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).
