New photos of the hawks

I just dug out these photos, taken some time ago by customers at North Devon Hawk Walks.  The top one demonstrates the gyroscopic effect, which means that once the hawk " locks on" to it's prey, it's head will remain still even if the rest of it's body is performing all sorts of strange acrobatics.  This is so as to minimise the chance of losing sight of the prey, of course.
The second photo illustrates the hawk's unofficial motto  " Height is safety". So although it's good to be on the upper slope of a hill, it's better to be on top of a car at the top of the hill.  It's even better to be on top of the bike, on top of the car, on top of the hill. 
I always remind customers of what I call " The pirate and the parrot effect".  If the arm on which the bird is perching starts to droop, the hawk will walk up the arm to settle on the shoulder, or sometimes the head.    People usually only need telling once.

South Molton

Just come back from South Molton, where the hawks from North Devon Hawk Walks have been part of the Seven Saturdays in South Molton, an attempt to liven up South Molton on Saturday mornings. It certainly needs livening up, closing as it does at 2pm on a Saturday.  There is a market, there are shops, there is everything a holiday destination in Devon needs, but come 2pm on a Saturday, down slam the shutters.  Quaint is one, nice, way of describing it.  There are others.


Anyway, a nice surprise today when Sue Mustin, who had been on a hawk-walk with us a year ago, presented me with a framed photo of one of the hawks.  It shows either Lady Macbeth or Cassius skimming along the ground and is a really great action shot. It won first prize in the "Action" section of the Nuneaton and Bedworth Festival of Arts, deservedly so.  Unfortunately, as it's framed I can't post it on here.  You'll have to come out with us, to see it in real life.

While I'm sitting in South Molton, with a hawk on my fist, as part of the 7 Saturdays, a lot of people comment upon how relaxed the hawks appear.  This is a product of their having been subject to a lot of manning during their early years.  " Manning" is mentioned early on in this blog, and is basically just getting the bird used to a range of different experiences, in a safe and controlled way, during their training.  Like much training, it never really ends.   This is why Lady M can sit on the fist, watching people trying to park ( we have possibly the worst parkers in Southern England, their natural skill at bad parking is encouraged by an absence of any coherent or sustained parking enforcement),  listening to the town band, ( very good) and visiting performers ( some louder, but not so good), and observing a busy town centre going about it's Saturday routine ( until 2pm, see above).


The moult is going well, all the birds have dropped huge amounts of feathers and are growing nice, clean new ones. In the early stages, the birds look quite scruffy and every shake releases a blizzard of fluff, dust and feather. Now they are beginning to look sleek and streamlined.  It should be all over in a month or so and we will be ready start hunting.  While the feathers are growing, they are vulnerable to being broken, so we don't hunt then.

Next weekend we are at the Tiverton Balloon Festival, as part of the Petroc contingent.  Petroc is our local college in North and Mid Devon and I sometimes run courses in falconry there.  Part of the day will involve introducing the birds to balloons.  I wonder what they'll make of them.

Flying hawks

A full range of weather options over the past two weeks !   Torrential rain, which is no good for flying in, baking sunshine, which is no good for flying in and then at last, perfect weather. Sunshine, but not too hot, and a strong gusty breeze that enabled the hawks to get high with ease.  When they are a hundred feet up and circling lazily around, the customers can really see what all the fuss is about.

If hawks wore T-shirts with mottoes, their's would read   " Never waste energy" and " Height is safety".   That's why they won't fly high on a hot day,  it's just too much like hard work to get up there. It's OK once they're at a certain height because then they may hook into a thermal, a column of rising air.  But getting there is hard work, which is where the first motto comes in.

When they are high, the customers at NorthDevonHawkWalks get to see the birds constantly changing shape as they adjust their wings to take advantage of the changing wind conditions. As soon as the customer puts out their fist, with a piece of  meat on it, the hawk changes shape dramatically. The wings are pulled in, so that they form an   ' M ' shape ,  less wing surface exposed to the air means less lift and so the bird drops down from the sky and hurtles towards the fist. It never fails to get a gasp of admiration !


