Kathleen's Hawk Walk

One of Kathleen's Christmas gifts from Phillip was a Hawk-Walk, where she would be able to participate in some real falconry.  The event was to take place ten days ago, but inclement weather forced rescheduling until today. We had blue sky with lots of sun shine, easily the warmest day so far this year.

The hawk she would be working with was a Harrier Hawk, a young three year old male weighing a paltry 1.5 pounds and named HaDuke [hey Duke!].  At one point, HaDuke just took off and dove into this grouping of cactus: the very spiny Opuntia.  I grew one in the greenhouse, decades ago, and I always felt that it literally threw its spines at me if I was anywhere nearby.  The hawk got a bunch in his head, but the spines didn't seem to matter at all.  Better him than me!

He obviously saw something I didn't and just dove for it, in the next two pictures.

After instructions to the 8 participants, HaDuke was flying freely from one participant to the next. Spoiler alert: the hawk only went when called, and participants called him only when they had food for him.

Here's our hawk just landing on Kathleen's gloved fist.

This time, he's reluctantly leaving Kathleen's fist, [I think they bonded...] so she has to help entice him off her fist.

Eventually, he did take off. On his right talon, he's wearing a bell, so you can hear him coming; and a small transmitter, so the trainers can find him should he choose to fly away.

In this next picture, the hawk was with the people in the background when Kathleen called him: he flew down the path, about a foot off the ground, and here he is climbing quickly to land on Kathleen's extended fist.

In this next shot, HaDuke is just landing on Kathleen's fist, and hasn't closed his talons on the glove yet.

Part of the bonding process...  I think Kathleen is enjoying this...

Here our trusty Hawk is talons-forward about to land on the perch one of the trainers was using.

The hawk was flying freely, and here he's flying up the side of a steep hill to reach those of us on the upper path.

The adventure is called a Hawk Walk  because hawks are quite prepared to walk up to their prey if that's easier than flying there. Here he is walking amongst the cactus, picking up bits of food smeared on people's feet just out of camera range.

At the end of the adventure, the participants were asked to rapidly count to three, then toss a small bit of food high in the air.  HaDuke  then flew up to get it.  You can just see the bit of food near the upper quarter of the next picture, right in the centre of the frame. The Hawk got most pieces before they hit the ground. [remember you can click on any picture and see them all larger]

At the very end, our young hawk was tempted by a mouse-looking stick swung by the trainer on a rope. Falconry is a sport of training these hunting birds to hunt and release [exchange for treats] their prey. Here the trainer is stepping on the rope so the hawk can't fly away, and the HaDuke is shielding his catch from other possible predators [including the trainer]. The trainer then exchanges the catch for food the hawk prefers.  Win-win!

The walk took place in a remote mountain area near Alpine. After the 1.8 mile private dirt road, there were some properties with gardens, and here's one with naturalized local flowers.  A wonderful gift to behold.

Meanwhile, back at the falconry, they brought out three birds for the next group of would be falconers. This first one is a  young peregrine  falcon, posing for me...

Next is another mature female Harrier Hawk.

And last but not least, an immature female Harrier Hawk, with a fuzzy hairdo.

All these birds are bred and raised in captivity. While in training, they can fly freely, and are taught to hunt for the falconer.  It's a very ancient art, thousands of years old, and this falconry has a very special permit that allows them to have people with minimum training fly these raptors freely.

It was an very special day for me, and I think Kathleen is still grinning ear to ear.