Progress!

This bird is incredible!

We're making great progress; she took food for the first time on Sunday morning, eight days after trapping. It takes a pretty powerful motivation for a wild-trapped bird to overcome their natural inclination to believe that I'm about to eat her at any given moment. She was hugely well-fed when I picked her up off the trap, it took more than a week for her reserves to get low enough to even look at the food I offered her, but she finally took some food this weekend--it's the first major step in building a working relationship and very exciting.

Other than putting on her permanent furniture, there really hasn't been much to report up until now. Falconry birds are required by necessity, tradition, and federal law to wear particular equipment (called "furniture") which hasn't much changed in several thousand years. Now we use metal grommets on their soft leather bracelets and steel ball-bearing swivels for tangle management, but the basic setup is more or less exactly the same as King Arthur and Ghengis Khan used. Documents dating before 1000 BC depict equipment and techniques we still use today. One of the things I love most about this sport is true living history, with language, equipment, and techniques all reaching back with at least three thousand years of documentation.

Anyway, shortly after trapping we put on their furniture, and the taming process begins (called "manning"). We spend hours just sitting with them in the dimly-lit mews, touching them, picking up their feet to inspect toes and talons, opening their wings, just acclimating them to touch and proximity in the first 24 or 48 hours. People think it sounds nuts to take a wild bird straight off a trap and start "petting" them, especially those wicked-looking talons... but that first day or two they're really so afraid that they more or less accept anything. They're fully expecting you to start eating them at any second. It must be completely terrifying, like being in an alien world. As time goes on and they gradually lose the fear they start to take in more of their surroundings and adjusting to their new situation. I started taking her out of the mews, sitting or walking around the yard, sitting with her in the house while we watched TV in the evenings, acclimating her to the dog and the dog to her. There's really not a whole lot you can do with them until they're good and hungry, other than continue manning them as thoroughly as possible--until they start thinking about food, they're really just waiting to get eaten themselves, and still afraid of every new thing.

I'd offer her food on the glove every day, but she wasn't even looking at it. That's okay, and expected--as I'd said, she was very well-fed at trapping, so she had plenty of reserves to keep her comfy for quite a while. I don't think she even would have eaten on Sunday if I hadn't pushed the issue, but it's starting to get very cold here and she was shivering that morning when I picked her up. I was worried she was going low enough on calories that she was having trouble staying warm, so again I sat with her and offered her some food on the glove which again she didn't even look at. Eventually I offered her a big, juicy wad of liver on a pair of forceps, stroking it along the side of her beak to encourage her to open her mouth. Eventually she nipped at it, probably more out of irritation than anything else, but once it was in her mouth she sat thinking about it for a good five minutes, flashing her pupils. She took a few more bits off the forceps, but still wasn't hungry enough to take the food off the glove, so we were done for the day. It was a good sign though, and I knew she'd probably eat in the next day or two. At least I got some calories into her!

Sunday evening after the Market I offered her food again on the glove, but she was pretty uninterested. I figured she could think about it overnight and sure enough on Monday morning I offered her some more liver off the forceps which she snatched up fairly quickly. She sat flashing her pupils for a few minutes and thinking about that food... then leaned down and went straight for the food on the glove. Breakthrough!

It really is a big deal for them to lean down and take food from the glove for the first time. They handle everything amazingly well, but leaning down and exposing the back of their neck to the handler is a tremendously vulnerable position to put themselves in and they must be either very comfortable or very hungry to do it. She wasn't real hungry and only ate a fraction of what I expected her to take, but it was a huge breakthrough nonetheless and tells me she's making great progress... they say 90% of the work of manning them is done when they take that first food off the glove.

Once she started eating, it tells me she's relaxed enough to start leaving her unhooded in the mews, which feels great. Before this point, they tend to bate a lot, thrashing around and bashing up their flight feathers. Most birds have no sense of smell and rely on hearing only supplementary to their vision. By hooding them, and eliminating their visual input, it sort of shifts their attitude about everything into neutral. They don't fear what they can't see. We hood them and acclimate them to touch, to balancing and moving around the glove, to stepping on and off from perch to glove and back, all without the element of fear. By the time we remove the hood and let them see what's happening around them, they have some familiarity with all of these things, and it makes the manning process much, much less stressful for them.

Today at first light I went out to the mews and found her resting comfortably on her perch, a foot pulled snugly up in her warm breast feathers and looking out the window--a very relaxed posture. I picked her up for weighing (we monitor them very closely for weight and condition, and keep a daily log of notes), and offered her some food. She wasn't hungry, so instead we practiced picking her up and setting her back down on the perch, unhooded, as well as walking through doorways, going from light areas to dark and vice-versa, and spent some time just walking around the yard, enjoying the frosty morning.

I left her resting comfortably on a perch out in the weathering yard, and will try offering her food again in a few hours in exchange for hopping to the glove--the first step in a flight recall. Real progress has been made, and it's very exciting!

In other news, anyone have any good name suggestions? I have been calling her Gaia. I tried out Io and Spica, but nothing seems to quite stick. Until this point she's been so terrified I hadn't seen much of her personality... maybe in the coming days she'll calm down enough to tell me what her name is. I'd love to hear any ideas anyone has!