A few days ago we were at the Mid-Devon show, in Tiverton where as usual, the hawks were very popular, with people queuing up to stroke Artemis the sparrowhawk and admire Lady Macbeth and Cassius.  My friend Tom brought along his African eagle-owl and we ran a competition to guess her weight  raising £40  for the North Devon Animal Ambulance.  The name of the winner will be placed on the website,  www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk within the next couple of days, after I've contacted them to send them their free Hawk Walk voucher.

It's getting more and more busy as summer holidays lure people out to learn about falconry with us. We've been going out twice a day for several days now, and if the weather stays reasonable we should have another very busy August. 

As the birds are moulting ( losing their old feathers and growing new ones), I have to be very careful with their  diet, making sure they get a lot of very good quality food to promote feather growth, but balancing this with the need to get down to a flying weight for the days when we have customers.  See previous posts for information about food for hawks.

Hawks flying

One of my customers, Darren Williams, has posted a great little video of Cassius flying.


See it at http://vimeo.com/43519321

He'll be posting another one shortly of Lady Macbeth in flight.

Haggard hawk

Life continues, here at North Devon Hawk Walks.

I'm looking after a young male Harris Hawk for a guy who has not been able to devote as much time to falconry as he would like.  I agreed to take on Hero for a month, to do a bit of remedial training and manning. He's been trained and hunted, a bit, but because he's had not much done with him, he's in danger of turning haggard.

Haggard means, basically, going back to the wild. So with Hero it's been a case of back to basics. Started off with sitting with him in the aviary, with him tethered.  Then feeding him on the fist, then walking around with him, then creance flying, then flying free.  Sounds easy! 

Actually, it wasn't too bad at all. Because of course, he was just being reminded of everything, not like Orlando ( see previous posts) who is learning it all from scratch.

Anyway, Hero is now flying free ( at about 1lb 5ounces), and following on nicely through the trees.

The only slight problem is that although he will follow nicely, he won't go far enough ahead. He needs to learn to do this if he is to be any good at hunting.  But I've still got a few weeks left to achieve that.


Orlando continues to frustrate and intimidate in almost equal measures.  She's got a tremendous bellow of rage that she uses whenever I have the temerity to try and pick her up from a perch.  But for several weeks now she's been free-lofted ( ie flying free in her aviary), as well as learning to follow on. She just needs lots and lots of manning. I probably need to get her hunting ASAP as that will help her psychologically.   Not enough hours in the day.!  ( Or rabbits in North Devon).

My wife Jane is off to learn about using Facebook for  business today. So hopefully I can pick her brains and the next stage for North Devon Hawk Walks will be to join the Facebook empire.

Look at the website www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk  for forthcoming events ( Fairs and shows etc).  Recently we were at the Devon Wildlife Trust event in Exeter, which is where the picture below was taken. Most kids are fascinated by hawks, and Artemis the sparrowhawk is quite happy to be stroked.

We shall be at the South Molton Seven Saturdays in Summer event, every Saturday morning, starting 14th  July.    Come along and meet the hawks.

Forthcoming events

Lady Macbeth, Cassius and the rest of the crew will be at Exeter Cathedral on Saturday 28th April as part of the Stay in Devon exhibition

As usual we shall all be attending the Mid Devon Show on 28th July. Look out for the North Devon Hawk Walks tent.


Also at the North Devon Show on Wednesday 1st August.

And I shall be doing a "masterclass" on falconry with the birds on Monday 3rd September as part of the West Buckland Festival.

I've added a photo of Lady Macbeth in which the telemetry she now wears can be seen. Over the past 4 months, she's twice  been out overnight as a result of my not being able to find her after she caught a pheasant. Obviously, she's more interested in eating that, than coming back to me.  Usually, the bell she wears is enough to help locate her but I decided I couldn't take the chance any more and invested in a tail mount for her, so that I could use the telemetry I already had for Artemis the sparrowhawk.  In the picture above, you can see the transmitter which is secured to her tail by a crimped-on metal grip. It's tiny, smaller than a UK five-penny piece, and carries a thin, six inch long aerial.

