Talon Safety

-

"Aren't you afraid of her beak so close to your face?"

That's a question I hear occasionally during raptor programs when Carson the Red-tailed Hawk sits on my glove. Though her sharp, hooked beak is inches from my nose, I am honestly more concerned about her feet. Raptor beaks are usually just for eating; talons are made for grabbing.

To avoid those talons, I am always very careful about how I move my right hand. When offering tidbit treats, I always hold the food in forceps to keep my hand at a distance. And I deliver the food high, straight to her beak. If I move it too low, she might be tempted to grab the food with her foot.

Sometimes my hand needs to come within striking distance of those talons like earlier this week when I applied a leather conditioning grease to her anklets. This required my full attention to avoid getting a talon in my hand. Before coming near her feet, I showed Carson my open hand to say, "see? No food here." I reached around the back of her leg to make sure my hand wasn't a target. I also kept a constant eye on her body language. If she showed distress at any point, I would back off and try again. 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Stress Bars

-
Image
Cleaning the raptor mews may be a dirty job, but it can lead to some interesting discoveries. Under a pile of shredded newspaper, I found this feather from Carson the Red-tailed Hawk. The central shaft forms a slight S-curve, telling me this came from Carson's alula, a bird's "thumb."  I noticed faint lines along the feather vane like frets on a guitar's fingerboard. Known as stress bars, these lines are weak spots in the feather. They form if the bird undergoes heightened stress as the feather grows. It might be physical stress like starvation or psychological stress like escaping a predator. For Carson, I believe these stress bars are caused by her permanent wing injury affecting feather growth.
Read more

Training Archives

-
Image
Rummaging through old files, I found a treasure: the notepad where I recorded my first training sessions with Carson the Red-tailed Hawk.  When I first started at the Museum in 2016, I asked her to step on my glove (a behavior she had done with other trainers) and she ran away from me. We had such little trust that she wouldn't even eat in front of me. That was my first goal to overcome, highlighted at the top of the notepad:  To get to that point, I started by leaving a piece of food on a perch, stepping out into the hallway, and waiting for her to eat it. Sometimes she ignored it and I took the food away after 3 minutes. After a few tries she started eating the food. On the third day, she was waiting for me at our training spot, eager to take food! Carson waited for me at our training spot in 2016. We started with the bar pretty low. Since I took the time to start our training with the very basics, Carson gained confidence quickly. Fast forwarding to 8 months later, I found ...
Read more

Construction

-
Image
Aldo loves showing off his nest during the breeding season. When the kestrel hears me coming, he jumps down to the ground in the back corner of his mew. He trills excitedly, bowing. This behavior is rather inconvenient for me when I need to weigh him or take him out for a program. Since he's looking for attention in his nest, I remove his audience by stepping out of sight. I quietly wait in the hallway. I listen for the flutter of his wings to tell me he has flown back to a perch. Then I know it is safe to enter the mew and give him a treat. I didn't realize how much I rely on my ears during this morning routine until construction started on the library's new building next door. An excavator moving dirt is loud enough to drown out the subtle whisper of Aldo's wings in flight. I shift my strategy and shuffle down the hallway just enough to be able to see the perch through the window. I still remain quiet until I see Aldo appear, giving me the green light to enter the mew...
Read more