Dirt hawking with a clicker

I'm a licensed falconer, as you might be able to tell from my little picture...well, I guess the licensed part isn't that obvious, but the little white thing hanging from my whistle really is a license!

Anyway, I'm a dirt hawker...which means I fly a Harris' hawk (Red tailed hawks also qualify).  The dirt hawking term comes from the fact that everybody going out in the field comes in covered with dirt if we get lucky, as we're hawking ground quarry like rabbits and jack rabbits most of the time.  Every now and again we go after some high-fallootin stuff like pheasant or ducks, but folks that fly long wings (falcons) generally call our hunting style "low life slips" as Harris' hawks tend to take that kind of quarry the easiest way possible.

So, what's this got to do with clicker training?  Well, both the dog and the hawk are clicker trained. The Jack Russell terrier (remember the "proud to be worth less than a grand dog"?) came into my life when the second whippet broke for good (as far as being able to run in an open field), and my husband begged me to get something "small and sturdy".  She taught me to refine my clicker training in a big way...you can't MAKE a JRT do anything that they don't want to do.  Especially when you have to run that dog "naked" in a hunting situation.  I might go into depth how much she taught me another time...suffice it to say, she's taught me creativity in reinforcement.

The Harris' I fly is also clicker trained...he started life as a pigeon exterminator for a friend of mine that did a great job with his early training, but went through a period while on loan to another fellow that gave him some, shall we say, emotional baggage.  This has led to some fearful behavior in the field that is just this season really extinguishing. 

As a dirt hawker, I don't need a whole lot of fancy behavior...just a whistle recall to the fist (my hand), following (moving from perch to perch after the dog and I), and allowing approach on quarry.  The little extras, like recalling to a lure, being crate trained, hood trained (comfortable wearing a little cap that blocks his vision), understanding "jump ups" (hawk jumping jacks), and calmly sitting on my fist or backpack perch are great but not absolutely neccessary.  I have found, since I'm so comfortable clicker training dogs, that it seems almost intuitive to also work the hawk this way.  Traditional hawk training is almost all lure-reward with management in the initial stages.  It's not that big a jump to consider clicker training if you are already comfortable with it, but there are some little details that you have to work out to properly utilize it with a bird of prey. 

1. Hawks associate the object that delivers a treat with quarry.  They aren't very nice to quarry.  It is a rare hawk that is safe to feed with a bare hand, regardless of how you present the treat.  This makes it awkward to deliver a treat after the behavior occurs if the behavior is a simple jump to glove or similar thing.  I worked out two different approaches to the problem.  One is to close a treat in the glove, hiding it, before asking for a behavior.  I may or may not click and open the glove at any point, but the glove is stocked with a cookie before hand.  This is the approach I took with my red tail.  For my more social Harris' hawks I have experimented with "hawk zen" exercises (an almost safe approach because they have an inherent sense of inhibition towards others of their species, since they live in social groups and often share kills, and they are a little more cerebral than Red Tails.)  One bird that I've handled still has foot inhibition problems and has to be "reminded" occasionally, another does quite well but you still have to bring the treat to him in a fisted bare hand then open it right at his beak to avoid the feet, and the current bird I'm flying can be treated as openly as a dog.  The exercise is exactly like what you would do with a puppy (though starting with a gloved hand!)--offer a treat in a closed fist, when the bird turns it's head from the fist, and keeps both feet on the glove or perch, click (I use a tongue click) and open the hand to deliver the treat.  Criteria is NO predatory, avaricious, leaning, foot twitching behavior towards delivery hand before click.  Many falconers told me it couldn't be done, even with Harris' and that I'd eventually end up with my bird hanging from my bloody bare hand.  So far the birds I know that I trained or am currently flying haven't done that to anyone and I've flown my doglike one for over two seasons now.
2. Fear.  Hawks are afraid of a lot of different things.  The main ways that traditional falconers overcome the fear are manning-general exposure to "stuff" and weight control-finding the weight that the hawk is hungry enough to ignore fear and distractions but healthy enough to safely fly.  I know that it has been claimed by some that clicker training eliminates the need for weight control, but I have not yet found that to be true.  A friend of mine tells about the day that her bird was sunning herself on a telephone pole and two rabbits came out to play below her.  The bird was so full and satisfied that she just turned her head upsidedown at the bunnies and chirped a bit, giving my friend the impression that the bird almost could be saying, "Look how cute."  This same bird came down smartly to a large offered treat, though.  What I've found with hawks is that you do need to carefully monitor their weight, chart it against their performance, use advanced clicker desensitization while manning, and understand the bird's body language to successfully increase flying weight.  My birds fly better each season at higher weights, because of the accumulation of information from clicker training, but there definitely is an upper limit!

Hawking with a clicker has definitely refined my approach at dealing with behavior problems.  Even when I was a bare apprentice and my hawk had hurt himself slamming a rabbit (I know, it seems a theme), I found that traditional techniques and experienced falconers were no help bringing him back to hunting.  They just told me that he was too fat until one finally FELT his chest and was appalled at how skinny he was.  Then told me that he must be a bad bird, just fatten him and release him.  I instead did jump ups with him, nothing more!, and he recovered to take release pheasants and every rabbit we ever saw.  I did eventually release him, because he was a bird that needed to contribute to the gene pool in my opinion! 

My Harris' are so easy that it's almost unneccessary to clicker train but it's just so much fun.  It keeps my expensive glove cleaner, too, as hawk treats are messy, nasty things!  I still use what traditional folks have done in the past, and a LOT of what Steve Layman invented, and have messed with things all on my own, too.  It adds a layer of precision to the sport and makes birds better performers, falconers better trainers, and JRT's possible to run.  (If I didn't have clicker training, my dog would have to wear so much aversive hardware she'd never get under a single bush!)

 'til next time.

Andrea