Arkansas Hawking Association newsletter article
Just finished writing this for our state publication, and haven't come up with a title for it yet, but I thought I'd share it here. Most of this will all be recap for you guys, of course, but I hope you enjoy it anyway!
After several weeks of searching, Pele was trapped on October 24th, 2011 on a bal-chatri. She was a bigger bird than I was after, having initially hoped for a small male Cooper's that I could hunt sparrows with, having both heard from others at home in Oregon and read from those with more experience that passage female Cooper's would often ignore sparrows in favor of larger game. I would gladly have pursued rabbits with a Redtail, but with my graduate school schedule, I wanted quarry that was readily accessible, and while rabbits do exist in the Jonesboro area, finding populations of sparrows is much easier. Once Pele was in my hands, though, I just couldn't let her go - I had been out looking for Cooper's since early September and though I had seen a handful, only two were passage birds in trappable situations, and neither had cared for my two house sparrows in a BC. But now, I finally had a Cooper's Hawk, and having heard plenty of warnings about late-trapped accipiters, turning her loose simply because she wasn't the little male I'd hoped for didn't seem worth it.
Pele's trap weight was 477 g, but on the morning of the 26th, by the time she had cast and her stomach was finally empty, she sat at 428 g with her hood and jesses, making her a pretty average female Coopers. Despite that, her build was such that she looked like a larger bird, with long legs and toes, broad shoulders, and a deep bill. She continued to refuse food until the afternoon of the 27th when, at 398 g, in a darkened room, with only a cracked doorway and a small LED flashlight for light, she ate a few tidbits that I had placed in her mouth. That evening she was more willing to eat, and so I fed her to 413 g.
Despite her initial reluctance, once she was eating, Pele's initial training proceeded much like most other hawks does. She hopped to the fist the next day, and made a few 1-2 foot jumps the day after that. I went ahead and raised her weight back up into the 420 g range over the next few days, and she continued to cooperate while being introduced to my roommate, and sitting unhooded on the perch in the living room while I made breakfast. Not all was as perfect as it sounds, of course - being a Cooper's, she bated plenty at every little thing, and much as I tried throughout her training and manning, I was never able to leave her unhooded for long, whether she was alone in a room or being monitored. I stopped trying once she developed mild friction burns on the bottoms of her feet, since she would bate onto the astroturf tabletop and then continue jumping and pulling as hard as she could. The table perch I had made for her controlled mutes easily and was high enough for her to be comfortable on, or so I had thought, but there was always something for her to bate at, whether it was the window, the ceiling fan, or the balcony of my housemate's room upstairs. A pole perch might have kept her feet in better shape, but I suspect she would have bated constantly regardless, and therefore hooding her was the only option. During the day, she would (and still does) bate even while hooded, but she thankfully doesn't pull hard enough to injure her legs, and quickly regains her perch.
By November 6th, she was flying the full length of my apartment's living room without hesitation, and so we headed outdoors. Pele needed a slow reintroduction to the world outside my apartment, and so the first day outside was spent simply bating off the fist until she noticed the food on the glove. I began bringing her weight back down slowly to refocus her, and togther we learned about scary things like falling leaves and passing cars. A few days later, she was flying around 20 yards instantly to the lure and fist, and on November 23rd, at 398 g, after waiting for the high winds and rain that we'd had lately to die down, Pele and I went out on her first hunting trip at a nearby grassy field. Instantly, she flew up into a tree and refused to come down. Of course. Fist recall failed completely, but she did come back down to the lure, and once I had her on the glove, she did stay there a little while longer before making for another tree. After half an hour of this, with no wild game flushed whatsoever, I got her back on the fist and released a House Sparrow from my bag, which she chased instantly and caught easily. Thankfully she showed no interest in carrying, protected as she was by the tall grass all around her, so I let her eat and handed her tidbits and called it a day.
