he ate a whole chick today

Kajika ate a whole chick, this is great as it show he trusts me enough to bow his head. Also it means his weight is down so he will be more responsive. It\'s nice to see him finally eat, his crop is bulging.

His name is Kajika

His new name is Kajika pronounced car-gee-car

It has been a tiring 48 hours...

...for the bird and for us!

he can finally get some sleep and tomorrow we can start the manning process.

Hawk Walk

This evening since he had progressed so much so quickly, we took him for a walk to familiarise him with other dogs and sheep

He was very calm whilst approaching sheep and took no notice of max.

Overall i think that the Waking process as worked a treat, we now have a hawk that is good around dogs, sheep and other people.

Eating for the first time

At 4pm today He ate from the fist for the first time

This is excellent progress as it shows he trusts us, he no longer needs to be held 24/7 and can be tied to a perch overnight whilst the finishing touches are made to the aviary.

Waking the Hawk

Waking involves keeping the hawk on the glove for 48 hours (so far !)

On Thursday evening after a 30 minute car journey with a hooded hawk on my fist, we were ready to remove his hood, we where expecting him to scream at us and bate (jump off). But surprisingly as you will see in the following video he doesn't scream at all.

After the initial bates he settled down and we got familiar with swapping the bird between gloves as we would have to do it when we were tired early next morning.

After the practicing we ate dinner (i only had one hand to use), then i got comfortable and sat down to do the night shift, throughout the night the bird progressed with confidence.Eventually after two hours he let me stroke his feet and play with his feathers. at about 12pm i quietly introduced him to Max our dog, who was fast asleep. It was key to create a bond between dog and bird as they will be working together in the field to hunt, so these short encounters helped a lot. At 4:30am I was getting tired and Dad came down to take over while I went back to bed. 

The Following Morning 

during the day we walked around the house max came in to see him and he was tolerant of him,

Day 2

After a similar night and after i had swapped with Dad, we introduced him with the garden

At first he bated a bit, but then he bobbed his head, meaning he was looking at his surroundings.

When I took over again, I wanted to check his progress and see how tame he had become.

I was able to stroke his beak on top, and under it. I can rub and move his feet and i can play with his feathers and beak, also i could open his wings.

Collecting My Hawk

We went to the breeder on February 9th to collect him.

After we caught him up in the breeding pen with a net, we had to fit the bell to the tail, and the anklets to the legs, to do this we calmly pined him down.  This whole time he was wearing a hood to keep him calm.

The first time he was put on the glove he fell of a couple of times, this was due to the weight of the tail guard which put him off balance.

But he soon got a grip and was able to pose with me for a photo.

Building the aviary

On Saturday 4th of February we started to build the hawk's aviary (enclosure).

 First we laid out the wood for the base and held it in place with stakes.

Then we stapled the landscape material in place to stop the gravel getting muddy.

After that we filled it with gravel, (well I say we, but I had to shovel one tonne of gravel myself!).  We started to bring in the wooden sections Paul had made during the week for us.

The first half of the aviary was screwed together and squared up.  this meant that when we screwed the second section on it would be square as well.

The roof started to go on.

The second section was screwed together and the roof struts were screwed in place for the last part of the roof.

The roof was attached and the shiplap nailed in place, the hole in the roof is for the bird to sit in the rain if he wishes to.

 Finally the felt was tacked down and the wood painted, the wire in the hole has been attached but I took this picture before that happened.