ADVENTURES WITH BIRDS OF PREY 



111 



to jump or to fly 

 to its food. 



Plenty of pa- 

 tience was need- 

 ed as we waited 

 from five to ten 

 minutes at a time 

 for these nervous 

 Cooper's hawks 

 to come to us, 

 and we flew them 

 half a dozen 

 times to a feed- 

 ing. Each day 

 the distance was 

 slowly increased 

 until they would 

 come a hundred 

 yards to our fists. 



A good deal of 

 this work was un- 

 necessary, but 

 we were inexperi- 

 enced and could 

 only guess when 

 our birds were 

 sufficiently 

 trained. For two 

 months w e flew 

 them to our 

 fists on long 

 strings before 

 finally turning 

 them loose with 

 considerable ap- 

 prehension. 



Now, after six 

 years of experi- 

 ence with hawks, 

 we fly our birds 

 loose after a week 

 of training at the 

 most. Moreover, 

 we do not worry 

 whether they will return to our outstretched 

 hand. We know they will. 



We can still recall vividly turning our 

 first hawks loose — the birds skimming 

 along the ground, then rising, up, up, to the 

 topmost branches of a pin oak tree. 



TRAINED AT LAST! 



They ignored us while taking account of 

 their surroundings, and then tested their 

 wings with a few short flights directly away 

 from us. Were we really going to lose our 

 hawks after months spent in patient train- 

 ing? Of course not. It was the way of all 



DROPPING IN ON DUCK HAWKS 



Lowering himself down the jagged cliff on the large rope, husky John Craighead 

 has a smaller one tied around his waist and legs. This "life line" enables him to 

 rest and acts as a safeguard should the climbing rope become frayed on the 

 sharp edges or a falling rock knock him out. On this 300-foot precipice in north- 

 ern Pennsylvania the authors found a nest with four young hawks (page 123). 



hawks on being released for the first time, 

 though we did not realize it then. They 

 were just seeing how it felt to be free. 



After nearh' an hour, sure enough, hun- 

 ger and habit brought them back. They 

 were flown on a string for two days before 

 we again gathered courage to release them. 

 It is well to fly them free for at least a 

 week before flying them at game, so that 

 they can grow strong and learn to handle 

 themselves. 



Our great triumph came when our hawks 

 caught their first wild quarry, for from that 

 time on we could consider ourselves falcon- 



