Teddy Moritz sends the three pictures at left of a strange day in the field (click on pictures to enlarge).Apparently, Suli the dachshund flushed a rabbit from a brushpile and chased it up a lawn where it tried to dive
into this plastic drain pipe -- a good escape route for a small bunny, perhaps, but this fellow had gotten quite a bit bigger since he last tried this escape strategy!
into this plastic drain pipe -- a good escape route for a small bunny, perhaps, but this fellow had gotten quite a bit bigger since he last tried this escape strategy! The result of this ill-fated escape attempt was that the 
rabbit got stuck head in, and feet out. It was only a second or two before Odessa, the Harris Hawk, slammed into the bolted bunny.
End result: one dead rabbit.
Afterwards, Suli checked the pipe hoping that a few more might come out. You never know!
Teddy uses a Teckel or working miniture dachsund to bolt rabbits to her Harris Hawks. Unlike rabbits in Europe, American rabbits den above ground, like hares, but will tuck into a hole or pipe if pursued by dog or hawk, or if the weather is really terrible out (i.e. freezing rain or really bitter cold).
The Harris Hawk is a native of the Southwest U.S. through Mexico, Central America and into the northern half of South America.
A pretty brown and black bird with long legs and a band of white on the end of it tail, it was named by John James Audubon (he called it a "buzzard") after one of his longtime friends and financial supporters, Ed Harris. Audubon also named a sparrow after Harris.
Unlike most birds of prey, Harris Hawks will hunt in groups in the wild, and this natural tendency may account for why they work so well with humans and dogs. Relatively easy to handle, and often quite affectionate, Harris Hawks are now captive-bred for falconry. I do not believe any birds come from the wild anymore. In fact, it would hardly matter if they did; Harris Hawks are very common, and no one has been a better steward to wild raptors than American falconers who have not only pioneered captive breeding techniques now used all over the world, but who have also been a consistent, powerful and well-educated voice for hawk, falcon and eagle conservation across the globe.
A mid-sized bird, the Harris Hawk is a good bird to use on cottontail rabbits (which are smaller than European rabbits), pigeons, other small birds such as quail, rodents, or even mid0sized birds such a pheasant.
A Harris Hawk will typically perch in the tree line as near as possible to where the human and the dog are flushing quarry, following up the field as the hunting team progresses. If a tree is not available, a hawker may provide a perch in the form of a plastic or bamboo T-topped perch pole.
As you can imagine with four animals in play (hawk, human, dog, and rabbit) there is a lot going on in the field when you are hawking!
.
rabbit got stuck head in, and feet out. It was only a second or two before Odessa, the Harris Hawk, slammed into the bolted bunny.End result: one dead rabbit.
Afterwards, Suli checked the pipe hoping that a few more might come out. You never know!
Teddy uses a Teckel or working miniture dachsund to bolt rabbits to her Harris Hawks. Unlike rabbits in Europe, American rabbits den above ground, like hares, but will tuck into a hole or pipe if pursued by dog or hawk, or if the weather is really terrible out (i.e. freezing rain or really bitter cold).
The Harris Hawk is a native of the Southwest U.S. through Mexico, Central America and into the northern half of South America.
A pretty brown and black bird with long legs and a band of white on the end of it tail, it was named by John James Audubon (he called it a "buzzard") after one of his longtime friends and financial supporters, Ed Harris. Audubon also named a sparrow after Harris.
Unlike most birds of prey, Harris Hawks will hunt in groups in the wild, and this natural tendency may account for why they work so well with humans and dogs. Relatively easy to handle, and often quite affectionate, Harris Hawks are now captive-bred for falconry. I do not believe any birds come from the wild anymore. In fact, it would hardly matter if they did; Harris Hawks are very common, and no one has been a better steward to wild raptors than American falconers who have not only pioneered captive breeding techniques now used all over the world, but who have also been a consistent, powerful and well-educated voice for hawk, falcon and eagle conservation across the globe.
A mid-sized bird, the Harris Hawk is a good bird to use on cottontail rabbits (which are smaller than European rabbits), pigeons, other small birds such as quail, rodents, or even mid0sized birds such a pheasant.
A Harris Hawk will typically perch in the tree line as near as possible to where the human and the dog are flushing quarry, following up the field as the hunting team progresses. If a tree is not available, a hawker may provide a perch in the form of a plastic or bamboo T-topped perch pole.
As you can imagine with four animals in play (hawk, human, dog, and rabbit) there is a lot going on in the field when you are hawking!
.
7 comments:
This is probably going to seem terribly dumb, but has a Harris Hawk ever mistaken the Dachshund for a prey animal? They can be about the same size, right?
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I have never heard of it happening between two animals that work together routinely, but I am not a hawker, so perhaps we will both be illuminated by responses to this question!
I do know a bird will foot a dog -- that happens all the time if the dog comes too close and is nosing the quarry that the bird is sitting on after a kill. Nothing wrong with that, and once a dog has been footed once or twice, it generally gets the lesson! That said, a hawk's eyes are so large, and its prey processing center (the ability of its brain to gauge size, weight, color, direction, speed, change of direction) so finely tuned to strike moving things, that I think it would not happen with two animals than knew each other and worked together often.