Over the next week I flushed many sparrows for her, and she either missed every single one, or refused to chase, having grown discouraged. She was reluctant to follow sparrows into cover, and couldn't catch up to them in the few seconds they were above the grass or out of the bushes. Finally, however, on 11/30, a sparrow made a critical mistake and flew out over a stretch of short, mown grass. Pele was after it instantly, and this time she had it! Finally, a wild kill with my first ever accipiter, just over a month after trapping.
She caught a handful of sparrows over the next few weeks, but didn't become very consistent until mid-December, once she started becoming more confident and better able to choose her targets. By the end of December we were catching two sparrows nearly every day, and she surely would have gone for more, but staying indoors at night meant she didn't burn calories as quickly as a hawk kept in the mews, so eating three sparrows in a day, plus tidbits for recalling her to the fist, put her overweight for the next day. She had learned what we were out to do, however, and learned it quickly. She hardly ever left the fist except to chase quarry, having realized quickly that the short window of time from a sparrow being flushed to it escaping into cover meant that she had to stay close to me if she wanted a meal, and on the fist was as close as she could get. Many times, I was immensely grateful for the neck bell which I had put on her, and I soon learned to differentiate the sound of her searching for missed prey versus the sound of her plucking her food.
Pele chased everything that moved. That was her strategy - if it moves, I want it. If I catch it, great. If not, I'll try again next time. After multiple repeated failures, she eventually gave up on some quarry, such as Mourning Doves, which are just too fast for her to catch off the fist. But anything smaller than a dog started off on the list of "potential food" until it proved too hard to catch. I was pleased to see that this included cottontails, which we rarely saw in our sparrow fields but which she chased enthusiastically each time they flushed. The tall grass made it hard for her to keep up and get good footing on them, however, until January 15th, 2012. We were climbing up a hill covered in fairly short grass when a rabbit burst from cover at my feet and tried to run uphill as well. Pele was after it instantly, and grabbed it with one foot on its head and another on its shoulders, and tackled it to the ground, holding it in place until I could come to dispatch it for her. She caught her second rabbit that season in similar fashion a month later, in an area of short grass while it was running uphill. Both times, she was easily able to control the kicking, screaming rabbit and hold it still until I could catch up and help out.
Her success on rabbits made me think that perhaps she could handle waterfowl as well, and so right at the end of duck season, once the fields and ditches had drained down some and what was left had frozen over, Heath Garner led me and Pele to a ditch on a farm field that regularly held coots. This type of hawking was entirely new to her, and very frustrating. I knew that leaving her hooded until we were right on top of the coots wasn't likely to be successful, since she had never been flown straight out of the hood before. Usually when she's unhooded, she needs a few moments to get her bearings and settle down, and sometimes that involves a bate or two and then some walking, and she'll often pass up the first slip if it's too soon after unhooding. But simply walking along the road as if we were field hawking wasn't right to her either, likely because all that open ground looked just too different from a hay field, and Heath's presence made her nervous as well. So of course the first thing she did was bate and manage to free herself from my hold and fly up to a pole, refusing to come down at all until Heath backed off and I called her down to her lure. I wasn't too deterred, though - I figured if we could just get a coot to flush in front of her, she'd forget all of the other things she didn't seem to care for. And as it turned out, that was exactly what happened. She bated and gave me several angry glances as we snuck our way down the road, with Heath staying a distance away and keeping an eye on the coots in the ditch.
Of course, as luck would have it, a family drove up and just had to get out and see what was going on. The sheriff also stopped by, curious as to why a car with an Oregon plate was parked at the side of the road. Thankfully Heath was able to handle the sudden audience, so that they didn’t all try to cluster around Pele. Once in position, I approached the ditch, flushing the coot, and Pele immediately took off after it. The coot tried to dive back into the water (a tactic that has since saved a few other coots) but it was now over ice and had nowhere to go. Pele grabbed it and dragged it over the ice to the bank, where with some assistance, she got enough of a meal (and a workout) to then sit patiently for the people who had come to see what was going on. We tried for a second coot afterward, since one had gone to a shallow reedy ditch on the other side of the road with a small tree overhanging it, but with Pele in that tree and us flushing the coot toward her, she ignored it completely. This has long been one of her quirks - it wasn’t until late in her second season that Pele began to try and chase things I had flushed while she was anywhere other than my glove.
