Here's a (slightly fuzzy) photo of her first short creance flight, set up in my back yard. We did one session in the yard of ten or twelve jumps of approximately ten to twenty feet from the training perch to the glove, to cement the concept that whistle + raised glove = food. Also, that returning to the glove without a recall whistle, glove, or lure does not result in food.
People are always really amazed that we're able to have these wild birds coming to us within such a short time frame after trapping, but they're predators and opportunists to the extreme. Once they come to realize that 1) they're not going to be eaten, and 2) that food comes from the gauntlet, it's not really very difficult to bring about an extremely reliable glove response. Although handling and working with a wild predator is very challenging, the actual "training" parts are surprisingly easy... much less complex than training a dog, in my opinion. As you may know if you've ever trained a dog, food rewards work best when delivered randomly. In this next photo, you see her as she's just come to the glove; the first thing she does is check for food to have appeared.
One thing I have to be reeeeeallllly careful about is that she never, never, never learns that food comes from me--it always "magically" appears in the glove. I must never allow her to make the connection between my moving hand and the appearance of food, or that my pocket is where food comes from. Those talons are wicked sharp with a tremendous gripping strength, and they are faster with their feet than you can even possibly imagine. She moves with such speed that my brain and eye cannot track the motion of her foot during a strike; she can (and has) footed me, putting a talon through my hand, before I ever even saw her move. You develop a pretty decent sleight of hand, or else you end up with a badly mangled paw or a flapping mess of wings and talons latched on to your vest pocket.
We do our long-creance flight sessions in a large park near my house. If I get there at dawn there's never anyone around, and there are several good places to work. Yesterday we went out an hour or two later in the morning than usual so I'd have good light for shooting. I set her up on a large tree stump; as she was "airing herself out" with a good rouse of her feathers someone walked by with a barking dog somewhere on the other side of the park, so in this photo you see her all fluffed up (the rouse) and with her hackles up (the dog).
We had a great session of creance work, it was a (rare and precious) gorgeous day.
Here she is coming in for a landing:
Trivia: every single wing and tail feather has a name and number designation.The next step after teaching the recall is reshaping the glove response and transferring the predatory focus from the gauntlet to a lure and from the lure to the particular game I'm after. She's still a baby, and probably has spent most of her short life eating mice and meadow voles, packrats and whatever other little critters happened to be kicked up by passing traffic. Since I can't be sure what game she's tried and succeeded at finding and catching on her own, I'll need to demonstrate that rabbits are food--so that when we get out into the field for the first time, we're both hunting the same quarry.
I also need to ensure with good lure training that she knows where and how to target the animals for the most efficient catch and kill. One of the reasons she'll choose to stick around is because I'm (hopefully) able to provide and assist her with catching larger, better-quality game than she's able to hunt on her own. In the wild, she'll eat the game that is most plentiful and poses the least risk of physical harm in catching, but one of the reasons redtails make such fantastic falconry birds is that they are serious gamehawks with tremendous courage and ability. Typical game is cottontails and black-tailed jacks, but there are folks hawking redtails over everything from ducks and pheasant to foxes and geese--all are quarry large and powerful enough that in most cases she'd have trouble killing them on her own. I need to demonstrate how and where to catch and hold large quarry in order to best subdue her prey and hold it immobile while I catch up and can help with the dispatch when I arrive. Of course, these are things she'd quickly pick up in the first attempts at live quarry in the field, but if I can cement the notions first with a lure then we're several steps ahead when I flush that first cottontail, and with a hopefully substanially lower risk of broken feathers or lost quarry.
We are progressing beautifully, and hopefully will be out in the field by late this week. Stay tuned!
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