Mantling.

I thought I'd describe a little of my experience of how the two hawks differ in this regard.  Mantling is when the hawk hides the food or prey by spreading her wings and tail over it.  The idea, of course, is to hide it from other predators. 

When I take people out on Exmoor with North Devon Hawk Walks, I usually end the walk by firing a few heads of quail up into the air for Macbeth to chase, and, usually,  catch.  It's quite spectacular and always gets a cheer from the customers when she catches it in mid-air.  There's a lot going on when she chases it.  She has to work out when it is going to stop going up and start coming down, she has to allow for the wind strength and direction blowing it, and her, around.  She flies upwards, with her head well back, looking upwards. When she has got close enough to it, she flips up and back, so that she is almost standing on her tail in the air, and grabs at it with her claw.  If she misses it, she turns into a corkscrew dive to try and catch it up.  Quite spectacular as I say.

Anyway, once she's eaten the head ( which is about the size of the top joint of my thumb), her behaviour changes remarkably.  Up  until that point she has been coming to the customer's fist for a small piece of meat ( rabbit or quail), eating it on the fist and then usually hopping or flying off.  While crunching up a quail head, she will mantle as though her life depended upon it. When she's finished eating it, she is quite aggressive to any move being made towards her upon the glove, but only for about thirty seconds.  After that she calms down and she's back to her normal self.

I think the blood, brains and bone in the quail head cause adrenaline to be released in Macbeth's blood stream and this  triggers the mantling and possessiveness. ( Sorry to be so gory).

Just lately she has not been catching the heads and seems to be not quite so hell-for-leather chasing them.  I think she's worked out that what goes up, must come down, and all she has to do is mark where it lands.  The mantling and possessiveness is still there, but the flight is not nearly so exciting. I think I'll have to find a way of making it impossible for her to get the head without catching it in mid-air.  Not sure how.   In fact, I've no idea how !

Cassius, being a lot younger, is not nearly so successful at catching the heads but he is still very excited about the whole game and gives it his best shot. But,  no mantling. He's just his normal, placid self. People are sometimes surprised by how different the personalities of the two hawks are, they expect one bird to be pretty much the same as the other,  as I've described, they're not  !