More like it!

 Tami had a "town day" yesterday, so the day before, she gave Orrin a Starling to eat after she had flown him. ( I like to gorge my birds at least once a week, and I like to fast them once a week as well. The gorge is generally whole game, either birds or mammals, so they have a chance to clean their crop with a casting. As you probably know their crops hold or store their food until their stomach can use it. As such it needs cleaning periodically. That is accomplished by the fur and or feathers that are not digestible. Each morning or approximately 24 hours later a "casting" or pellet is regurgitated. This helps keep the crop clean and the bird healthy.) He got enough food off the Starling that he didn't really need to eat that much yesterday. She fed him enough food that she brought him up to 115 grams, hoping that he would be at our targeted weight.

At flying time, he weighed 104 grams. I am beginning to believe that is his "lean" weight where he has no more fat. To get him lower requires that we make him digest his muscle. Any way we decided to go ahead and try him to see how he would respond. Two days ago on the 31st, she flew him alone because I was stuck in town. He did quite well, and from her recount of the flight, I thought that he had made some improvement.

Prior to today, we had been very careful to not give him an opportunity to get very far away. As the saying goes, we had been flying him very close to our vest. It was time for the ball to be in his court, and to see how he would react when we didn't call him. It was time, and he had plenty of chances to know that these outing were to feed him. We got to the line of trees where we had been trying to get him to follow us. Tami gave him a tidbit and set him in the tree. We walked off and did not call him. Finally when we had gotten about 80 or more yards from the tree that he was in, I asked her to put up her fist and by using her voice to encourage him to come. What we wanted of course was for him to come to one of the trees closer to our position. Nothing that we could see, happened so we kept on, walking further and further away. The sun was setting and right in our eyes, so it was tough to tell where he was or even if he was there. Finally when we were about 150 or more yards away from the tree that he was last seen in, I asked her to whistle for him, which is his signal for food on the fist. All of a sudden he was most of the way to the fist, but from one of the trees close to us. He is so small that it is really tough to keep track of him. He had moved with us, but we had not seen him do it. This time when he flew, he flew to a tree in front of us. This is the first time that he has done so, at least when I was there. We both grinned, since that is what we have been trying to get him to do all along. We walked on past him, without pausing or calling him, and soon he flew on to the next tree in front of us. After we got past him, Tami whistled him down, and without hesitation he responded. He then flew again to a tree in front of where we were going. We were approaching the resident Red-tail, so we turned away from him and started back the way we had came. I watched him and he let us get about 80 yards before he moved up to another tree closer to us. We walked on and he started this time to come to Tami without being called, so I whipped the lure back into his path. He arrived at the lure the same time it hit the ground. We have been tying a Starling wing on the lure for him after the fiasco where the meat came off before he could get to it. When he got to the bone and feather part he was trying to drag the lure to Tami, so that he could get some more meat. Its really cute, but he is also jumpy on the lure as well, and I expect some interesting times if we get him catching Sparrows.

Tomorrow will be his introduction to Starlings as a food source. From all indications he has never hunted anything other than Mice.

One of my friends that reads the blog inquired about "Turning him loose". The purpose of the apprentice period is to teach the novice how to train hawks, not to obtain a neat pet. One does not learn very much from just one hawk. Then there is the fact that a bird from the wild is just on loan, and if it survives the first year then it should be allowed to return to the wild to pass on its genes if it is strong enough to survive and mate. I personally prefer young birds of the year taken before they know their limitations. I enjoy their enthusiasm and willingness to chase and catch anything. After Tami has completed her apprentice period, she can do as she wishes, but frankly her thirst for knowledge about different raptors and how to train them matches mine easily. She has no qualms about turning Orrin loose when the time comes.

Raptors mature quickly due to necessity and a raptor taken in late fall will always react differently to one taken out of a family group, and in Orrins case this will cause difficulty when and if he starts to take game. He has always flown to a convenient branch or telephone line to eat his prey. Our only recourse will be to teach him to cache his food and come to more. We will see.