Training the flying team

All the birds that are flown free at ICBP, or used for photography days etc have to be trained. Most are trained once they are full grown.

Eagles, hawks, falcons and buzzards are all parent reared and then once they have fledged and are flying round the enclosures we take them out and start the training.

The exceptions to that are the owls and on occasion kites and vultures. These birds do better in training if they are hand reared, so during the breeding season you may see young birds away from their parents being socialized at an early age for subsequent training.

When the parent reared birds are trained we catch them up, put on their equipment, and tether them. You may be concerned about this, but it is pretty much the same as teaching a puppy to go on a collar and lead, or a horse to wear a head collar and be lead. Even sheep and cattle that are shown go through a similar training. The birds quickly settle and the training is in fact incredibly short when you consider that we can take a virtually wild bird and have it flying free in a matter of a few weeks.

During the training and indeed during its whole flying life the bird will be weighed daily during its working season to check on its health and wellbeing. Most of the birds end up being heavier once they are fully trained and fit than they were when they first started their training. There are many good books on training birds of prey, if you are interested, have a look at the book lists.

The hand reared birds are treated differently and they start their training before they can fly. So whenever we feed them we whistle so they equate the noise with food and soon learn to walk towards us to be fed. They are in some ways easier to train this way, but there are down sides. They can often be very noisy and they are certainly more demanding in terms of wanting attention. You will probably see young birds on training sessions at the Centre during the summer months.