Our first season ended in mid-March, a definite success in every way. She did suffer minor damage to her tail, mostly the very tips of the feathers, but overall she made having a passage accipiter seem remarkably easy compared to the things I’d heard and read. She definitely had her quirks, which for the most part didn’t change in her second season - needing to be hooded most of the day, bating while hooded, and refusing to hunt with other people standing nearby being the main downsides. If I had wanted a bird that was friendly, though, I would have gone for any other species. What I wanted was a great gamehawk, something quick off the fist that I could fly without traveling too much or spending too much time in the field due to my tight schedule, and in that respect, Pele exceeded my every expectation. She continued to develop in her second season, becoming more adept at aerial capture of sparrows, more skilled at chasing and pinning rabbits in heavy cover by diving straight in after them, and as most will have heard by now, confident enough to grab and hold down a female mallard in such a way that it couldn’t even struggle, with one foot on its head and the other around its shoulders. Pele may not have the crushing grip of a larger hawk, but her long toes and quick reflexes allow her to control prey easily, and the confidence from flying almost every single day of the season, and being successful multiple times per day, allowed her to do more than I ever could have anticipated. Our first season totals were 1 coot, 1 cotton rat, 2 rabbits, 1 blackbird, and 84 sparrows. We ended our second season together with 1 mouse, 1 cotton rat, 5 rabbits, 1 duck, and 116 sparrows. Her flying weights were roughly the same both years, starting the season around 390 g and finishing around 420 g.
Today, it is June 10th, and Pele is in the mew, where she has molted her fifth pair of primaries and is beginning to drop wing and back coverts heavily. It’s likely that she’ll finish in October, around the same time as last year, and I can’t wait to get her back out there catching sparrows and rabbits and everything else for what will probably be her last season before release. She’s been a great bird to me so far, and with any luck, her third season should be just as exciting.
After several weeks of searching, Pele was trapped on October 24th, 2011 on a bal-chatri. She was a bigger bird than I was after, having initially hoped for a small male Cooper's that I could hunt sparrows with, having both heard from others at home in Oregon and read from those with more experience that passage female Cooper's would often ignore sparrows in favor of larger game. I would gladly have pursued rabbits with a Redtail, but with my graduate school schedule, I wanted quarry that was readily accessible, and while rabbits do exist in the Jonesboro area, finding populations of sparrows is much easier. Once Pele was in my hands, though, I just couldn't let her go - I had been out looking for Cooper's since early September and though I had seen a handful, only two were passage birds in trappable situations, and neither had cared for my two house sparrows in a BC. But now, I finally had a Cooper's Hawk, and having heard plenty of warnings about late-trapped accipiters, turning her loose simply because she wasn't the little male I'd hoped for didn't seem worth it.
Pele's trap weight was 477 g, but on the morning of the 26th, by the time she had cast and her stomach was finally empty, she sat at 428 g with her hood and jesses, making her a pretty average female Coopers. Despite that, her build was such that she looked like a larger bird, with long legs and toes, broad shoulders, and a deep bill. She continued to refuse food until the afternoon of the 27th when, at 398 g, in a darkened room, with only a cracked doorway and a small LED flashlight for light, she ate a few tidbits that I had placed in her mouth. That evening she was more willing to eat, and so I fed her to 413 g.
