Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Exercising The Birds

At the World Bird Sanctuary’s Nature Center, during the day we keep many different types of birds of prey tethered to perches outside behind the back porch in a “weathering area.”  Visitors can view them up close with no enclosure wires that may obstruct photo-taking.  One of the questions most frequently asked out here is, “Do these birds ever get any exercise?”
 View of the Weathering Area located behind the Nature Center
Studies have shown that, in the wild, birds of prey only fly when they really have to.  They sit on tree branches or other perch-like objects for 80 to 90% of their day.  If our tethered birds need to stretch their wings they have plenty of room to do so.  Just vigorously flapping their wings without lifting off gives them adequate exercise. However, each bird that has been trained to fly during our shows will get exercised at least every other day.  This keeps them in very good shape during their flying season, which typically lasts 6 months. 
Fred, our Hooded Vulture, during a practice session
Weather permitting, these birds are flown outside in our amphitheater in front of the Nature Center.  They fly back and forth between the gloves of two trainers anytime between 2pm through 4:30pm.  If you are a visitor around this time, you can feel free to sit and watch as the birds may fly right over your heads!  Also every weekend until Labor Day, join us for our Amazing Animal Encounter shows where we may fly some of our birds of prey, as well as present parrots, snakes, and mammals up close and personal!  You can see these programs at 11.30am and 2pm on Saturdays, and at 1.30pm on Sundays.
 Fred demonstrates his flying skills as he prepares to land on the glove
When we first begin to train a bird of prey to fly glove to glove, we start out very close and have him/her just hop to another persons glove while still attached to a leash.  We call these leash-hops.  We always use positive reinforcement when training our animals, so we first show the bird that the other person has a food reward in their glove.  As soon as the bird hops to the other glove, he/she will get that food.  Pretty soon the bird catches on to the fact that when that glove is raised up, that’s his/her cue to fly over to it and get some food.  Soon the bird no longer needs to see the food and will completely trust that when the glove is raised there will be a nice tasty piece of raw rat meat in the glove for him/her.
 Jack, our young Harris' Hawk, flying on creance line
I was able to take part in our new Harris’ Hawk, Jack’s, flight training.  I snapped some photos of him at the last stage of his training: the creance line.  This is the name of the lightweight line we tied to his jesses for the first time he flew outside.  We continued to use the creance line for several weeks so that if he flew to any point other than his trainer, we would be able to gently recover him.  Finally he was creance tested, meaning that he was placed in several different unfamiliar locations outside to see if he would either try to fly off from there or if he would look for the nearest glove and fly to that when cued.  Jack aced that test.  He is no longer on the creance line and he can be seen free flying at indoor and outdoor programs.


Submitted by Sara Oliver, World Bird Sanctuary Naturalist


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