Jump-up success!

It may be too soon to tell if my feeding her up scheme worked or not, but I have a suspicion that it has! Musket has spent the better part of the week with me in the office. She has spent evenings with me on my fist or on her new "bell" perch (picture to come soon) inside the house. She has had two evenings gorging on chicken necks and has not attempted to foot me once since. Yesterday I decided to try my hand at jump-ups again. Jump-ups involve just what you would think; the bird jumps to the falconer from a perch for a “tidbit” as the whistle blows, then returns to the perch for another round. These birds are highly intelligent; they quickly learn what they are required to do for food. Up until this point for the last 6 months or so, Musket has not been expected to perform for her meal, but not any longer.

I cut up the tidbits and readied them in a pouch for the test. I placed her on her bell perch and held out my fist with a tidbit on it. She almost immediately jumped to it and ate her treat. Earlier this week when we tried this, she just about took my arm off with her aggressiveness. I had to hold her jesses tight so she wouldn’t crawl up my arm or jump at the treat. This time she was perfectly calm, but couldn’t remember what to do next. I pointed to the perch with my free hand. She looked at the ground searching for dropped treats; since this is usually my sign to her that she needs to look around. She sat on my fist for a minute or so, trying to figure it out. I didn’t want her to start footing my glove looking for more food, so I sneakily took one treat from the pouch and placed it on the perch. By some miracle, she did not see me do that little maneuver. Once she saw the treat on the perch, she hopped down to it. I garnished my fist again and presented it to her. She popped up immediately and ate the treat and I blew the whistle. This time she still wouldn’t go back to the perch, so I dumped her off the fist by dropping my hand quickly. I had to do this two more times, but then, the lightbulb turned on and she would make her own way back to the perch! Awesome!

By the end of the session, she was jumping to my fist just as I blew the whistle! In January, it took me two weeks to get to this point, I feel very good about our accomplishment.

So I think my little experiment worked. It took the edge off by giving her lots and lots of food. Her attitude is almost 180 degrees from what it was on Monday when I was worrying that I had broken my hawk and made her aggressive. She’s calm and responsive now, all I have to do is get her to start coming to me across the lawn consistently, then I’ll cut her loose and we’ll go hunting! Wish me luck!

Musket with me at Work. I've changed the wrappings in that box... yuck!