Conservation, rehabilitation, captive breeding, foster rearing, incubation and education. These are just a few of the roles that The Hawk Conservancy Trust plays within the bird of prey world. Through out the last few years we have really stormed forward regarding most of the subjects I have mentioned.

Since becoming a charitable trust we have excelled in certain areas. We have put our selves on the map as far as the bird of prey hospital goes, caring for around 200 injured birds a year with just under a 50% release rate. People from all over the south come to us with patients including the RSPCA, wildlife hospitals, veterinary hospitals and of course the general public. We are also well known for our work with rare and endangered species such as the oriental white-backed vulture breeding programme, breeding and releasing our indigenous red kites back into the local area and also the many foster parents that we have on the park rearing chicks from the wild giving them a second chance at surviving.

All in all there are many different aspects of work that we are involved in, but from the public perception we are probably most well known for our flying demonstrations. Without flying demonstrations we would not get half the visitors that come through the gates every year. Demonstrations take up a huge part of the day when visiting us. There are normally a few birds that really stand out in peoples minds having visited us. Madeleine the secretary bird is always mentioned, probably because of her very striking looks.

Our job as far as demonstrations go are to try and show people each bird behaving as naturally as possible. Obviously most of these behaviours are instinctive so in theory all we have to do is trigger this behaviour as and when we need it. Sounds fairly straight forward but as many of you will appreciate, animals are very unpredictable at the best of times and are all, as we are, individuals. We need to carefully pick our birds that are to be used for demonstration purposes because not all birds can be used. For example you have to be careful how you fly very predatory birds. Some falcons will be terrible for chasing wild birds all the time which obviously makes them inadequate for displays - its no good when the audience have to stare at a bare sky while the falcon is half a mile away. Some of our regulars will know that we try to change our birds that take part in demos as often as we can. Some birds are destined to work in demos for the whole of their lives, e.g. imprinted owls, as they would be no good for breeding purposes.

In some cases we will fly a young bird in demonstration until it is mature enough to breed. A perfect case of this was George the condor who flew in demos until he was seven years old, which is about mature for an Andean Condor, and then he went into a breeding programme.

Obviously birds will undoubtedly get old, so new blood needs to constantly be added to demonstrations. It takes a lot of hard work and constant routine to get a bird up to the standard that we require for a daily slot in one of our three demos that we do each day. On average we aim on about a three year programme to get a bird just as we want it.

Over the winter period we obviously stop all our demonstrations and give all the birds that have worked over the summer a well earned rest. Our time instead is devoted to a lot of maintenance around the grounds. It also give us a perfect opportunity to spend some quality time training young or new birds for demonstrations the following season. Finding time to train birds in the open season is very difficult, as you can imagine, due to the lack of free time. The afternoons in the closed season are normally left free for us to work with these birds. This winter we have a very interesting line up of understudies that will hopefully make it in the New Year.

The new stars
Photos taken on 23 Dec 2005
Vega
Orion
Chaucer and Dickens
Anderson
Wordsworth
Goose
Kipling

Danebury and Cheyanne, the two American bald eagles, have to be among the most recognised birds that we fly. They are renowned for the very spectacular routine that they do every day of the summer flying from a mile and a half away back home - sometimes reaching incredible heights as they do so, and finishing with a breath-taking landing to music in front of the public. We thought to ourselves earlier in the year that it would be fantastic if there were more than two. As a result we are currently training two more bald eagles to do as Cheyanne and Danebury do. Their names are Vega and Orion. Vega is a five year old female and Orion is a three year old male. Some of you may remember that we did begin their training a few seasons back and they showed real progress, but it was also the year that we began our red kite release program. It got to the point where we couldn’t risk the kites being too disturbed by the eagles getting it wrong and landing near their nest sites, so we made the decision to put them both into an aviary together on the chance that they may pair up, but unfortunately Vega is quite a dominant female and gave Orion a real hard time.

Now that we have no young kites out in the valley it is a great time to start their training off again. After a lot of work over the last month or so we are now at the stage where both of the eagles know exactly what we want them to do which is one of the hardest things to get right. As we get them out of the landrover to fly they immediately look out over the valley for someone to call them in. To achieve this all you have to do is start them off with really short distances so they get to know that they take off from one person and have to fly to another person. Then increase the distance gradually. From now until we open all we are going to do with them is fly them in a large field that we have access to from one end to the other. This is basically to get them super fit. The key to the valley is to be able to get them to fly from one side to the other in a straight line which is incredibly hard work. Once they are fit enough to do that you’ve cracked it. As time goes on they will soon learn how to make it really easy for themselves by making good height and therefore being able to rest most of the way across. Remember they want to make their lives as easy as possible - they won’t make hard work for themselves for no reason. If they make the grade it will be very interesting to see how they get on with Danebury and Cheyanne.

Also on the winter training team we have some young falcons. Two first year lannerettes and a first year lanner/peregrine hybrid. Their names are Dickens, Chaucer and Anderson after the ‘great writers’ theme. So far they are all getting on pretty well. The reason we are training these is not because we’ve got any particularly old falcons in the current team that may need replacing but because we want to give the likes of Lark more time off in the year. He has to work really hard in the summer so by having more we don’t have to solely rely on him. Me, Ashley and Andy have got one each to train, and it’s been a bit of a competition so far as to whose can fly the best. I won’t say whose is best but all I will say is me and Andy are both glad we haven’t got Ash’s bird! (just the luck of the draw).

Wordsworth, the young Gymnogene is another, being trained by Sam. This should be very interesting as the only other gymnogene that we have ever flown here was Jimmy who is the father of Wordsworth. Jimmy had a huge tendency to disappear half way through a demonstration and terrorise the local wild bird population. He was also a bit of a Houdini, managing to escape out of his aviary countless numbers of times. I think Sam’s got his hands full with this one as it’s already got a bit of an attitude problem.

I suppose the final two birds to mention are Goose, the immature Bateleur eagle and also Kipling, the immature griffon vulture. Goose is starting to turn into a real star. He is incredibly buoyant in the air, managing to make flying look easy in even the worst of conditions, something unfortunately the bald eagles find harder. He has also got the manners of a saint. Being a parent reared bird he has got a very natural respect for people not showing any signs of trying to dominate. I wish I could say the same for Kipling who is a totally different kettle of fish. She is a typical imprint, not quite a full ticket! She’s always around your ankles calling away, and sometimes she just gazes into the distance for no apparent reason. She being one of the youngest on the park has only just started flying properly. There is still a long way to go with her yet. She’s got a lot to live up to having Micawber as her older brother. Hopefully he will teach her a thing or two!

Anyway that’s about it for the understudies. Next year's demonstrations should prove to be quite different. There’s still plenty of work for them before we open in February and it will be interesting to see who if any have made the grade by the time we open. It will be nice to look back at the end of next season and see just how far they have all progressed!

I hope that you all look forward to seeing them in the new season.