Which is not to say that a wild hawk would not nail a very small dog or cat. That happens occassionally with the larger eagles, some of which are used to hunt quarry as large as fox and small deer. A Gos awk might be able to nail a small feral cat or toy dog as well -- not one it knew, of course, but if chihuahua's are ever returned to the wild, I think they might find predaion from the air something to wory about in some parts of the country.
A Harris Hawk, however, is not too big. It's good for mid-sized birds, rabbits, snakes, rodents, and maybe even a duck or jack rabbit if the hawk is lucky and the hit is good. Any quarry above about 4 pounds, however, and it's going to have to rethink its meal plans. Even a very small mini-dachshund is going to be about 50 percent heavier than that, so normally the bird would say "no" based on size alone, even if it wanted prey very badly, and was rarin' to go.
Patrick
Howdy,
Patrick-- wild Harris hawks are routinely flown for falconry. You can take them in TX, NM and AZ with a permit. The wild hawks are usually fine birds, but each one is sort of an unknown quantity.
In contrast, the captive-bred birds have a few generations of selective breeding behind them (which does make a difference) and you can know precisely what sort of performers their parents and siblings became.
As for the dogs, hawks almost never make mistakes of identification. They can see better and think faster than people and dogs combined, if that statement makes any sense at all.
If a hawk hits a dog, it is almost certainly intentional.
Hawks and dogs that routinely work together become strongly bonded and reliant on each others' help. They are completely at ease with one another.
But strange dogs in the field can sometimes elicit suprising reactions (from Harris hawks, esp.), spanning the spectrum from deathly fear to outright aggression. But the latter is very rare, and I have never seen an attack that seriously injured the dog. I would be more in fear of my hawk's life than even a small dog's in such an encournter---one of Patrick's terriers with her blood up could chop a hawk in half.
I'm not sure if it's parallel, but wild caught parrots never settle right compared to their captive- bred brethren. I know every species of hawk and falcon is different, but I suspect a hand-reared bird is almost always going to have a tighter bond with humans and dogs than a wild-caught bird. Do you find that to be true?
P
Actually the subject is one of some debate even among falconers. (Do you believe that?)
The fact is that many if not most wild hawks become very tame and perform in falconry exceptionally well. Remember, these are not adult birds, but rather birds taken at about 5-6 months of age and not set in their ways.
We call these juvenile hawks "passage birds." They have been flown for thousands of years and are preferred over all others by many falconers even today. They form strong bonds with people and dogs, but maintain a respectful reserve that is, frankly, calming and dignified to be around.
Best of all, when the season is over, you can let them go and they will return to the wild within days and survive well on their own as they did before coming into captivity.
The hand-raised ones, taken form the nest, are called "eyases," and these develop no fear of people for obvious reason. But this is a mixed blessing. Such birds simply take what they want, treating you as they would their parents or siblings. This can get out of hand in a hurry, and in the wrong bird can be a dangerous trait. In hawks, no fear means no respect.
These birds can not easily be released, so if they do not turn out well, some unfortunate soul is generally stuck with them for life. They can live 30 years...
The captive bred birds I fly are not hand raised. They are raised by their parents and left with the family group for 16 weeks. They are fully socialized as hawks and are not imprinted in the classical sense. While they grow extremely tame, they are also well mannered (for hawks) and later will breed with their own kind.
To me, this is the best of all worlds.
Excellent, and I think I get it. A seriously old crusty bird (2-3 years of age) is going to be pretty cranky I take it? While an adolescent passage hawk of a couple of months is a "tweener" bird which is between two worlds (the wild and the suburbs) and is going to be OK in either one of them (or both). An eyas, however, is going to be a codependent and may, in some cases, have "attitude issues." Sound like captive-bred birds (known genes) without imprinting does give you a good balancing point.
P
For hawks and falcons (eagles are an exception here), anything over 1 year of age is considered adult. Some of these birds are very cranky, and often the older the get, the crankier.
And yet: They have their champions. Traditional falconry calls them "haggards," which is how we derive the same term today for crusty old folks. :-) Present company excluded.
Idividual haggards have been some of the best performing and most highly esteemed hawks in various golden ages of falconry past. They were written about by name.
The truth is that all hawks (like all living things) are individuals, and vary as much as people do. Thus some haggards will tame down well and form hunting bonds with people; and when they do, all the skill of the world's most effective, efficient, and deadly predators is yours to enjoy.
Naturally, these birds are some of the easiest to lose, so the relationship is not always a long one.
In modern falconry in this country, most haggards are not permitted unless taken under depredation permit (chicken stealers, etc).
But interstingly, kestrels, being difficult to age accurately and also very common, are allowed taken as haggards. I've flown two, both of which were excellent. One was very tame and I flew her for about 4 years; she caught over 600 birds for me. The other was totally wild, and lost after only 3 months, but was the finest-hunting kestrel I've ever seen. She caught 99 birds while I had her, and regularly chased them down in level flight and killed them on the spot---two amazing feats for a kestrel.
Also: I know falconers who flew haggard peregrines in the 1960s (when no law applied, or at least none was enforced) and count them among the finest hawks they have ever flown.
So, unsurprisingly, the situation is pretty complex.
But your summation about captive bred stock of known parentage and good upbringing is sound. These are my favorites. But it's also true that there is no and will nevr be a substitute for whatever it is the wild gives a hawk...
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