April!
Wow, time sure goes fast.
Arran is no longer on a creance! Freed him on Friday, and he's doing super well. Aim is for him to be in shows, so fingers crossed! <3
More new babies have hatched at the centre; 3 more Turks and 4 more scops owls. We're gonna be overrun...
But aside from that, new birds have arrived. A mountain caracara (Pierre), two steppe eagles (Tuck and Marian), two black kites (Bonnie and Clyde) and a stunning, mature female bald eagle (Montana). She's 13yrs old and a beautiful addition to our eagle lawn. Before she arrived, we had no mature balds on display. Aspen, McCoy and Denver are all 3yrs and under; so they're still sporting their juvenile feathers. This new girl sure is a beauty.
We were told she'd never been handled before. Yet, on the day she arrived, she was sitting on the glove perfectly and...even did 6 leash jumps to the glove. Odd indeed. She was even good enough to be put in displays in only her second week of being at the centre! She was kept on a creance (she was still in training after all) and...it was all going beautifully. Perfect, even.
So her trainer, Sarah, took the decision to free her on Sunday. We did it at the end of the day, with no guests in the centre, just in case something should go wrong. It's a good job we did.
She did one perfect flight on the creance. So she was freed and them put back on the perch.
She looked down at her left foot, then down at her right.
She was free.
She flew straight up into the tree and sat there.
Slightly worrying for a moment, but she came straight back out of the tree as soon as Sarah put her glove up.
Great, we thought!....until we realised she wasn't applying any brakes.
She hit Sarah straight in the head with her feet - talons extended.
Sarah's ok thankfully, but she's got some nasty wounds now. A large puncture wound in her head, and one hell of a gash down the side of her face and neck. Montana is a beautiful eagle, but she's an imprint. Imprinted eagles have no 'boundary' that parent-reared eagles have. They will bully you, literally, for food and will quite happily try to kill you if given the chance. Sarah was so willing to work with her, and she really thought she'd be able to turn her around, but she's too dangerous - we're not allowed to keep her at the centre.
So much for having a beautiful adult bald at the centre, ey?
Aside from that horrible accident, everything else is going fine. Injuries are part of this job.
In more 'good news', the boss has ordered me a new bird to train.
I'm going to be getting my very own male lanner falcon! -faint-
The lanneret will be a youngster and will teach me just as much as I'll be teaching him. Excite! Now to think of what to call him...