Great Leaps
It's amazing how you can be moving along with training, and feel you really are not making any progress, and finally, your bird 'gets it', and you make a great leap . . . literally.
I had succeeded last week in getting Abby to take food from off the fist, and probably rewarded her just a little too much. Her weight went up way too high. It has been a slow shave down since then. She is being kept in her mews day and night now, and seems comfortable in there. I am able to come in and take her off the shelf perch, and she does not try to get away now. The cold of late helps to bring her weight down, although without any exercise, she's not burning the calories too quickly. Over the last couple days I have noticed a subtle difference in her attitude. She doesn't seem frightened anymore, and seems to be paying a little closer attention to me. But I still hadn't reached the critical weight to motivate her to move her feet. Until tonight.
What a wonderful wrap up to the evening, after a somewhat frustrating day at work. Without going into unnecessary detail, I had to stay 2+ hours of overtime to work on a project. However, my husband had fed all the dogs and cats, and even had our dinner ready when I got home. I ate, and was able to get to working my hawk right away . . . after spending a few minutes looking through my American Falconry magazine, which just came in. For you falconry folks . . . the humorous article at the end, about hooding, particularly tickled me as I am currently dealing with training a hawk to the hood. She has either gotten worse at dodging me, or I've gotten better and quicker at getting the hood on her head. She still doesn't like it, but it can be done rather painlessly now, and with minimal fuss from the hawk. Given time, she'll accept it better.
Anyway, I set everything up, unhooded the hawk, and presented the tidbit on the fist, just out of reach. She studied it for a bit, as she has the last couple days, then started looking away, no, not really interested, and then with one last look around, as if she were going to bate away, she jumped to my fist and took the tidbit. I guess she just wanted to make sure nothing was going to come at her from somewhere in the room when she made her move. I returned her to the perch, to do it again, just in case. Yes, she jumped right over again. We finished up the small selection of tidbits I had on hand. I hooded her and left her in the livingroom, as I prepared another mouse. No, her behavior is definitely not a fluke. Each presentation, she came to the fist for the tidbit, as I held my arm higher and higher. For such progress, I let her have the whole mouse. She was put out into her mews shortly thereafter, with a nice warm feel in the crop.
Now we can start making real progress.
I had succeeded last week in getting Abby to take food from off the fist, and probably rewarded her just a little too much. Her weight went up way too high. It has been a slow shave down since then. She is being kept in her mews day and night now, and seems comfortable in there. I am able to come in and take her off the shelf perch, and she does not try to get away now. The cold of late helps to bring her weight down, although without any exercise, she's not burning the calories too quickly. Over the last couple days I have noticed a subtle difference in her attitude. She doesn't seem frightened anymore, and seems to be paying a little closer attention to me. But I still hadn't reached the critical weight to motivate her to move her feet. Until tonight.
What a wonderful wrap up to the evening, after a somewhat frustrating day at work. Without going into unnecessary detail, I had to stay 2+ hours of overtime to work on a project. However, my husband had fed all the dogs and cats, and even had our dinner ready when I got home. I ate, and was able to get to working my hawk right away . . . after spending a few minutes looking through my American Falconry magazine, which just came in. For you falconry folks . . . the humorous article at the end, about hooding, particularly tickled me as I am currently dealing with training a hawk to the hood. She has either gotten worse at dodging me, or I've gotten better and quicker at getting the hood on her head. She still doesn't like it, but it can be done rather painlessly now, and with minimal fuss from the hawk. Given time, she'll accept it better.
Anyway, I set everything up, unhooded the hawk, and presented the tidbit on the fist, just out of reach. She studied it for a bit, as she has the last couple days, then started looking away, no, not really interested, and then with one last look around, as if she were going to bate away, she jumped to my fist and took the tidbit. I guess she just wanted to make sure nothing was going to come at her from somewhere in the room when she made her move. I returned her to the perch, to do it again, just in case. Yes, she jumped right over again. We finished up the small selection of tidbits I had on hand. I hooded her and left her in the livingroom, as I prepared another mouse. No, her behavior is definitely not a fluke. Each presentation, she came to the fist for the tidbit, as I held my arm higher and higher. For such progress, I let her have the whole mouse. She was put out into her mews shortly thereafter, with a nice warm feel in the crop.
Now we can start making real progress.
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