North Yorkshire #6--When the unusual happens...

Hi everybody!

So, I'm sorry it's been about a month since i last e-mailed. I knew that would happen. Anyways, this e-mail is on the subject of what I've had to deal with when the birds act up. It includes escapees, birds catching animals when they're not supposed to, and birds just plain being a nuisance.

My first experience with an annoying bird was on my second day here when I had to sit with a bird that was still in training. This is called 'manning' a bird, and just means that you have the bird tied to your glove and you sit with it for 45 min or and hour to get it used to sitting on the glove. This bird is now flying free when we exercise him, so he's progressed a LOT, but It was quite annoying that first day when he was still jumping off my hand almost non-stop.

The next day, we had a bird escape. Birds very rarely actually escape. This was the first one for the year. It was a 4 month old falcon who was still in training. He just totally ignored the lure with the food on it, and flew off. That day was rather boring for me, since i was mostly just inside the center with not much to do, and no sociable people around. We got the falcon back after chasing him for about 7 hours. Needless to say, most everyone was in a rather bad mood by the end of it.

Then, the Sunday after the falcon escaped, we lost another bird. As i said before, this is normally a rare occurence, so it was really bad to lose two in one week. What was funny with this bird (A Turkemanian Eagle Owl named Cleo) was that she flew off during a demonstration. Demo birds are some of the most trusted birds we have. I wasn't there the day she flew off, but even i was surprised to hear that she had flown off. Cleo was also a bigger deal because she was gone for most of a week. She was also more dangerous because it was possible that she would try to attack the tethered birds if they were outside at night. So we had to bring them in every evening and back out every morning. She just randomly came back into the center about a week after she left. A couple of the more experienced falconers were able to get close enough to her to get her jesses. She's now back in the demos just fine, so we don't exactly know why she disappeared.

A couple of weeks ago I got permission to start taking Hawks out into the arboretum by myself. The first two i did went great, my only problem is that i tend to walk to quickly if I'm by myself, so i'm learning to pace myself. Then i had the experience of one of the Hawks (His name is Brian) going to hunt a pidgeon. Luckily, I had been out with more experienced people before when hawks had decided to hunt when they weren't supposed to, so i knew what I needed to do. It was just totally scary to see the hawk fly in the totally wrong direction. I didn't know my heart could beat that fast! Luckily this hawk is very well trained, and is more interested in the chick that i show him than the pidgeon that he caught, so i was able to pick him up w/o too much difficulty. He wouldn't let go of the pidgeon for quite awhile, though. While the experience shook me up a bit, i got through it fine, and was able to deal with the hawk. I don't especially like taking that hawk out anymore, though, b/c he caught another pidgeon the next time i was out with him.

Those are the more exciting stories i have. the other stuff that's happened is pretty small, like a hawk who tried to fly in the opposite direction to where i wanted him to go. I still don't know why b/c he was trying to fly TOWARDS machinery not away from it, and he didn't try to catch any animals or anything. He only came the right way when i called him down to food, so i just gave up on him for that day. Another time a bird did something weird was when an owl suddenly decided he didn't like me anymore. For the first month and a half that i was here this owl, Morris, flew for me quite well. He would fly a really long way for his food, and behaved really well around me. Then I tried to fly him a week ago, and he wouldn't fly even half the distance he did before. He just totally wouldn't fly for me, though he flew fine for the other girls who came to help. Apparently he just decided he didn't like me anymore. I do know that he's done this before, which is why he's being sold right now. He's rather a temperamental owl. Sophie had me feed him from the fist in his aviary to try to get him to associate me with the food. I don't know if it worked b/c i haven't flown him since.

So, those are my stories of the annoyances of birds who don't behave (in the more extreme cases: most of them are always being a bit annoying). Oh yeah, a piece of news: I'm now able to hood the falcons myself. yay! The skill of hooding takes longer to learn than other things that I've done. So, I can now get all the birds ready for the demonstrations by myself. I feel much more useful now that can help with a lot of things without needing someone watching over what I'm doing.

One last thing, If you would like me to send you an owl from England, I need to know within the week, because I'm leaving England next weekend. Make sure you give me your full address and everything.

~Nettie