John Kent's bird notes

26 Jul 2021

General

Handling guidance

(demo position) Stand side-on with your left arm / glove side to where the bird is coming from. Make a firm fist with your thumb on top, hand not higher than your shoulder. Arm bent slightly at the shoulder so bird doesn’t try to walk up your arm toward your head.

This position makes it more obvious to the birds where they are supposed to land. Also means that a bird can easily fly past you if there is a gust of wind or it suddenly decides not to land. If you stand facing the bird, it’s more likely to fly into you.

You will barely feel the lighter birds land. You’ll need to brace a bit for some of the heavier birds, especialy if the wind is strong.

Keep your right hand well out of the way - don’t be tempted to stroke or poke the birds’ feathers. The birds are fairly good natured but this might get you a peck (some birds are okay with their feet being tounched, e.g. to put their equipment on).

We are giving small food rewards for flying to you. We will handle the food for you and give signals to attract the bird.

You can take pictures although perhaps not when the bird is trying to land on you.

To get Chalky (or other stalks?) to land, kneel with their food tub.

Personal advice

Don’t kneel down to the birds, get them up to your fist (stops them getting lazy)

Don’t reward them if they do something wrong.

Feed Walter with a ‘sweep’ to his beak.

Experience days

First task is to get attendee list from the office

Take food from top-left, leave the bottom shelf

Finish by washing food bins, packets, bags, etc

Common questions

XXXX Raptors and birds of prey

Raptors – which means ‘seize or take by force’ – kill with their feet rather than their beaks. ‘Birds of Prey’ therefore excludes other meat eating birds that kill with their beaks (e.g. Storks and Diego)

‘Raptor’ is more like a style of hunting than a single biological grouping. The clade that includes hawks and falcons also includes parrots and some songbirds.

(clade = a whole branch of the tree of life, including all the ancestors as well as the leaves).

Diurnal (daytime) birds of prey are split into several groupings

Nocturnal BoP (owls) include

So most of the birds at the Hawk Conservancy Trust not actually ‘hawks’. A few aren’t even raptors, notably the White Storks.

Recognition

Adult males and females usually have similar plumage (if not identical). Size is usually the biggest discriminator – with females larger. Jeuveniles can look very different: e.g. bald eagles and Egyptian vultures where young birds don’t have the striking whites of the adults.

Falcons have longer ‘scythe’-shaped wings compared with Eagles and Hawks. They are more muscley-looking than hawks. Feathers are stiff for working the air. May perch with their wings crossed behind their backs.

By comparison with falcons, kites and buzzards have relatively small bodies compared with the wing size. This can allow them to be better at soaring and manouevering.

Red kites have forked tails. Buzzard tail is squarer / diamond shaped. Red kites have redder wings with notable white shapes. Black kites have a less distinctive fork than red kites. The ‘black’ in black kite refers to the feathers under their wings, not the overall body colour (which is tawny).

Foot size may indicate whether a bird is a hunter or a carrion eater (kites have small talons)

How old is this bird?

This is a really common question. A reasonable answer if you don’t know is that birds in captivity can live much longer than wild birds, and that some of the birds in our displays and experiences are 20 years old and the oldest birds at the Trust can be approaching 40 years old.

Bigger birds live longer

Some of our oldest birds now have diseases of old age which can include arthritus, high blood pressure, cataracts, and these birds are in effect retired from work.

Here are some of the better known birds and their year of birth.

The names of the birds hatched at the trust can help age them. Each year has a theme and birds hatched at the Trust in that year have a name related to that theme. E.g. The theme for 2012 was Olympic athletes, hence Ennis the Great Grey.

Largest wingspan

At the Trust, the Cinereous vulture

Do wild birds bother the Trust’s birds

Yes, sometimes.

A pair of nesting buzzards ganged up on Sam the Bald Eagle, which put him off. Perhaps because they were nesting with young.

Crows often get uppity.

Red Kites don’t and in fact may join in with the displays where food is fired into the air.

A magpie buzzed Sage the Tawny owl in the woods, but didn’t then stick around.

Why don’t the birds fly away

They sometimes do, but in general the birds know that they get fed here. The aviaries are their homes / territories

If they do, we have GPS tracking to find out where they have gone. They then happily accept a lift back.

XXXX Most of the birds naturally return home to their aviaries at the end of the display without being forced to, knowing tyhey will get food reward

What do you feed the birds

XXXXX

Are the birds okay in aviaries or in the mews

XXXXX do the birds get to fly

Do you train the birds to take part in displays

XXX Food related

XXX Following their natural instincts

XXX Creance lines etc

XXXX A lot of the training is getting the birds to trust their handlers, especially for ‘skittish’ birds

What is the equipment attached to the birds?

