catch their favorite food - voles. You know how? Apparently voles piss almost constantly, and their urine reflects ultraviolet. So they simply follow the trail to dinner!

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This is fascinating. One of those things that I knew people did, but I know absolutely nothing about. Thank you for opening up a new world for me!

This picture is hilarious.

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Yay! Glad to see there’s at least a few folks wandering by, I was a little worried it was just gonna be us chickens…

:smiley: I’m going to go ahead and operate under the assumption that if a post full of avian-goodness kills the thread, then someone should have put me out of my misery immediately after the OP. :wink:

Everyone has “off” days, even hawks. If a bird isn’t hungry or doesn’t feel like flying, they certainly make it plain. I can generally tell just by peering in the mews window what her state of mind is, and if she’s going to want to hunt… backed by a fairly extensive knowledge of her metabolic rate and “personal” inclinations. I weigh her at least once and usually two or three times a day during the active season, weigh her food and time her feedings accordingly so that I always know exactly when she’s going to be hungry. I can time her need for food to match up with the times of day she hunts sharpest, and stack the deck in my favor that she’s going to want to hunt when we go out.
If you get out to the field and she clearly has no interest in hunting, there’s every chance it’s because you screwed up their feeding schedule. Sometimes they just don’t feel like it, maybe they’re a little fat, maybe the weather isn’t right or they don’t like the company you’ve brought along… but most of the time it’s a feeding screwup.

I can tell if she’s going to want to hunt simply by what we call her “glove response”. If she’s hungry and ready to hunt, she’ll hit the gauntlet like a ton of bricks when I whistle to her. If she can’t be bothered, she simply won’t respond. If she’s kinda-sorta interested but “meh” not really feeling it, she’ll respond, but her response time and overall demeanor will be laggy. It’s hard to explain with any precision and without going on and on, but I bet you know something about it, I’m sure you can read your birds’ body language after some time of getting to know each other.
When they’re really ready to hunt, I mean really primed, on edge and ready to kill something, they go into a state we call “yarak”. Very keen and alert, and then Mr. Oryctolagus cuniculus best hunker down under cover :wink:

As you said, if all conditions are right (feeding schedule, weather, etc) and she’s acting “off” then something may well be up, but by the time you see active symptoms of anything your chances are high it’s too late. The subtle signs are often the only ones you ever see, and they’re real easy to miss if you aren’t paying attention. Red-tails are greedy and will often have good glove response even when they’re roly-poly fat. If your RTH is at combat weight and is unresponsive at dinner time, something’s up. One of the reasons they make such good apprentice birds is precisely that. Many other hawks and falcons are much more difficult to read in terms of weight and hunting condition, and the line between “combat weight” and “dead” for a bird like a prairie falcon can be very fuzzy indeed for an inexperienced falconer.
Keeping a kestrel is completely nerve-wracking. Fiddling around with combat weights you might be talking about tenths of grams, weighing and feeding them 3-4 times a day. They are considered apprentice’s falcons, but for the life of me I can’t figure why… except that they’re so abundant in numbers.

We don’t have a specialist in town, but we are fortunate to have a vet around who has some previous falconry experience, years back–a rare find indeed! He treats the birds at the local raptor center, too.

Probably just about what you did. I don’t want to get too specific lest anyone reading get any bright ideas about giving it a try (;)). Harming or harassing birds of prey carries stiff federal penalties, so if it’s at all remotely possible, call your nearest raptor center, wildlife rehab center, state police, or fish & game department before trying to deal with it yourself. If you’re faced with an injured bird of prey or need to relocate one out of a building, best to arm yourself with a hefty pair of leather gloves and drop a towel or something similar into their talons to keep their feet busy!

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Mmm, not too often, assuming you’ve done your job right. Life as a wild predator is not easy. They have upwards of an 80% mortality rate in their (first) passage year. They really are the hardest-core of hard-core opportunists, and come to learn almost immediately what a sweet deal this is for them. I am a constant and reliable source for high-quality food, and that’s pretty close to everything she cares about. With my help, she catches more and better-quality prey than she would on her own, and she definitely understands that correlation.
Some birds don’t, and despite all your efforts they just don’t care to hunt anything bigger than mice and meadowvoles. In that case you release them, apply for a new trapping permit, and try to find yourself a bird with some ambition :).

