This part sucks. Once you have it, the fun stuff begins! Fifth Step: Trap Your Bird. While this step can also take a long time, the process in of itself is a blast!
So how do you trap a bird? Wait…trap a bird? You are taking a bird from the wild?! Okay, let me explain. Falconry and falconers take conservation to heart. Same way that ethical hunters do as well. You are only allowed to take a passage bird from the wild. A passage bird is a juvenile bird that is on its first winter. In a different perspective, if a pair of raptors laid three eggs and all of them hatched, only one would make it through the first year.
As a falconer, you are trapping one of the other two that would have perished. You are teaching that youngster how to successfully hunt, you are protecting her from predators, from competition, from severe weather. Many falconers end up releasing their falconry bird in the spring anyways! They get it through the first hard year, hunt with it, and then wish it luck, knowing that they allowed that bird to survive and go on to propagate.
Some falconers though, myself included, fall hard for their bird — it will become their lifetime falconry bird. The bond you build with the bird is what makes that free spirit return to your glove at the end of the day.
It is a wire cage that you put live bait in. The bait does not get injured! It is protected from the birds talons inside the wire cage.
That hamster has caught over 5 hawks in her lifetime! Driving — driving around for hours a day whenever time would allow…save your gas money for this! Driving and looking for passage birds! Driving back roads, driving the highways, even jumping onto freeways. Is it safe to set the trap out? Safe for us? Safe for the bird? Throw the trap out of the window! Turn around. Wait for two minutes. Wait for 30 minutes.
Depends how hungry the bird is! After a certain period of waiting, you may get a better look at the bird in questions tail. Grab the trap. If she hits it…wait. Jump out of the truck. Take your shirt off this is indecent for us ladies, grab a towel instead! Carefully get control of the birds feet and free her from the trap. Look her over. Is she definitely a passage bird? Do you love her? Congrats, you have a bird! I may be a master falconer now, but I still feel like a beginner.
My birds still teach me things. With every new bird, there is a new experience. A: Does anyone else in your family practice falconry? It takes someone with the passion to want to be a falconer.
You can be an animal lover, but you need to have that passion to want to work with wild instinct. A: Is it hard to be a female falconer? Do you ever face gender bias? NC: Falconry is a passion that is universal and timeless and goes beyond gender.
Your trials should be against yourself to get better and not to compete with another man or woman. A: How do apprentice falconers obtain their first birds? NC: To start, you must trap your first bird from the wild. This is done through very strict regulations, which vary from state to state. All except the kestrel must be trapped as a passage immature bird. How many raptors can I have?
As an apprentice falconer, you are only allowed to possess one raptor at a time. If you lose this raptor, you can only replace it once per season. A general class falconer may possess two raptors, a master class falconer, three. What kind of hunting license do I have to have? You have to purchase a Sportsman's license. What is the best choice of raptor for an apprentice?
A good bird to start with is the red-tailed hawk. Even waterfowl and upland game birds can be taken by this versatile species. You spend time crafting something beautiful, and then you let it go. I belong to a tiny subculture that not only looks for them, but traps them and takes them home.
But if you want to do it with talons instead of bullets, you need a teacher. Sometimes the amount of biology, history, daily weighing, bookkeeping and assorted regulations are so daunting that I feel overwhelmed, but I take solace in something my sponsor once told me. As a US apprentice, I am legally barred from purchasing a captive-bred bird. I have to go out in the world, find a wild animal, trap it, train it and only then may we begin hunting as a team.
It took me weeks to find my first bird. I got my license late in the season and was trapping in November when most birds are already trained and hunting with their people.
My sponsor and I looked for weeks on end to find a bird so late in the season that was still sporting juvenile plumage. Since breeding-age birds are not allowed to be trapped for falconry, finding a loner out there in the cold months who was young enough to train was no mean feat; most had already migrated south for the winter. I named him Italics and hunted with him for two years before I released him this past April.
Red-tails are never domesticated. They learn to get comfortable with their handlers and get used to life in their studio apartments called mews, game warden-approved hawk houses but remain wild as ever.
When released they go right back to their normal ways.
0コメント