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.

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  !

Shakespeare.

So, a little about the hawks I have. 

Lady Macbeth is 8 years old. I purchased her when she was three months old, from Steve Wright, a well-known falconer in the UK.  He used to run the Heart of England falconry centre associated with the Mary Arden centre, a Shakespearen themed museum and display centre.  There was a tradition that all his hawks got named after Shakespearen characters. We were living in Kelso on the Scottish Borders at that time, so I was looking for a name to describe a blood-thirsty, female, Scottish tyrant.  Hence Lady Macbeth.  Sometimes she live up to the name a bit too much!


The other hawk is Cassius, 8 months old. Purchased from a breeder in Monmouthshire. He's named after the character in Julius Caesar who is described thus : " Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look".
Very appropriate for a smaller, slimmer hawk. He flies at 1lb 9 ounces as opposed to Lady M's 2lb 4 ounces.


Yesterday I met Norman Towe, a very experienced falconer. He and his wife come down to stay at the White Horse in Exford every year.  He usually brings a couple of owls and hawks and undertakes a few speaking engagements while here. He's a very interesting character, and has had some fascinating jobs . He's a Professor of Mathematics at Oxford among other things.  You meet all sorts in falconry.

He mentioned a sobering statistic.  He has twenty-four birds,  twenty-two of which are rescue cases given by people who took up falconry and then realised they couldn't cope.  

The Harris Hawk has made falconry available to thousands who would never have been able to cope with the birds traditionally used.  Unfortunately, many of this new generation didn't do enough research or think hard enough about the costs, time and effort involved.     When I take people out on hawk-walks  ( http://www.northdevonhawkwalks.co.uk/) ,  they are always surprised to learn that no sort of licence or training is required for anyone who wants to take up falconry.

I'm out with the birds tomorrow at the Sportsman's Inn on Exmoor. They're having a charity day with all sorts of attractions and the birds will be giving a flying display.  I hope the weather is better than it is today.
Cassius in particular gets water-logged in damp or rainy conditions. Being young, his feathers don't seem to be as waterproof as Lady M's.  They've both begun the annual moult and have lost half a dozen big wing and tail feathers each, with new bright feathers just beginning to peep through.

Enough for today.