Fay and Falconry

I want to take a break from my training history to give an update from Hurricane Fay. It was pretty exciting for us! We got the Florida version of a “snow day”, both Hazen and I were given administrative leave and told to stay home and brace for the storm. It would have been really fun if I hadn’t come down with a nasty cold that I’m still getting over. Oh well, it was nice to sit at home, listen to the wind and rain, and watch the Olympics.

We had no major damage, but we did have a lot of limbs come down and a few dead trees in the lot behind our house came down as well. But over-all, this was a tame one and a nice wake-up call to us Floridians who have gotten complacent over the last year. It’s easy to forget about these devastating storms until you have one barreling down. Fay hit the whole state. It came over the keys, crossed over the state south of us, and then turned right around and came back over us. We got the first of it Thursday night with the wind picking up pretty good and torrential rains, but no lightning or thunder. Earlier that week Hazen and I caught Musket in the dark so we could get jesses on her in case I got nervous about the storm and wanted to bring her it. I was doing fine until we started getting 50mph wind gusts, then I got worried about her in the rain and wind in the dark. When we finally got a lull in the rain, Hazen and I ran out and brought her in for the night. As you can see in the picture, she was pretty bedraggled. She simply refuses to get under shelter and will sit out in the rain all day long, silly bird. She spent the night in her giant hood in a warm room.

The next morning, I put Musket back out in her mew after things had calmed down. I guess I should have known better because we were in the eye of the Hurricane which spanned about 65 miles so it took many hours to move over us. Well, things get pretty calm in the eye, clear skies, little wind, and you start to think it’s over. The wind picked up again towards the late afternoon moving the other direction just as strong as before, so I went and brought Musket in again to spend another night safe in her box. I took the opportunity to weigh her and she was just over 50 ounces! Sigh… I have almost a pound of weight I need to peel off her before we can safely fly again in the fall. Oh well, it’s good to know what I have to look forward to.

All and all it was exciting. That was a “good” storm. Some folks lost power, but most had it back up and running within a day, unlike Hurricane Frances where almost everyone I know was without power for at least a week, I had no power for two weeks. They say there is another one brewing up south of Cuba. Maybe it will come and get us, it’s hard to say, this one sounds bigger. It’s good to know that I can just pack up my bird and leave if I need to.

I’ll resume my next post with what happened the first time I flew her free. I hope you enjoy the videos and pictures of the storm!

Early Training

Transforming a wild hawk to a reliable falconry hawk, in my limited experience, has everything in the world to do with food. Hawks, in general, are not social animals. Musket doesn’t put up with me because she thinks I’m cool. She is simply smart enough to realize that if she does what I ask, she gets to eat a free meal. Getting food from me is way easier than hunting for herself! Hawks get this for some magical reason and with proper conditioning, will respond to their falconer while flying free! Then, when they do have a successful hunt, they will allow their falconer to trade them for that rabbit or squirrel with whatever morsel they have brought to barter, like a chicken wing. Maybe one day I’ll be able to see behind the curtain, but for now, I find it simply stunning that this even works.

There are tons of different methods for building that working relationship with a hawk, but the common thread in all these discussions is to bring the bird’s weight down. I knew this golden rule, but still did not realize just how crucial it was to do this as quickly and safely as possible.

The first week I had Musket, I got her to take food from me from day one! I thought this was a wonderful accomplishment. The books said that most birds will not do this and it will usually take them several days to get hungry enough to get over their fear and take food from you. Now I wish she had been like a typical bird and was too afraid of me to eat from me. But, I had to learn the hard way just how much to feed my bird.

I don’t know how many of you have ever clicker-trained a dog, but working with a hawk is very similar. They call it operant conditioning in psychology, the “Pavlov’s dog” response. For every positive thing she does, she gets a reward. As she gets the reward, I make a sound so she associates that sound with the reward. In my case, when she did something right, I blew a whistle. This is a sound that can be heard over distances which is vital when she’s somewhere in a tree and I can’t see her, or if I want her to come to me. I’m getting ahead of myself.

When I started working with her, I’d give her a treat and a whistle just for being brave enough to take the food from me. This also helped establish to her that the sound of the whistle meant a food reward. I also wanted her to develop the association with me, that I meant food. But there was a problem, I was feeding her too much! My goal was to safely bring her weight down and work on training at the same time. I only offered her a few ounces of food a day, and her weight would drop slightly, but it I always felt like I was starving her, and her weight drop was not significant.

Still, I felt as though we were making progress. The books outlined a series of steps to follow when manning and training your bird. Some of these steps could be combined, but with my limited knowledge, I didn’t know that at the time.

I continued to feed Musket her regimented portion every day. She’d take what was offered, gradually becoming bolder as she got over her fear. I could get her taking food from my hand never taking her eyes off me, then she would eat from my glove and put her back to me. After a while, I could get her to walk towards me to take food. Eventually I got her to step on the glove to take food, until I finally got her to jump up to my glove to get food. Her weight was dropping very slowly as I needed to feed her to train her, and our sessions were already short. It was a catch 22 situation and I couldn’t figure out how to break it.

