40-41 days

I had intended to make a video every three days, but he is changing so fast and I am getting so much differing video that the file would be too big or I would have to leave something out if I waited for three days.

I should mention that he is fully grown except for his feather growth. He will not get any bigger, just longer feathers. About 38 days is the heaviest that they will get. After that they trim down a bit, but not a lot. The feathers will be fully grown at 70 days, and by that time the blood will have been fully withdrawn, and he will be in his "new" suit that will have to last him for a year.

Now he is becoming more and more restless. He had not left his window ledge until today, his 41st day of life. He has been content, and sleeping a lot. Now he is getting ready for the flights that have to be coming soon. He went from being scared to be picked up, to feeling quite confident and actually jumping to me whether I want him or not. He apparently recognizes the glove as a place that I will let him jump to.

He is very confident that with us is very safe and where he wants to be. He is content enough that he falls asleep with no hesitation.

This period is a critical one for an eyass (baby) hawk or falcon. He does not want to be alone, and will come looking for one of us to be with. We can lock him outside, but he just paces back and forth in the window until we either go to him or let him in the house. They can be a pain in a lot of places, at this stage, as he wants to bite, not knowing that it might be a problem for us. He needs to be with us for his mental development, and it is very demanding, but all this will eventually pass, and the more time we can spend with him the better he will be for it.

It was very windy and quite cold outside, so I tried to bring him inside so that I could read and be comfortable. I set up a perch for him, and he was content for about 5 minutes.

Then he jumped to the arm of my chair, then to my arm, then up my shirt to try to give me some love bites. Then to the top of my chair, which gave me a crick in my neck as I fully expected to get my ear pierced at any minute.

Josie need some attention as well and they looked each other over from all angles.

A smell test was in order, but a cautious one. Josie is smart enough to know to not trust one of these critters.

Hearing a thump from outside, I went to look, and Lee was running around on the back porch. He eventually ended up on top of the smoker, sliding off, and then running over to me so that I could hold him.

The next week will be the critical time. He will soon be trying his wings. I am not sure what kind of possible danger he will face while he gets used to them. As long as he doesn't get too close to a mama hen with chicks, I think the Chickens will be OK. The young Redtails have not fledged yet, and he is very cautious of things that fly. If I can get him through the next two weeks, then things should work out fine.

https://vimeo.com/170335756    password-   owyheeflyer

37-39 days

Well the boy is growing his feather like crazy. Tail is about half its length. He is requiring more interaction each day. He is bored. We had to go to McDermitt, Nv today for a fire training, so he was left alone for about four hours. When we got back he was insisting that someone spend some time with him. I finally got all my stuff done and went out to sit with him and make a phone call concerning some fire radio for the rural fire district. He kept running around and I knew that he was going to jump to me whether I wanted him or not. I was able to finish the call before he came visiting.

Then I had to yell for help before he took a chunk out of my belly. I managed to foist him off on Karen while I finished my business.

 https://vimeo.com/170062874                Password-  owyheeflyer

36 days old

Lee is now 36 days old and is beginning to develop a personality. So far so good. It is very difficult to improve on Mother Nature, and raptors raised as babies rarely turn out well mannered or achieve their full potential. There are many hard lessons that are learned on their own, that is very difficult to pass on when they know that you are the supplier of food. The hardest is that if they do not try, they do not eat. On their own there is no one to blame, so the raptor either learns to fly harder or dies in the process. There is a very small window or opportunity to learn that lesson.

In a natural setting there is a 30 day or so window that the parents will feed them. Until they are able to make kills on their own they will stay around the nest area, screaming for food. If there is a lot of them, the food is of course limited, so as they see things that the parents bring to them for food, they try on their own to catch them. As they fail, they begin to try harder, fly harder, and eventually they discover if they try hard enough they can indeed catch their own food. With a full tummy they begin to forage wider and wider afield, until the point that they forget why they would need to go back to the nest area.

Of course not all of them are able to make that transition, or they make a mistake and receive an injury. Over the course of the first year approximately 75 percent of young raptors die of either injuries, or mistakes. That seems to be a pretty large toll, but it is what keeps the species strong.

With the interference of man, in this case me, those lessons are almost impossible to teach. I will be very careful about depriving him of food for any length of time. Even though I do no more than drop off his saucer of ground meat, he still knows where it comes from, and if he doesn't get it he is not quiet about that failure, and with enough of a reminder, I will indeed supply that which he wants.It is a given that no matter how good a hunting hawk he becomes, he will only be a shade of what he could do in the wild with only nature to guide and shape him.

My goal at this point is to raise him so that he is quiet, with as good a set of manners as I can manage. So far things are good. The next hurdle will be when he is no longer content with lying around watching. That is why we have a telemetry transmitter hanging around his neck. That will help me find him when he starts exploring. It is my intention to leave him outside all day, and bring him in at night. Sounds easy, but there are many pitfalls just awaiting a young and dumb raptor named Lee.

There is a Red Tail nest down at the creek that the young are about the same age. Lee has already shown the tendency to scream a warning about the parents when they fly over. Hopefully it will all work out, but the danger is there. I eliminated our big Silver Wyandot Rooster already and I liked the stew much better than I ever did the Rooster. The only other Roosters we have are Old English Game hens, and they are smaller than Lee even currently, so I would expect them to give him the respect that he deserves, even as a baby.

https://vimeo.com/169576520

 password-  owyheeflyer