Training

Since the hack ended I have been doing some training while lowering the bird's weight.  I first established a bridge with the word "good."  Same process as "clicker training" but I've never understood why people buy a contraption that makes a noise when they already have one of those, their voice (an exception being a whistle bridge for long distance behavior marking).  I would just lose, break or forget the dang thing anyway.

I haven't fully subscribed to any particular "method" or "recipe" for raising this bird.  In the beginning I just left her with food all the time and kept her around me and the family.  When she started moving around I let her out on a tame hack during the day.  Now that  she is getting cut her back some and she has some motivation I've begun to train her in the way that I feel I will get good results.

First thing that I decided is that it is not realistic for me to only call the bird to a lure and pick her up every time.  She needs to fly to the glove to fit in it my style of hawking.  I'm trying to accomplish this without her getting sticky footed or overly aggressive with the glove, so my method is to call the bird to an open hand with one or more tidbits hidden between my fingers in the glove.  The bird can see the food and how much she gets only when she lands on my fist.  I am clearly communicating that what you see is what you get and hopefully this will alleviate the desire to tear my glove apart looking for food.   As has been know to happen when calling the bird to a fist when they realize that food is potentially tucked in there or catch the falconer robbing them.  So far this is working.

I also have been giving baggies from a bird launcher in front of the dog to establish pseudo hunting scenarios for the bird.  After the dog goes on point, I walk up with the bird on my fist and trip the launcher.  When the hawk has her prey, I quickly walk up and attach her tail saver.  At the moment I am using a 4" piece of double sided Velcro that I put around the base of the tail to hold the train together so the all 12 feathers are supporting each other, I plan on using this unless the mantling becomes bad.  Currently she will spread her tail and drop her wings but she also leans over the prey mostly keeping her tail off or barely touching the ground.  Imprint accipiters I've seen the past often lean back on their tail; smashing it into the ground.  I bridge her for plucking at the prey animal and when her body language softens I toss her lure from behind, ungarnished, a foot or so in front of her which she quickly jumps to.  I then drop her cut up portion of food for the day from over her back around the front of the lure.  I've noticed that a lot of imprint accips break their feathers when pulling at food, so by only giving her cut up pieces I hope to get rid of some of that rocking back/tearing action.  As she is picking up her tidbits, I can slip the lure into my bag without a bad reaction.  When she is done eating, I've been jumping her up to the fist for her final tidbit.  Assuming this process continues to be effective, I figure I can toss a tidbit or two in front of the lure in the, jump her to the glove and continue hunting.  I'm prepared to make adjustments as I move along though.

Today everything when like clockwork and I'm planning on getting her out in the field soon to continue her progress.  I'm also planning on conditioning her to the hood in the future, maybe on some rainy day or something.  I also plan to stretch out her daily ration of food over the entire day, so that we can hunt, as well as, bridge and reinforce non aggressive behaviors throughout the day instead of at just one feeding time.  As I have said before, this is my first hands on experience training an imprint accipiter and I'm approaching it with aspects of training; changing and/or modifying the birds observable behaviors.