Creance and Lures: Houston we have a problem!

I had Musket’s weight down enough that she was eagerly jumping free to my gloved fist from a perch across a room. I decided that it was time to take her outside and try her on a creance. A creance is a line that can be any length (50 ft is pretty good) that is attached to a weighted object. It’s basically a leash. It allows you to fly the bird outside without fear of losing the bird. If she takes off for the sky, she can’t go further than the end of the line. She did a good job with this; it wasn’t much different than our flights indoors except that she could fly to me further. She was mostly okay, but still kind of skittish.

I had her coming well to my fist when called on the creance line outside when I realized that I had not spent the time to wed her to the lure. I am sure that you all have witnessed falconers swinging a lure around to call a bird in. This is not something that is essential to the type of falconry that I am doing, but it is a good tool if the bird goes into a tree and decides to sit there for hours until she feels like coming down. It’s extra incentive to bring her back in. Falconers “wed” their birds to the lure which basically means that the bird learns that when it comes to the lure it gets a huge reward. Most birds pick this up quickly and treat the lure like prey. Musket was no exception and learned that the lure was something to be desired fairly quickly. The only problem was that in order to wed her to the lure, I had to give her huge meals on the lure, and that also meant that my training slowed down as she had to sit for a few days to get rid of the weight. It was frustrating because in my mind it had already taken far too long to get her to the point we were at already.

When we finally arrived at the point where I felt that she was properly wedded and I was getting ready to free-fly her, we had a bad day on the creance. The following was a post I put on an apprentice falconry board, you can probably tell how frustrated I was at the time.

I've hit a snag with my Female RT "Musket". I trapped her in early January at 49.9oz. Let me say that I like to do things slowly, especially things that are very important to me. Well, we had some weight issues early and my sponsor advised me how to solve those, but after all this time, she still is not where I want her to fly her free. She has been doing some great flights on a creance from a post on the lawn to my glove with very little hesitation. I have her flying the length of my yard to me with no problems. She’ll come to me almost immediately as soon as I put my hand out there, and after we’ve done that for a little while, I blow a different whistle and throw out the lure with a full crop of food on it. Yesterday she almost jumped for the lure before I had it on the ground and then she hopped down beside it and leisurely ate the chicken I had put on there. She let me walk around her without problem, letting me put my hand right above her as she ate. She reluctantly went after a few little tidbits I tossed out trying to get her to trade off, but eventually we did that as well. All was going as planned until I took the lure away. When the lure was safely in my pocket, she walked around seeking out bits of meat that she had missed (she’s really good at this, I had no idea that there were bits of meat anywhere). The last two days of lure flying, she decided to fly back to her "creance post" after her lure meal instead of coming back to me. So, I stood between her and the perch, blocking her from flying to it and offering her a tidbit on the glove. After a while she gave me, what I can only describe as the “screw you” look, and took off! She made it to the end of her creance line and kept trying to fly off. I waited her out, patiently ignoring her escape attempts and would every now and then present a tidbit and blow a whistle to her. Well after about 10-15 minutes of this, I decided that she was not going to willingly come back, so I gathered up the slack in the creance line and walked toward her. Then she acted like a wild thing and flung herself on her tail and stuck her feet out at me. After a few attempts, I did finally get her to hop up on my glove by pushing my hand on her keel, but she was not happy about it. It was funny though because once she was on my fist, she was a different bird, totally calmed down. I actually probably could have flown her again on the creance, maybe I should have, but I put her away in her mew, and left her there for the night.It’s a bit frustrating to me because I really should be at the point where I am flying her free. It’s been a month and a half, she should be trained by now. Some part of me feels like a failure in this endeavor. But, my general way is to take things slowly. I am sure that part of this is my slow pacing and also inexperience, so I probably shouldn’t be too hard on myself (that’s what my husband says). But I can't shake the feeling that I'm doing something wrong. I have put a call in to my sponsor to try to help me troubleshoot a little bit. I think it’s just a matter of weight reduction. I know if she was not tied yesterday that I would have lost her. I know that free flying's a leap we are going to take hopefully soon, but I don't think we're quite there yet.

The board had some good suggestions. Ultimately the one that worked was to give her a full crop of food over a few days and let her feel fat, and then take her weight down again quickly so she felt hungry. I guess the birds can get used to getting little food and it gets their attention to have a full stomach and then go without again. After I tried this last suggestion, Musket was all over me! She would not let me get far away from her without coming to me and this, as I now understand it, is exactly what I needed to see before we flew.

We were now ready. I called my sponsor and told him I was going to do it, I was ready to fly her free.