Despite her initial reluctance, once she was eating, Pele's initial training proceeded much like most other hawks does. She hopped to the fist the next day, and made a few 1-2 foot jumps the day after that. I went ahead and raised her weight back up into the 420 g range over the next few days, and she continued to cooperate while being introduced to my roommate, and sitting unhooded on the perch in the living room while I made breakfast. Not all was as perfect as it sounds, of course - being a Cooper's, she bated plenty at every little thing, and much as I tried throughout her training and manning, I was never able to leave her unhooded for long, whether she was alone in a room or being monitored. I stopped trying once she developed mild friction burns on the bottoms of her feet, since she would bate onto the astroturf tabletop and then continue jumping and pulling as hard as she could. The table perch I had made for her controlled mutes easily and was high enough for her to be comfortable on, or so I had thought, but there was always something for her to bate at, whether it was the window, the ceiling fan, or the balcony of my housemate's room upstairs. A pole perch might have kept her feet in better shape, but I suspect she would have bated constantly regardless, and therefore hooding her was the only option. During the day, she would (and still does) bate even while hooded, but she thankfully doesn't pull hard enough to injure her legs, and quickly regains her perch.
By November 6th, she was flying the full length of my apartment's living room without hesitation, and so we headed outdoors. Pele needed a slow reintroduction to the world outside my apartment, and so the first day outside was spent simply bating off the fist until she noticed the food on the glove. I began bringing her weight back down slowly to refocus her, and togther we learned about scary things like falling leaves and passing cars. A few days later, she was flying around 20 yards instantly to the lure and fist, and on November 23rd, at 398 g, after waiting for the high winds and rain that we'd had lately to die down, Pele and I went out on her first hunting trip at a nearby grassy field. Instantly, she flew up into a tree and refused to come down. Of course. Fist recall failed completely, but she did come back down to the lure, and once I had her on the glove, she did stay there a little while longer before making for another tree. After half an hour of this, with no wild game flushed whatsoever, I got her back on the fist and released a House Sparrow from my bag, which she chased instantly and caught easily. Thankfully she showed no interest in carrying, protected as she was by the tall grass all around her, so I let her eat and handed her tidbits and called it a day.
Over the next week I flushed many sparrows for her, and she either missed every single one, or refused to chase, having grown discouraged. She was reluctant to follow sparrows into cover, and couldn't catch up to them in the few seconds they were above the grass or out of the bushes. Finally, however, on 11/30, a sparrow made a critical mistake and flew out over a stretch of short, mown grass. Pele was after it instantly, and this time she had it! Finally, a wild kill with my first ever accipiter, just over a month after trapping.
She caught a handful of sparrows over the next few weeks, but didn't become very consistent until mid-December, once she started becoming more confident and better able to choose her targets. By the end of December we were catching two sparrows nearly every day, and she surely would have gone for more, but staying indoors at night meant she didn't burn calories as quickly as a hawk kept in the mews, so eating three sparrows in a day, plus tidbits for recalling her to the fist, put her overweight for the next day. She had learned what we were out to do, however, and learned it quickly. She hardly ever left the fist except to chase quarry, having realized quickly that the short window of time from a sparrow being flushed to it escaping into cover meant that she had to stay close to me if she wanted a meal, and on the fist was as close as she could get. Many times, I was immensely grateful for the neck bell which I had put on her, and I soon learned to differentiate the sound of her searching for missed prey versus the sound of her plucking her food.
Pele chased everything that moved. That was her strategy - if it moves, I want it. If I catch it, great. If not, I'll try again next time. After multiple repeated failures, she eventually gave up on some quarry, such as Mourning Doves, which are just too fast for her to catch off the fist. But anything smaller than a dog started off on the list of "potential food" until it proved too hard to catch. I was pleased to see that this included cottontails, which we rarely saw in our sparrow fields but which she chased enthusiastically each time they flushed. The tall grass made it hard for her to keep up and get good footing on them, however, until January 15th, 2012. We were climbing up a hill covered in fairly short grass when a rabbit burst from cover at my feet and tried to run uphill as well. Pele was after it instantly, and grabbed it with one foot on its head and another on its shoulders, and tackled it to the ground, holding it in place until I could come to dispatch it for her. She caught her second rabbit that season in similar fashion a month later, in an area of short grass while it was running uphill. Both times, she was easily able to control the kicking, screaming rabbit and hold it still until I could catch up and help out.
