New Bird, it starts again.

My new bird arrived yesterday. A young female Harris Hawk, 12 weeks old and living with her parents and siblings until just yesterday. She was taken out of her chamber and put in an airline kennel and put on an Alaska Airliner at 10 yesterday morning. We picked her up in Boise at 6:30 PM. I was a bit surprised that they accepted the bird as the temperature was 106 degrees. The plane of course was air conditioned and she was in no danger. As soon as the plane stopped they took her off and into an air conditioned building.

We got home around 8:30 PM and took her into the bathroom, which can be darkened, and took her out to put on her bracelets and jesses. I carried her for an hour or so to see how she was going to react, and she did quite well. As I walked by the perch that I had for her, she obviously recognized it as a better place to sit than on my hand, as she bated towards it. I placed her on it and we watched the news and read for a while to see if she would sit and more importantly regain her perch if she bated off. She did so on the one occasion that she bated.



I decided that I needed to modify the perch to keep her feathers in good shape, so I added a disc to the bottom of the perch and a piece of carpet added to give her purchase for her talons when she does attempt to regain her perch.


I picked her up around four this evening to weigh her and found that she weighs in at 800 grams, which is 28 oz. A bit smaller than I would have guessed. She is quite plump and will obviously hunt at a much smaller weight than that, but should have no trouble with any of the Jackrabbits that live around here. Perhaps the smaller size will give her more speed and agility. I do want to hunt her on Chukar as well, and she will need every move that she can generate to be successful.



I held her for a couple of hours, touching her, and just getting her used to things. She is much too fat to eat, or learn anything other than the fact that I am not going to eat her, so she is now on her perch. When she has lost enough weight to be interested in food, we will begin.