And, too, at the end of the day, even if hunting is poor or she misses her kill, food will magically appear in the gauntlet. That’s a powerful motivator for sticking around.

There is a magic moment–during the first few days after trapping they’re pretty much in a total state of shock and fear. It sometimes takes days for them to decide to bend down and eat the food you offer; they’re afraid to expose the back of their neck to you. Once they do decide to eat, 95% of the work of manning (taming) them is done. The instant they realize that a) you’re not gonna kill them and b) food magically appears in connection with that leather gauntlet, you’re pretty much golden. What happens next generally progresses very, very quickly if you’ve laid the groundwork right.

They don’t usually go too far AWOL. I can predict her movements reasonably well in the field, and even if she disappears from sight I usually have a pretty good idea about where she’s at. Also, she wears a set of bells that ring at slightly different tones and can be heard from some distance, so that’s another method of tracking her down. Some birds wear radio telemetry devices, too.

Everyone loses a hawk at some point. Sometimes you find them, if they want you to, and sometimes not. They can be miles away in half a minute, so suffice it to say that if they don’t want to be found, they won’t be.

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Yes - I knew enough to keep something between the feet, beak, and me. The line between holding a bird securely and holding it hard enough to injure or restrict breathing is pretty fine. A major difference, of course, is that my birds use their mouths as their primary weapon and yours use their feet. And they have zero inhibitions about hurting you badly if they decide to use those weapons.

I’ve always had mixed feelings about the incident. I know why everyone did/acted as they did, but I can’t say I agree with all of it. I feared that if I didn’t get the bird out of the building quickly the guilty party might again take matters into his own hands, and not knowing who he was out of a dozen or so people, waiting for someone in authority to show up wasn’t that great an option. Not to mention the issue of one bird dead already. Would be most unfair for many people to suffer (most of whom knew better than to harm a bird, knowing it was illegal to do so) because of one bloodthirsty jerk.

But it’s probably the only time in my life I’ll ever handle a raptor.

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Whoops, missed the edit window:

Yes, American kestrels are very small for predator birds, described in the linked article as about the size of an American robin. There is a picture towards the end of the link of a kestrel perched on a human’s hand that gives a good idea of the size of these birds. They’re cute, but they ARE wild predators. I’d advise keeping your distance unless you know what you’re doing.

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Hey, thanks for posting–I’m totally happy to yap about it, so am glad to know someone’s interested. :slight_smile:

Thanks! Not that I can take much credit for that, but hey… :wink:
I trapped her. Apprentices are limited to holding an American Kestrel or Red Tailed Hawk trapped from the wild during their juvenile (“passage”) year. A few states allow Red-shouldered Hawks, but not many. They do have to be wild-trapped, apprentices are not allowed to fly captive-bred birds.

ETA: I almost forgot–I’ve had a license upgrade! That means now I’m allowed to hold a much wider range of species, allowed to fly captive-bred birds, to receive birds transferred from other falconers or rehabbers, and to take and raise eyeasses (nestling chicks).

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Sorry for the delay in posting… but not too sorry, we got some good work done today :). I think we’ll be out in the field even sooner than expected!

Thanks :slight_smile:

In the other thread, Xema described the time commitment as “necessarily ferocious”… that about sums it up. My state’s fish and wildlife department, in describing the licensing process, states that you must effectively dedicate your life to the pursuit, and they’re not joking about that. Being licensed doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life as an active falconer, but when you’re in possession of a bird your life pretty much revolves around it.