I did attach it to her anklet, but she ate the aerial, or at least, tore it apart. I suppose it was getting in her way a bit. She's quite happy with the present arrangement and I think she doesn't even know it's there.

We've just come back from a hawk walk. It's a cold windy day on Exmoor and the breeze helped Cassius and her Laydyship show off their flying skills nicely.

I also took out Artemis, not to fly, but to let people get close and examine her in a way they're unlikely to be able to do anywhere else. The above close-up doesn't give an idea of her size .She  weighs  222grammes when she is at flying weight, and she measures about six inches from her head to the base of her tail, which should be about four inches long.  See previous posts to learn why it isn't.

See www.NorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk  for details of the hawk walks.

Link to hawk photos.

Here is a link to photos taken by myself and customers on hawk walks on Exmoor.

Some are also from falconry displays in the UK, while a few are from my visit some years ago to Biak, in New Guinea. 


http://photobucket.com/HawkWalks

Patience is a virtue

Definitely time that I posted something!

Orlando, the female Harris Hawk that I wrote about in the last post, continues to occupy a lot of my time. Because she wasn't touched at all for the the first 18 months of her life, she is a lot more difficult to train than birds that are bought at three months of age and then trained, which is the norm.

We've progressed to the stage where I can touch, stroke and generally fiddle about with her without losing a finger.  This is important, because anyone who owns a bird of prey that is to be used in falconry needs to be able to check the bird for injuries, fit equipment etc.

  It's always possible to  "cast" a bird, that is getting someone to cover the bird with a towel while she is on your fist and thus immobilise her, but as you can imagine, the birds don't like this very much at all.  Because the Harris Hawk is quite intelligent, for a bird of prey, they soon learn to be way of anyone sneaking up on them with a towel. If the casting always takes place in the same room, they can become unwilling to enter that room.

But as I say, I am now trusted enough to be able to handle her most of the time. Except for her feet. Her tolerance of being touched does not yet extend to her feet.  She will allow me touch them a couple of times every two or three minutes, but no more than that. I've learned to watch for the tell-tale shift of balance as she takes the weight off one foot preparatory to striking me with it. But as with most things connected with falconry, time and patience will carry me through.

The sparrowhawk, Artemis, is taking a break now after a mid winter career of starling scaring. The winter has been generally mild down here in Devon so there are less starlings around.  She did a good job of scaring them away from the farms where we were employed. When we were outside, I would point her at a tree full of starlings and she'd head straight for it at speed.  She'd fly quite low and then pull up at the last moment into a steep climb which carried her up into the branches.  Inside the cattle sheds, she flew low and fast, chasing the starlings around, through, over and under the various obstacles until either she needed a rest, or she caught one.

The tail feathers of a sparrowhawk are very brittle.  They don't bend anything like as much as those of the Harris and are very prone to breaking. Artemis now has only a stump of a tail, a shadow of its former glory.  It doesn't reduce her speed but it does make her less manouverable. The tail feathers will be renewed, along with all her other feathers, during the coming summer in the annual moult.

During the moult, the feathers drop out, in a regular pattern, over a period of months and new ones grow out to replace them.   Because the feathers come out in a regular pattern, the bird is never "lop-sided" by having say two wing feathers missing on one side and none on the other. Over the years, I've noticed, that the  Harris feathers  drop out at two day intervals.  So if there is a wing feather on the floor of the aviary this morning, then the corresponding feather from the other wing, will be on the floor in two days time.

Falconers tend to keep their birds moulted out feathers ( the big ones, that is), so that they can be used to repair any damaged or broken feathers on the bird.  This is called "imping"  and basically involves fitting an internal splint or brace made from bamboo or plastic within the hollow spine of the feather  that is on the bird and gluing a section from a moulted feather onto the splint.  If it's done well, you can't see the join  ( as Eric Morecombe would say).

Anyone interested in flying hawks is welcome to get in touch with wwwNorthDevonHawkWalks.co.uk     We fly around the North Molton/ Withypool area of Exmoor in Devon, all year round, any day of the week.  I enclose a couple of photos, both taken by customers recently.

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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