Quote Originally Posted by Martin Hollinshead View Post
Oliver,
The braces on the hood are loosened/opened enough to permit the hood’s immediate removal. Hawks trained to fly this way explode from the glove, the hood barely clear of their head. The fast removal tells the bird, ‘out there is a hare you can get up to’ and this promise has the already concentrated and fully focussed bird give absolutely everything.
Of course, this puts all the weight on the falconer: he has to get it right, has to assess hares/conditions correctly every time in what might be a split second. If he keeps getting it wrong, commitment goes out the window (which sort of takes us back to the thread on developing a motivated hawk, or ruining one). I will add that the preparation for this is done with lure flights out of the hood.
Another benefit of course, is that when group hawking, the bird doesn’t have to watch other hawks chase hares while she waits for her turn – another killer of motivation.
On your training to keep the bird sitting on the glove and ignoring quarry with a slight special movement, I cannot comment – other than to say I’d love to see it in operation.
Martin
I think I get the picture, and I would love to see this done! lol, kinda like pulling a trigger on a gun? I'm not very quick and nimble with my fat fingers and would for sure mess something like that up.

Speaking of group hunting, if you have ever seen a marine mammal show there are quite a few dolphins being held at control with one person. I think it might be more difficult in this situation, again I have no experience with it in birds of prey, but we would ask one dolphin to go do something, or two, or three. We could do the same with seals, sea lions, and I've seen it done with tropical birds. In a lot of cases you could use that selection process to reward other behavior. I know it's completely different situations, but so far I have never met concepts that couldn't be worked in with other animals. I'm also aware that mutliple birds in the field can be a complete hand full, and putting hoods on it can make the job very easy. Again, what do I know, I'm new to this whole thing and could quite possibly be overly ambitious.

A bit off topic, but if you have not seen it yet they even work with their sharks at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Different individuals are trained to come to different shapes and colors for feeding time. Ken Ramirez does big things there, not only have attended a lecture of his, but have worked with him closely on one occasion and seen him work quite a few times personally. He has a book titled Animal Training, it's got some good stuff in there dealing with OC for a variety of situation. In my opinion, and experience, birds are smarter than fish. I think there is a lot more these birds are capable of than we give them credit for.