Her success on rabbits made me think that perhaps she could handle waterfowl as well, and so right at the end of duck season, once the fields and ditches had drained down some and what was left had frozen over, Heath Garner led me and Pele to a ditch on a farm field that regularly held coots. This type of hawking was entirely new to her, and very frustrating. I knew that leaving her hooded until we were right on top of the coots wasn't likely to be successful, since she had never been flown straight out of the hood before. Usually when she's unhooded, she needs a few moments to get her bearings and settle down, and sometimes that involves a bate or two and then some walking, and she'll often pass up the first slip if it's too soon after unhooding. But simply walking along the road as if we were field hawking wasn't right to her either, likely because all that open ground looked just too different from a hay field, and Heath's presence made her nervous as well. So of course the first thing she did was bate and manage to free herself from my hold and fly up to a pole, refusing to come down at all until Heath backed off and I called her down to her lure. I wasn't too deterred, though - I figured if we could just get a coot to flush in front of her, she'd forget all of the other things she didn't seem to care for. And as it turned out, that was exactly what happened. She bated and gave me several angry glances as we snuck our way down the road, with Heath staying a distance away and keeping an eye on the coots in the ditch.
Of course, as luck would have it, a family drove up and just had to get out and see what was going on. The sheriff also stopped by, curious as to why a car with an Oregon plate was parked at the side of the road. Thankfully Heath was able to handle the sudden audience, so that they didn’t all try to cluster around Pele. Once in position, I approached the ditch, flushing the coot, and Pele immediately took off after it. The coot tried to dive back into the water (a tactic that has since saved a few other coots) but it was now over ice and had nowhere to go. Pele grabbed it and dragged it over the ice to the bank, where with some assistance, she got enough of a meal (and a workout) to then sit patiently for the people who had come to see what was going on. We tried for a second coot afterward, since one had gone to a shallow reedy ditch on the other side of the road with a small tree overhanging it, but with Pele in that tree and us flushing the coot toward her, she ignored it completely. This has long been one of her quirks - it wasn’t until late in her second season that Pele began to try and chase things I had flushed while she was anywhere other than my glove.
Our first season ended in mid-March, a definite success in every way. She did suffer minor damage to her tail, mostly the very tips of the feathers, but overall she made having a passage accipiter seem remarkably easy compared to the things I’d heard and read. She definitely had her quirks, which for the most part didn’t change in her second season - needing to be hooded most of the day, bating while hooded, and refusing to hunt with other people standing nearby being the main downsides. If I had wanted a bird that was friendly, though, I would have gone for any other species. What I wanted was a great gamehawk, something quick off the fist that I could fly without traveling too much or spending too much time in the field due to my tight schedule, and in that respect, Pele exceeded my every expectation. She continued to develop in her second season, becoming more adept at aerial capture of sparrows, more skilled at chasing and pinning rabbits in heavy cover by diving straight in after them, and as most will have heard by now, confident enough to grab and hold down a female mallard in such a way that it couldn’t even struggle, with one foot on its head and the other around its shoulders. Pele may not have the crushing grip of a larger hawk, but her long toes and quick reflexes allow her to control prey easily, and the confidence from flying almost every single day of the season, and being successful multiple times per day, allowed her to do more than I ever could have anticipated. Our first season totals were 1 coot, 1 cotton rat, 2 rabbits, 1 blackbird, and 84 sparrows. We ended our second season together with 1 mouse, 1 cotton rat, 5 rabbits, 1 duck, and 116 sparrows. Her flying weights were roughly the same both years, starting the season around 390 g and finishing around 420 g.
Today, it is June 10th, and Pele is in the mew, where she has molted her fifth pair of primaries and is beginning to drop wing and back coverts heavily. It’s likely that she’ll finish in October, around the same time as last year, and I can’t wait to get her back out there catching sparrows and rabbits and everything else for what will probably be her last season before release. She’s been a great bird to me so far, and with any luck, her third season should be just as exciting.