Throughout this process, she still seemed kind of wild! In the middle of my training, I had to leave for a week (Phillip and Roseanne got married), so I asked Rudy to watch her for me while I was gone. Well, when I got back, she was a different bird. She had this calmness about her eyes that she didn’t have before. Rudy had been working hard with her to man her down and was successful in dropping her weight safely, but quickly. I was a little disappointed that it was not me that was able to do this to her, but I was grateful nonetheless.

Next post… more training, and finally… free flight!!

Manning

So now I have this bird… what next? How do you go through the process of taking a wild fearful bird and transforming it into something that will fly to you out of a tree on its own accord when called?? It still seems like magic to me!

Now we enter the period called manning, this is when you get a bird used to the presence of people and calm them down. There are lots of different methods to man a bird. Some falconers try to get it all done at once and throw a big party to get the bird used to all sorts of sights and sounds right away. Some keep them awake for days to keep them tired so they will, in theory, accept their lot faster, too exhausted to resist.

Other falconers approach this period with caution and try not to scare the bird. They might place the bird in a darkened room to start with, since they are so visually oriented this method is instantly calming. They will then introduce the bird to new sounds and later sights slowly, gradually allowing the bird to get used to their new life with minimal stress. I have heard folks say that this method can create a bird that is less easily spooked and can later be flown at higher weights without as much fear of loosing the bird (more on that later). I don’t know how much of this is true, but all these methods will help bring the bird down to a calmness level and ease that allows it to work with people.

I chose the middle ground. I kept my bird with me at all hours of the day but let her sleep at night, keeping her constantly involved in her new world. We set up a tarp on the wall and floor with a ring perch to keep her in an active area of the house where she could see us moving around at all times, but not requiring her to physically be with us at all times. I put her in her giant hood and brought her to work with me every day, exposing her to all that I could.

It was hard for her, but I was amazed at how quickly a wild bird adjusted to the hustle and bustle of the alien human world. It wasn’t too long before she would fluff up and get cozy on her perch, or eye us warily but make no move to try to get away. I remember the first time she was comfortable enough to start cleaning her feathers with us in the room, I was thrilled!

Throughout the entire process of manning, I would work with her every day, monitoring her weight and slowly bringing her down to where she was hungry enough to get over her fear and accept food from me. Managing their weight is the key to success. I’ll go into detail on how to I got her to start looking at me as a source of food and not as a predator in my next post.

Home, the First Day.

I brought Musket home! I had a red-tailed hawk in my house! It was like a dream come true.

After the trapping, I got my new bird home safe and sound. Rudy helped me put her equipment on, so she was bedecked with new anklets, jesses and a leash. I transported her tied to a perch in a box made special for her. They call it a “giant hood” and it’s basically a narrow tall box with breathing holes that a falconer uses to safely transport his/her bird.

I spent the rest of the day with her. I laid down some tarps (because a red-tail can shoot poop up to 6 feet, maybe they should make it an Olympic sport!) and watched a few movies with her on my fist in a darkened room. I first had her out with her hood on, which she had on since we had trapped her. She had no idea where she was. When I finally took the hood off for the first time, the look she gave me was absolutely priceless! It was this shell shocked look of panic, I could only imagine what was going through her head. Poor bird, she’d get used to it all soon enough. She was pretty calm for being freshly trapped and only baited (jumped off my fist) a few times that first day. I think she was sizing me up, she was definitely scared, but I was able to get her to swallow a few pieces of raw meat that day.

You can see this funny picture of Musket and I on our first day together after Hazen got home. The house is a wreck, I’m in pajamas (typical) and Musket and I are a little unsure of each other. (You can see the giant hood in the background to the left, it’s the big white box).

Trapping My First Hawk!

It must be said that I am a good girl. One month before I received my permit and a week before the opening of the second trapping season, I received a call from my work that a hawk was stuck in a building. It had been there for 5 days, and they needed help to get it out. I went out and successfully caught the bird that had flown through a window and been stuck in a small chamber since. (They thought some kid had thrown a ball through the window). The bird was a gorgeous, huge immature female red-tail, just what I would be looking for in a month. Sigh. I let her go and tried not to think of how cool it could have been to have taken her home especially later when it was coming down to the wire and I was wondering if I'd even get a bird this season.

It was three days before the end of the trapping season. Permit freshly in hand, I begged the day off work knowing that the weather forecast for the two days after looked grim. I woke up early and met my sponsor Rudy. We drove up to a place where Rudy had trapped red-tails before. I was relying on his experience because I rarely see red-tails, and when I do, they are usually adults. It was a foggy morning and the first bird we ran across was a dead first year red-tail in the road. My sponsor laughed and said, "that was your bird!" I collected it anyhow hoping that we'd catch a live one and I'd be able to use the feathers off of this one in case we broke some in trapping the live one. More on that later

We arrived to the place where Rudy thought there would be a lot of red-tails, and he was right, I’d never seen so many in one place, and I look… believe me! The first one we saw was a big immature female, but she flushed the wrong direction and wasn't interested in our gerbils. The second bird we saw was sitting on a power pole. Rudy caught sight of her first. We got close to her and threw his trap out of the car. We headed down the road a ways while we waited and then spotted two other birds. Before we could get turned around however, the bird on the power pole came down to the trap, was that ever thrilling to watch! We pulled off and watched her foot the trap again and again for almost 5 minutes (those poor gerbils!). She just wasn't getting caught. Finally she started to jerk her foot erratically. We figured she had finally caught a loop. Thinking this was our chance we moved in and before we could reach her, she took off, knocking the trap over in the process.