They are very abundant hawks, and easy to spot once you develop the eye for it. For anyone who hasn’t seen 'em, look around the uppermost limbs of the tallest trees, or along the tops of telephone poles for a thick bowling pin shape. That size and that placement, at least in the west, is nearly always a red tail.
That baby screaming is just: “mama, feed me!!!” Adults call when hunting or sometimes to challenge an intruder, but over all they’re far less vocal than the youngsters… though of course this varies bird-to-bird. My little male, Arion, cheep-cheeped all the time, but I really haven’t heard Gaia vocalize much at all.
You’re right about the odd choice of the low tree for an eyrie site, typically they nest near the tops of trees, and will usually choose the tallest roosting sites.
Hard to say how often they feed–they need to eat approximately every 22 hours with a minimum intake, but of course given the option they’ll eat as much as they can, whenever they can. During the summer when there are plenty of fat mama bunnies and dumb babies, they’ll tank up (good timing for growing a shiny-new set of feathers). Other times of year they might only eat infrequently. Different species have different metabolic rates and different prey sources. Little birds and the shortwings, accipiters, have much more finicky metabolisms than the bigger, slower broadwings.

Way cool indeed! They are amazing to watch at work.

Out here, that frequent all lined up along the road and a hawk of any notable size, I’d probably peg as a regional subspecies of Red-Tail, if it didn’t have the classic coloring. I’d love to know if anyone has other suggestions, I’m mostly just familiar with western birds.

Today she was 1136g, I’m expecting her flying weight to hover right around 2.5 lbs this season. Her trapped weight was 1548g, she had a keel on her like a butterball turkey. She was feeding herself juuuuuuust fine, and a hawk that hits a baited trap that far above combat weight is a hawk with some serious motivation to hunt. :smiley:
Last season she hunted right around 980-1020g, generally they fly at slightly higher weights every subsequent season.

They are BIG. At the raptor center where I volunteered we had two hens who seemed just… massive. In reality they’re smaller, weight-wise, than a fair-sized turkey, but that wingspan was unbelievable. We had two goldens and two balds; to do anything with them, like coping beaks and talons, it took three people to control them while a fourth did whatever needed to be done. They are not birds to mess around with, that’s for sure.
My ultimate goal, some day decades down the road, is to run a brace of Ibizan hounds under a golden and hawk from horseback over deer, furbearers, and coyotes. Goldens are incredible birds!
Balds on the other hand are… freaky. How they became our national monument I’ll never know–they’re very jumpy, nervous birds, and males especially are rarely free-handled because of their hinky temperaments. Have you ever heard the sound they make?
During lambing season around here you see millions of 'em. One day I was out with a couple friends and we rolled into a field we sometimes hunt. Taking a look around, we counted eleven of them between two small trees in one end of the field. Not wanting to feed them a couple hawks for lunch, we took the party elsewhere. They are beautiful birds, and I love watching them fish over a lake in Minnesota, but I am definitely happy to admire from afar.

Ooh, I have not read either one. The Hawk is Dying is on my Netflix queue, but I don’t think I knew it was a book… thanks for the titles!
I think the only fictional falconry-related book I’ve ever read was The Snow Falcon, which was thoroughly predictable but entertaining, and technically pretty correct. Probably my favorite non-fiction on the subject is a book about a guy who travels to Mongolia to meet the Kazakh falconers and their Berkuts (warning: dead wolf), called Eagle Dreams: Searching for Legends in Wild Mongolia.
For the technical piece of it, I’m still working on memorizing Liam McGranaghan’s The Red-Tailed Hawk: A Complete Guide to Training and Hunting North America’s Most Versatile Game Hawk (apparently literary-minded falconers really like to make the most of their subtitles).

That factoid totally made my night :smiley:

Cheers! Also: I love your username.
That gos knows full well when she’s been scammed. Chris has to have an excellent sleight-of-bunny, as she will absolutely nail him hard if she busts him swiping her kill. Gos are difficult birds, accipiters in general are difficult birds, but gos especially take a certain kind of handler. The effort pays off though, she is a friggen’ rock star. The day of that photo, she made four rabbit strikes and kills in under thirty minutes, which is… a holy hell of a lot. We usually see our first rabbit in right around thirty minutes :stuck_out_tongue:

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Regrettably, I have to wonder if, in their abundance and smallness, they are to some degree considered “disposable” by some people. I hate to say that about any bird, but that attitude is out there. I understand that you wouldn’t want a member of a species with low numbers or special handling needs handled by an apprentice, but with birds smaller isn’t always easier to keep!

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Oh, I have a question! :::: bounces up and down with hand in the air ::::

Clearly, for the hawks this “business arrangement” is advantageous enough for them to stick around. Mmmm… guaranteed food! Shelter they don’t have to fight other birds to keep! Protection from predators!

