cc that...but man what a treat.....to have such awesomeness so close, you are a lucky man.
did you raise it from an egg?
how difficult are they to train?
I love all animals but raptors.....are a close second to Monitor lizards for me.
I'll preface this with the warning that what I'm doing is legal because I'm state and federally permitted to do so. Do not try this without the proper permits...
I didn't raise this one. She's a captive-bred hybrid though (gyrfalcon and prairie falcon).
They're generally raised by their parents in a breeding chamber, without seeing people (apart from banding) until they're around 60 days old. Depending upon how much (if any) imprinting is desired, they may be exposed to people much earlier than that. This bird is an imprint.
Depending upon the type of bird, and the type of flights desired, they're not too difficult to train, or they may be very difficult to train, lol.
The primary differences in training birds of prey are one, they only recognize food as a reward, (so training is timed to coincide with mealtimes). And two, you only use positive reinforcement (with no negative). You can yell at a dog, or hit it (negative reinforcement), but that won't work with a bird. We reward positive behavior with food rewards, and simply ignore bad or undesired behavior. You try to shape the training to allow the bird to show the behavior you want, then reward it with food, and it will then repeat the behavior. With birds, negative reinforcement just results in fear, which is detrimental to getting them to come back...
I often fly a redtail hawk, in which case I trap an immature bird in October or so. In that case it may take me 3-4 weeks to take a wild bird and teach it to allow me to hunt with it, return when called, and transfer off of her kills (rabbits and squirrels) for a reward. I normally fly a redtail for 1-3 seasons, and then release it when it hits breeding age. I trap another one the next fall.
In the case of a falcon like this, I find training more difficult. While the redtail follows me through the trees while I flush game, the falcon is trained to climb and circle overhead (without landing) at up to several thousand feet above the falconer (called "waiting on") for periods of 20-60 minutes. Meanwhile, I move under her with a pointer in an effort to point and then flush pheasants, or else flush ducks off of small bodies of water. She'll then try to take them in a dive (stooping falcons have been recorded at 275 mph, while in level flight can do about 55-60 mph).
There are pro's and con's to imprinting, and pro's and con's to training older (but still immature) birds (called "passage" birds, since they're trapped in their first migration, or "passage"). Often, birds that we see as more "nervous" (accipiters, etc, such as coopers hawks and goshawks) are raised from young chicks only a few days old and are imprinted, as this makes them very tame.
In the case of my hybrid, she's imprinted to make it very unlikely she'd ever breed in the wild if I lost her (potential pollution of wild gene pools). She also wears two radio tracking transmitters when she flies, which allows me to track her at up to 60 miles or so. The birds have no concept of "captivity" or "freedom", so never actually try to escape, and they fly free apart from initial training. A bird that can fly as fast and high as her, and see quarry MILES away can get lost fairly easily though... She can literally go MILES in the time it takes me to get back to the truck!
