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.