Author: [email protected]

These were taken by Christina Paz for submission to Pursuit Falconry Magazine.

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The movie is on our ospreyfalconry Instagram page. The bird has been behaving well at weights around 1300g. He flew to the perches I picked for him for tidbits and flew directly to me for visible, larger tidbits. He is staying on the boat for long periods before flying to more stable perches. If I crank up the trolling motor to speed 3, he will always face forward.

At 1298 grams, the bird flew well to my glove twice. He flew to me while I was in an aluminum boat for a bream. Several hours later he flew across the yard to another fish. He is slow, deliberating a while. When I first see the head bobbing and direct gaze that means he is planning on flying to me, I can expect to wait another couple of minutes to him to check the surroundings, check his feet, and maybe slice.

These birds seem fairly reliable, just hesitant.

An interesting episode: With the osprey on my glove I walked by a fish lying in an open container. I did not notice the osprey spot it lying there. He flew form my glove to the ground about 50 feet away. I walked back to the fish, fixed it to my glove, hid it behind my back and walked back to and then 30 feet past the osprey.

Before I could present him the fish, he flew back to the container! It had been around 2 minutes since we walked by. He had seen it. He had remembered where it was, but he didn’t notice (or understand) me remove it.

After standing around on the container and closely, repeatedly examining it, he finally turned his attention to me and flew his longest distance to the glove yet (about 70 feet).

Today, Kennonite pulled out his boxes filled with leather, grommets, and tools. It was time to put some anklets on Orville. He won’t be using them to restrain the osprey the same way he would a red-tailed hawk. But anklets and jesses are handy should he want to hood him or travel with him.

Orville sat on his outside perch and watched as Kennonite set up the table and cut leather. You can see the whole fish–a bream–we put on his perch. When Orville was smaller, we started out hand feeding him small bits of fish, and now that he’s older, he’s able to eat out of a bowl. But he hasn’t learned to grasp the fish with his talons and tear meat from the fish for himself. He’s made a little progress, but we’ll be happy when he can eat a whole fish. The falconer’s hands are aching from cutting up his food.

Back to the anklets: Using an X-acto knife, he cut a strip of leather and measured around the bird’s foot. It seemed to be a good fit, so he cut a second one. This is the easy part. The hard part is placing them on the bird, as he doesn’t always want to cooperate. Pecking can be a problem. Orville only pecked a little when the Falconer placed the anklet on the second leg.

Next, Kennonite made the jesses. These aren’t especially long so they won’t hinder the bird in the water.