Luckily, she landed nearby in a tree; she was keen on those gerbils. So, since she had fouled up (no pun intended) the other trap, I threw mine out there. I had spent about 8 hours building and setting loops on this trap, it had probably close to 150 loops on there. We drove down the road again and put Rudy's trap out on another young bird and by the time we turned around our first bird had nailed my trap! It was incredible! I grabbed a towel and ran over to her to restrain her... oh she was caught really good! She had at least 8 loops around her feet, she wasn’t going anywhere! We collected her, hooded her wrapped her in a towel and took her home!

Preparing for the Hawk

To become a Falconer, one must go through a series of steps. The major and most difficult step is finding a sponsor who is willing to apprentice you for two long years as you learn to train and hunt a bird of prey. I was lucky. I found Rudy by chance. The one task that was outside of my control was behind me, now it was up to my skill and ingenuity, or so I thought.

Step 2. Take a Test.

Every state requires that would-be apprentice falconers take a written test of which they must pass with a score of 80% or better. Rudy told me that the test was not difficult, they just want to be sure you won’t kill the bird if you get one. Well, Rudy is right about most things, but that test was HARD! I pride myself on knowing by birds. I can accurately identify a hawk on the wing at 300 yards without binoculars driving in a car at 70mph thanks to my years of training. But this test required more of me than just basic knowledge of hawks and natural history. It was chalk full of questions related to disease, falconry terms, training, and identification. I passed, with an 83%. A disappointing number, and a blow to my ego for sure, but passing.

Step 3. Building the Mew.

I had passed my test (luckily), but now I had to rely on my limited carpentry skills to build an enclosure to house my future bird. I have a wonderful family who visited for the Thanksgiving holiday. They helped us demolish an old play set to convert it into a new hawk cage. We settled on an 8ft wide, 12ft long, 8ft high design that was a combination of a Mew (hawk house) and a weathering area (hawk tie-out yard). It took two long months of work, favors pulled in from friends and family, and a trip to the emergency room, but in early January, the Mew, my masterpiece, was finished. (Since this picture, we've added doors and walls to the antechamber.)

Step 4. Be Patient!

I have learned the essence of patience in waiting for my falconry permit. When trapping a hawk in Florida, there are two six week seasons that you area allowed to trap. I had missed the first (Sept-early Oct) and the second ended on January 12th. I had started the process of taking my test in early November hoping that the permit could be issued to me by the end of December so I could trap my bird after the Christmas Break. I took my test, secured my sponsor, built my mew, pulled together all the equipment I’d need, had a law enforcement officer come by and inspect my facilities, and now I had to wait… and wait… and wait. Well, it took two months of begging my own agency before they finally mailed my permit on to the Feds. The gal who issues the permits from the Feds processed my permit and faxed it to me the same day she received it. By the time I finally had my permit in hand, it was January 9th, I had 3 days to locate and trap a bird or I would be out of luck until the fall. The forecast was for rain. Sigh.

Next post… Step 5, trapping my first hawk!

How I Met Rudy

I guess since I am starting this Blog about my falconry experiences and this may go beyond just what Musket and I do together, I’ll start from the beginning. Summer of 2007, I met my sponsor, a seasoned falconer named Rudy Howell. A good friend of mine, Jim Garrison, introduced us one day when we were down at the FWC regional office. Rudy was there working on painting something and he and Jim struck up a conversation. Rudy was talking about his last bird, a merlin (small falcon), that he caught from the wild and let go because frostbite had gotten to its toes and they were turning black and falling off. That instantly caught my attention. I dropped what I was doing and listened in.

For those of you who don’t know, I have been interested in Falconry since my early years of college. I took all the classes UC Davis had to offer about birds of prey, participated in road surveys, and volunteered at the campus Raptor Rehabilitation Center cleaning cages, handling sick birds, and participating in outreach events with resident birds. It was always so fun to strap this powerful amazing bird to your fist and talk to people about it. I loved it! I wanted to be a falconer to develop my own bond with one of these powerful animals, but I didn’t have the time, money, or ability to go out and actually kill things having been a vegetarian at the time.

Here I was almost 10 years later, having lived in North Florida for 3 years, working check stations, gutting deer, shooting squirrels, dealing with nuisance wildlife. I had long given up my vegetarian ways. At last I felt a full understanding of where meat came from and, having participated in hunting activities, could finally see myself actually hunting my own meat. I felt that I had the right to eat it now. (I know that doesn’t make sense to most people, but that is how I feel about it.) So, I was faced with this falconer, who seemed really friendly and knowledgeable, so I asked him if he’d be willing to take on an apprentice, and he looked at me surprised and said, “well sure!”

And that was the beginning of my relationship with Rudy Howell, my sponsor, teacher, and mentor in this endeavor.