Monday 9 January 2012

Stroppy Harris and runaway Spar.

To be fair, my new Harris Hawk is not really stroppy, just intensely suspicious and quite aggressive. She has never been touched, flown or anything during her 18months, so it's not surprising that she is taking a long time to learn to trust me.

 I started training her as one would a new young bird. So for the first couple of weeks, I just spent increasing periods of time sitting in her aviary, reading or talking to her. When she was able to bear this without trying to fly through the wall, I progressed to taking her from her perch and holding her on my fist, still in her aviary.  Then it was a progression to taking her outside, on my fist and getting her to eat while there.   Surprisingly, this bit of the training was achieved quite quickly and she soon tore into her food while clinging to my fist. Now we watch television together ( indoors, her aviary isn't that luxurious), and go for slow cautious strolls around the garden and house.

 Over the past two or three weeks, I've started stroking her with a feather and as she gradually came to accept that, I now stroke or touch her with my finger.  This is still at the early stages, and she is only just coming to accept it. I've been pecked dozens of times and "footed"  ( grabbed by her claws) several times.  Fortunately for me, her claws are blunt as she has a concrete floor in her aviary.  Later on, I'll cover it with small gravel, and use a nail file to sharpen her claws, but that is several months away. The other day, due to my carelessness, she had three of my right hand fingers trapped in one foot while the other clung tight to the glove on my other hand, so tightly that I couldn't get my hand out.  So I was effectively handcuffed until she relaxed her grip, after twenty or twenty-five minutes.  The natural rachet mechanism within her foot means that once the grip goes on, it stays on until she makes a conscious decision to loosen it.  If her claws had not been blunt it would have been a trip to the local hospital for me, for stitches.

Once she is on the fist she is pretty calm, although she will bate  ( attempt to fly off) occasionally. However, she doesn't step up onto the fist like my other birds.  Instead, she attacks it, grabbing it with one foot with all her power as though she were trying to kill it. Then she steps up onto it.

She's quite big, and I think her flying weight will be somewhere around 2lbs 6 or 7 ounces. But that is some time off.  She's taking much longer to train than a young bird would, but as I'm in no hurry, that's not a problem.

The Spar ( Sparrowhawk) chose her time superbly and demonstrated just how the species gained a reputation for "sulking" and being difficult to train.

 A local TV journalist,  Janine Jensen  from BBC  Devon's  "Spotlight"  programme, came along to film Artemis scaring away starlings from a farm in West Devon, near Bradford. I explained what was going to happen.

 " Bird flies to tree where starlings are gathering, starlings fly off, sparrowhawk comes back to me for a morsel of food".

 Janine asked a few intelligent questions to act as an introduction to the piece of film, and then I released Artemis, who totally ignored the starlings, flew to another tree and sat there for ten minutes, totally ignoring me. 

Classic sparrowhawk behaviour, probably brought on by me flying her before she was ready to perform.  She then lead us all over the surrounding countryside for the next half-hour, with me using the telemetry to find her in various woods, hedges etc.  She eventually consented to me picking her up from a fence post about half a mile from where we had started.

Not a great film debut. Fortunately, Cassius was available to chivvy off the starlings and save the reputation of North Devon Hawk Walks.  

It does demonstrate that falconry is very much a partnership, and the bird is the senior partner.
























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