I would say you are looking at that backwards. Until you prove to her that you can be trusted, she will not.Originally Posted by davids
Goshawks along with most other raptors do not innately trust others around their kill. I think the accipiters are the worst of the bunch about this.
I would suggest making sure you are reading her second edition or later. There is a lot of great new thinking she added after her version 1.0 book which will be particularly useful with your current project.Im quite happy to try new , to me anyway, techniques. I’m reading Karen Pryors book currently and will carefully look at your suggestions.
My method for slipping the meal to take the edge off was to get her hooded, weigh her, and then put a small pile of tidbits on the ground. I would then crouch near them and unhood them so that was the first thing she would see. This did encourage her to hope there was a pile of tidbits in front of her nose as soon as she was unhooded, and we did have some ...ahem.... discussions when that was not the case, but they were manageable discussions. In that particular example the extra "hotness" of her temper was related to her being a bit lower in weight than normal for one reason or other. So at weigh in I would evaluate if I needed to mitigate things by boosting her blood sugar.I tried this but it usually increased her behaviour. it maybe my timing was off or I did it in an incorrect way. But I’ll keep searching for a better way to do things.
Does not sound like it is immediately adaptable to your scenario, but it might give ideas.
I think most all aggression in imprint accipiters can be attributed to what is colloquially referred to in America these days as "hangry" - just in case that term has not made it to your side of the pond that refers to an especially foul mood brought on by extreme hunger. I have found you can keep most of the hunger motivation but take the sharpness of it off with just a bit of food.
Best of luck David. Looking forward to hearing how you get on with this.
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