for me to call her to my glove . I whistle to her when I want her to come today , and I raise my glove and that ’ s what she knows . But when you first go out hunting with her , instead of calling her to you right away , you start to walk away . And if everything goes correctly , she ’ ll follow you . And the advantage to following me around is that - even though she might not know it yet -I ’ m going to flush prey . I ’ m going to use a stick , and I ’ m going to hit a bush with the stick and out from that bush is a bunny that was hiding . So , we begin to work as a team .”
Do raptors have their own unique personalities ?
Anastasia confirmed that many of them can “ get ornery , because they ’ re wild animals , after all . You have to be sure not to reward bad behavior . If your bird flies to you when you didn ’ t ask it to , you don ’ t give her a reward . Sure , land on my glove . But I ’ m not feeding you for that , because I didn ’ t ask you to come .
“ My bird ’ s name is Leela , spelled L-E-E-L-A . Are you familiar with the television show Futurama ? There ’ s a character named Leela who ’ s a cyclops , and when I got Leela off the trap , one eye was blind . It ’ s an example of the adversities that these birds face .
“ She ’ s about a foot and a half tall . Humans have seven neckbones , and these birds have 14 . So , she can go from being short to stretching right up . As you know , owls can turn their heads almost all the way around , like 280 degrees . She can turn her head about 200 . And they ’ re not very heavy , one-and-a-half to three-and-a-half pounds at most . They ’ re all feathers .”
As busy as the winter rabbit hunting season is for falconers ( or “ hawkers ” as they are sometimes known , regardless of what type of bird they hunt with — falcons , hawks , or eagles ), the off-season is almost as busy . Trainers don ’ t fly their birds during the off-season because the risk of them not coming back is greater . But they still need to be kept well-fed so that they ’ re content and get the proper nutrients to grow new feathers .
Another important part of the trainer ’ s responsibility is weight management . They need to weigh their bird every single day — and sometimes multiple times a day . They need to pay attention to how many grams they weigh at all times . A red-tailed
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