I wrote the earlier post about midday. Since then I have gotten a few questions and rather than reply individually, it might be easier to just tell all of you at the same time as I am sure that you are either thinking the same thing now or will soon.
I do want to clear up one misconception concerning him and imprinting. Imprinting is when the animal thinks that you are its mother. It will occur in Raptors up to about 19 days, but you have to really work at it to be able to imprint one at that age.
There are two ways to imprint a hawk and the first and quickest is to take it so young that it actually cannot remember any thing else but you. The second factor is feeding it from above by hand. It is natural for a baby bird to respond to fingers dangling a chunk of meat over its head. The head goes back, the beak falls open. In no time at all it will respond with an open beak and begging cries.
Imprints were used in Raptor propagation simply because the most difficult factor in such an endeavor is getting the much smaller male, in an enclosure too small for him to escape if the female gets mad at him, to actually climb up on her back and copulate. The females will lay eggs with no problem, but getting semen is the hangup. Males were imprinted so that they could be trained to copulate on a hat worn by you. It is then picked up with a capillary tube for fertilization of the female either through voluntary presentation, or everting and exposing the cervix. Imprints are an unnatural hawk for hunting, in that they basically remain babies for almost the rest of their lives. They are spoiled brats that scream all the time. They forget why they scream, it becomes a habit. An imprint can never be released into the wild, because it could never rejoin the wild population, because it will never be as the wild species.
The attempt to avoid imprinting is why I took Lee at 23 days of age. If I pay close attention he will not imprint. That is why he was fed from a bowl, and never on the fist until he was outside hopping around. I took him at that age for two reasons. One is that he was young enough that he could bond with us a bit, without being totally dependent. The other is his feathers. If raptors, when growing feathers, come under a lot of stress or suffer a reduction in diet, will develop stress marks in the feathers. That will cause a weak spot and the first time it rocks back on its tail while fighting game will break those feathers at that weak spot. By taking him at that age I bypass that problem completely.
I have explained all this in such detail so that you can better understand the terminology and the reasons that I am doing what I have done with him. Lee, because of his species availability is free, costing no more than my time. He is also the subject of an experiment. Certain raptors are only available through breeding projects or you might be able to take a eyass Peregrine if you can find one that the state will allow you to take. ( don't get me started) The cost of one of these from a breeding project has gone way up due to the increased cost to raise and feed one. The bigger birds will go through as many as three quail a day at the peak of their growing cycle. The cost of a Quail is about $1.65 or more. They will go through about 70 of them from hatching to fully grown. If Lee is not capable of taking the only game that I have available to me, then I will let him go back to the wild. He can fit in to the wild population and it will not take him long to forget he ever lived here or lived with a human.
If you picture the "Ladies lap dog" that quivers and screeches at any other dog that comes close to his mistress. You will be experiencing the dog world version of imprint. Dogs generally imprint when taken from their mother at less than 6 weeks. What I have attempted to do with Lee was to dual socialize him. He knows he is a Prairie Falcon, but he kinda thinks that I might have my uses at times.
Now I am sure that every one who is not a falconer did not expect such a lengthy explanation of the word Imprint. I am also pretty sure that I still did not fully explain the ramifications of an imprinted Raptor. Tomorrow I will go through what I am going to try to accomplish with Lee, and my plans for him.
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This afternoon around 2 PM I attempted to call him to the lure to feed him, as he was giving signs that he was hungry. He chose to ignore it, as I had changed the lure that I am using to a smaller less obvious one. Toby, a friend pilot and his wife, came to visit, so I went on about my business. Pretty soon I hear him peeping at the door, so I let him walk into the house and eventually on the fist where he was able to eat his meal on his perch. I carried him for about 2 hours later in the evening.
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