Hello, newbie from the UK here!

I'm Daisy and I share my life with numerous feathered, furred and scaly kids. Most of my birds live in aviaries as a few years ago we had an incident with a gas leak in our home and since I have been fearful of keeping indoor birds. I have built an outdoor bird room for my more hands on birds so that they can have separate air space! I am a mom to 3 Alexandrine parakeets, Koda, George & Holly. I also have a flock of 6 cockatiels, a couple of red fronted kakarikis, black masked lovebirds, black cheeked lovebirds, a peach faced lovebird and a Fischer's lovebird. Although I have experience with large birds, the littles always have a special place in my heart

As well as my psittacine species I also keep a Harris' hawk. He's coming up to 13 years old and I've had him since he was 16 weeks. He's an absolute love and I am honoured to have the opportunity to keep raptors. I did have an American kestrel too but he was unfortunately let out/stolen in April this year. Non-birdwise I have a bunch of snakes, lizards and chelonians (various species!), a cat and 2 dogs. I surround myself with these amazing animals and I couldn't be more happy. Nearly all of them are rescues and rehomes

I hope to see you all around and I can't wait to get posting

Welcome to the group! That's quite a menagerie you've got there.

How did you come to have a Harris's hawk? I'm guessing that you must be a falconer, since HH's are native to the Americas not the UK, and wildlife rehabbers wouldn't be taking them in on your side of the Atlantic. These hawks are part of the native wildlife where I live, although I haven't seen them in my neighborhood. I'm not up on the falconry laws so I'm not sure if current US law allows them to be exported. But other countries in their natural range might be more lenient, and the internet says there are breeders in England and Ireland who sell them. I wasn't aware that people were breeding hawks in captivity!

Hi Daisy! Welcome!

Thank you for the welcome!

I'm not necessarily currently a falconer as I don't actually hunt. As falconry is the term given to hunting with raptors I try not to use the term myself but sometimes it comes out to make it easier when explaining things haha. I AM intending on getting into the actual hunting side of falconry this season as I believe it will be good enrichment for the bird. I just keep raptors and train them using falconry techniques Harris' hawks arrived in the UK some time ago and they soon became popular (and cheap) when people realised what good falconry birds they made. They had the personality of a buzzard (hawk) and the go and flying style of an accipiter (true hawk). They're great all around, they have good personalities, are relatively 'easy' to train and they are sociable. Unfortunately, there are no laws protecting raptors from being bought by morons in the UK and if you have the money then anybody can buy one... sad really. They end up in the wrong hands a lot of the time. I think the US has a good system with apprentices! We have plenty of breeders here and we are not legally allowed to take birds from the wild like the US falconers do. We have breeders of hawks, owls, vultures, eagles etc.

Hope that clears a few things up haha

Hellooo! Thank you

Hey Daisy.

Hellooo!

For the benefit of anyone who doesn't know already, Harris's hawks are unusual because they hunt in groups and work together to catch prey, instead of hunting alone like most hawks. The strategies include taking turns chasing the prey until the prey is too tired to outrun them any more, and one bird flushing the prey for the others to catch. The internet says this makes them popular with falconers, because the birds are naturally more willing to work with the human than most hawks. But I'm having a hard time imagining HOW they work with the human, since the strategies they use with their family groups don't seem like they'd translate very well to humans.

Welcome to the forum!

Geez, I thought I had the managary with dogs, birds, turtles tortoises and fish. Sounds like you have quite the animal family.

Your Harris hawk is beautiful! I don't think I've ever met someone who had a predatory bird species before, let alone someone on this site.
What's it like having him? I would imagine everything about taking care of him is different compared to the parrots.

This translates into falconry because we are their cooperative hunting partner. We train them to 'follow on' whereas most raptors like accipiters (goshawks, sparrowhawks, coopers etc) will fly directly from the fist to prey. We put the Harris' up into a tree and they follow us. You teach this by calling them down for a bit of food then putting them in the tree in front. Do it a few times but every now and then drop your arm before they land and they'll carry on into the next tree. After a few times they realise that you want them to follow you. Once they're in the tree and following on, YOU flush their prey for them. Whether that means you're using a ferret in a rabbit hole, putting a dog on point or flushing it yourself it doesn't really matter. They learn that to hunt they can use you as their tool or hunting partner. You're absolutely spot on in saying that they're the only raptor that hunts in a pack. They have the nickname 'wolf of the sky' for that reason exactly

One of the great things about Harris' is that you can fly them in groups too, called a cast. My partner is hoping to pick up a young female next year so we can get ours flying together. They don't fly in 'flock' structure like a psittacine species would but they will follow one another and work together to take down prey

When working a falconry centre I used to fly two females called Tick and Tock. They were mother and daughter and flew for demonstrations brilliantly