I've held off posting lately because I didn't want to interrupt Daniel's story of the new bird, but now that things are in holding position until the bird is flying here's an update.
Things have gone from not ok to really good in the past couple of weeks. After a dosing for coccidia my hybrid has been back to his old self. Better wing beat, not landing and taking nice pitches. I'm not sure why I didn't have him checked before. But he was holding weight and I dismissed the possibility when I shouldn't have. Since being treated he's caught 11 ducks in 13 flights and the two miss days he was ~50+ of his flying weight.
I've also got the Gyrkin flying well, taking solid pitches and putting in monster stoops but still has trouble finishing the deal on ducks, often getting dodged at the last second. He has had some success and this past Sunday was one of those days.
Daniel, Scott and myself found some mixed ducks on a open hole in the ice on a 16 degree morning. This was likely to be the only water open so we decided that we had better fly it. Mongo was unhooded and cast off, immediately eating up the sky. At a pitch of about 700' we flushed and his stoop immediately pushed most of the ducks back into the water. After a minute or two to remount we flushed again and this time he leveled out from his stoop above the water and overtook a hen Gadwall over the ice. Grabbing her out of the air and nonchalantly coasted over to the bank of the pond, much to my relief, I wasn't ready to go ice breaking in the freezing cold. He got a good crop out of the deal and his second duck of the year was in the bag.
Monday was another good day. Mongo was still overweight from the flight the day before, so only Tulsa was ready to go. Another crisp, cold morning a ducks were there to be had. These high pressure, cold, cloudless days are great for these falcons and he effortlessly gained pitch.
Within minutes he was just a speck in the sky and I jumped the ducks from the water. A Gadwall was singled out and took the full impact from the stooping falcon. Upon inspection the duck's wing had be broken cleanly in half with a compound fracture. It is the first "tactical" kill for this falcon, as opposed to the body shots he has delivered until now. I'm sure this will lead to more "wing shots" in the future, since those must have far less physical impact to the falcon.
Hooding....... We'll the way Daniel wrote it made it seem like I have a deep philosophical viewpoint on hooding, but his words were a bit of sarcasm and we just went over the basics. Training a bird to the hood is, or can be, quite a process so in this case I'm only going to give my thoughts on hooding a newly trapped bird or a young one that has just been pulled from the chamber.
The most important thing is having a hood that really fits. People stuff bird's heads into too small of hoods all the time and just as bad is hoods that are too big. Small hoods rub the eyes and squeeze the bird's head. Big hoods rub the eyes because they wiggle back and forth, allow the bird to still see, and the bird learns that it can get the hood off so even if a good fitting hood is eventually used the bird still thinks it can get it off and will constantly try to do so into the future. Nobody wants to have spent $60+ on a hood and have a bird constantly scratch at it.
Next the hood needs to be opened all the way. It can make the hood appear less deep but that allows it to slip over the head easily.
Finally, holding the bird as close to your face as possible is a huge help. Your face distracts the bird a little and having it so close allows for finer tuning of your hand eye coordination. This makes your aim better and quicker adjustments can be made if the bird does try to move to one side or another. It's also important to roll the hood on smoothly, rather than "poking" it onto the bird's face.
Hooding a bird from the get go is a big help. The initial shock they experience when trapped or pulled from the chamber allows them to easily assimilate to the hood. Traditional manning of birds is of little use to me. A fresh bird is hooded and equipped then put on the block/perch. Each day the bird is unhooded and offered food. If the bird is not interested, the hood is put right back on.
Hood = positive because it makes the scary human disappear.
If a bird is not hungry no progress is being made its just learning that it can't get away so it gives up until it thinks it can possibly get escape. That is why a bird will sit calmly and just randomly bate violently in the first couple days of traditional manning. I've found that birds will be trained and manned just as quickly or much more quickly by just not bothering with waking a bird. Plus it allows me to get things done rather then just sitting around with a hawk.
When the bird is hungry enough it will eat when unhooded. After eating a tidbit I'll instantly rehood.
Hood = positive because food is there when the hood comes off. Human not scary because he now has something I want.
Early on I'll do 4-8, five minute sessions in a day and if the bird is motived then the same progress can be made in a day as in 4-8 days of manning. Personally I don't think the birds understand time. There is either stimulus or no stimulus to them. So a whole day of manning is not much different than a 5 minute session of being unhooded to the bird. The biggest advantage to this is that the situation can be controlled much better in a 5 minute window than in a multi hour day and all interactions are more positive than negative.
Many won't agree with how I do things and that is ok with me, but the proof is there and I've trained a lot of birds both for falconry and for work. I bet I've had my hybrid on my fist less than 2 hours total in the three years I've had him, Daniel caught his first rabbit with CJ 14 days off the trap, and not much longer than that with his first bird using his variation of what I do. I guess this is a bit of a tangent off the hooding subject, but it does show how effective of a tool the hood can be other than simply "blinders" for your bird.
Hooded Jack Merlin
-RVZ
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