Anyhow - falconers do release birds back into the wild. I have to wonder if some of those released birds get recaptured. I have to wonder if some of them want to be recaptured - but I have no idea how you’d determine that.

So… have some birds been known to be recaptured former falconry birds? If yes, do they “man” more quickly and get back into the routine faster than a first-capture bird? I’d think so, but don’t know so.

How good are hawk memories? Of course, I’d expect their memories for things that are important to them to be the area they do best, but any indication that they remember people other than just the falconer they see every day? Do they seem to remember where things are in their environment? I assume they have a good memory for their routines involving food and hunting, of course.

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Thanks for the thoughtful responses.

Stupid question - how do you weigh a bird?

This was a year or so ago, but I recall them having a very bold black pattern, with IIRC a black head and light buff breast. Very different from the shades of tans and browns in the redtails I see frequently.

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:stuck_out_tongue:
It happens from time to time, though not always because of falconry handling. I knew an RTH at a raptor center who had been released three times, but kept approaching random people, ostensibly looking for a handout. Clearly, not okay, so the third time it happened back she went to live in the company of people.

I am actually suspicious that Arion had been handled before, maybe in rehab. He had a nick in the top part of his beak right in front of the cere, and I always thought maybe he had hit a power line or something, and spent some time being handled. He was practically tame as a dog right out of the trap. He wasn’t banded though, so it’s anyone’s guess.

It’s a good question about their memories. They have some capacity for it but I don’t know where it extends. They seem to remember dogs they hunt over, some they like and some they don’t. You know, I really don’t know the answer… it’s hard to say if they remember something because it’s happened before, or if they’re just reacting the same way to something that affects them one way or the other. She is perhaps more tolerant of my husband peering in at her, but she doesn’t much like him or anyone else, so it’s hard to say if she’s just pissy or if the infrequency of contact means she never desensitizes. They’re not terribly complex, mentally. They don’t, for example, really play with toys or anything.

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Sorry to be a bit late to this thread.

Congratulations NajaNivea on your qualification and your bird (which I must say is impressive - good photos).

Much of falconry’s qualification process is designed to say, in effect: “Yes, of course you find these birds beautiful and impressive; of course you’d like to have one. But do you fully understand and are you really ready to devote the time and effort that’s necessary?” Clearly you have answered this in the affirmative.

For me, the time required simply wouldn’t work - so I’ll continue as a camp follower. My falconer friend will soon be trapping a redtail and I’ll be along for the first hunt, probably around mid-November.

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My friend’s first bird was a male Kestrel. After a very successful year he released this bird, who promptly set up housekeeping with a mate in a box my friend had placed in the eaves of his barn. This pair returned and successfully raised a brood each of the next four years.

At one point during the third year, my friend was out near the barn watching the male. The bird flew close, my friend put out his hand, and the bird landed on it. They visited for about 20 seconds and the Kestrel then flew off. It was the one and only time this happened.

40

Not stupid, we have specially set-up scales for the purpose. I use a postal scale with an AstroTurf-covered block glued to the pan for a perch. With smaller birds you’d use a more sensitive lab scale, but this one is accurate enough for my needs. We train them to step backward from the gauntlet onto the scale and to sit still until they’re picked back up. She knows food or flying always immediately follows being weighed, so when we step into the food prep/weighing area, I’m always hanging on to her jesses because she’ll occasionally try to jump to the scale before I’m ready to weigh her.

Oh, yeah. I’m going to go out on the proverbial limb and guess you saw a bunch of dark-morph RTHs, or maybe the Harlan’s subspecies, Buteo jamaicensis harlani. Passage birds are more mottled with a larger breast patch. I’m having a hard time finding a good picture of a light-morph Harlan’s (which is sort of funny to imagine, the lightest version of the darkest variety), but here’s a passage bird that fits the bill. No way to know for certain but I’d guess that bird would moult out with a black cap, here’s a similar haggard (adult) bird.
RTHs can range from solid white to solid black and everything in between.

Other potential culprits might be the Swainson’s Hawk or Broadwing Hawk but both are smaller than RTHs, Broadwings significantly so.