XXXX

Flight

Talk about how birds land - flaring to lose speed. Parachutists do the same. Planes can’t rotate their wings but they extend flaps which has a similar effect.

Detecting prey

Hawks and falcons use sight – their hearing isn’t much better than ours. Vultures can detect gestures from 1000s of feet away (e.g. Boe when she is called in). Owls have good sight AND excellent hearing. They can hear a human heartbeat. Manu birds can see Ultraviolet light that is invisible to humans. Kestrels use this to see urine trails left by mice.

Bird eyes are closer to reptile eyes than mammals like ours – birds descended from dinosaur-like creature. Some birds (notably owls) have elongated eyes so can’t move them in their eye sockets – hence head movements (some owls can go 270 degrees in each direction).

Raptors don’t usually have a good sense of smell. The main exception are New World vultures, which have a good sense of smell – as shown by their large nostrils (nares) that you can actually see through.

Breathing

The bird respiratory system is completely different from ours, with air sacs as well as lungs. Human lungs do the gas exchange with the blood and also the pumping, driven by the diaphragm, so they expand and contract, and air goes in and out through the same pipe (the trachea). Birds have quite stiff lungs but they have additional air sacs which are all pumped by the rib cage, not a diaphragm. Crucially, bird lungs have a one-way flow through the lungs, giving them a more efficient gas exchange, which help with their high oxygen demands.

Owls

General

There are five species of owl in the UK: Tawny, Barn, Long eared, short-eared, and Little Owl (although this was actually introduced in the 1800s). Long-eared owls are quite small.

The folk term ‘wise old owl’ is unfortunately not accurate. Owls have a wide range of instinctive behaviours that serve them well in the wild but they’re not good at problem solving (e.g enrichment puzzle toys) and will forget food if they can’t see it.

Barn Owl

UK Barn owls are the only example of this genus. But many related species in other countries.

Tawny owls

Most common (?) UK owl

We can have lots of these in the hospital

What to do if you find one XXXXXX

Cite Troy as an example of how not to do it (he was kept for three weeks as a chick and fed by hand every day)

Great grey

Large owl on the outside but little on the inside

Very low flier

In the same genus – Strix – as Tawny Owls – woodland hunters.

Strong facial disk - a satellite disk for sound.

Boobok

Australian. Looks cute but is an effective predator that can catch quite large prey. Muscley bird with relatively large talons.

Her call is a baby ‘feed me’ call quite unlike the normal adult territorial call.

Eagle owl

Cinnamon and Molly

One of the largest owls and can take quite large prey Don’t have large ranges and don’t travel very much Very long-lived – twenty years even in the wild Doing relatively well because of their large range and diverse diet – they will catch and eat almost anything

Milky eagle owl

XXXXX

Snowy Owl

Sweeny Todd

Hedwig in HP films. Although HP used males owls because they have purer-white plumage (and are smaller)

Vultures

White headed vultures

Will sometimes catch live prey (e.g. mongooses and squirrels) – almost unique amongst vultures.

Raptors - General

Peregrine falcons

World’s fastet bird of prey. Clocked at > 200 mph.

Stiff feathers compared with the hawks and owls so can better work the air.

Nostril adaptation so can breathe normally in a 200 mph airflow. Unlike cheetahs, can eat immediately after they have made their kill (cheetahs are out of breath)

Eagles

Bald eagles are a type of fishing eagle and as such have the characteristic white patterns that confuse fish.

Tawny and steppe eagles are ‘booted’ – they have feathers down their legs unlike most raptors.

Juvenile Bald Eagles have dark head feathers and take several years to get the distinctive white heads and black bodies of adults.

Bateleur Eagles

Adults have uniquely short tails. This may allows them to easily step backwards when attacking snakes. They may be the first on the scene at an early morning kill, as the vultures may still be seatching for thermals.

Harris Hawk

E.g. Josie.

Hot southern areas of the US

XXXX jess under thumb, back through middle fingers.

Unsually they will hunt collaboratively and may even ‘stack’ on each other’s backs if perches are limited.

Side-to-side tail wag = happy, as is purring

Displays

Woodland

Ennis. Get her out of the aviary with food. Let her eat the food but quickly encourage her onto her stump. She should then fly up into the Arena.

Use the horizontal branch to get her fly up and down. But then need to disappear on the ‘last one’ cue so that she flies between the bird team people (as she flies away so she doesn’t see you). Call her back down at the end, return her to the aviary and lob food in.