Hello Everyone - Advice about Kestrels

[Falcon Boy]

Hi Guys,
Hope everyones doing well. My season is going OK, working with a passage RT that I trapped late in the season. I'll get some pics of her up eventually.

Anyway I wanted some advice for next season. I am seriously considering imprint a cast of kestrels. I start my Masters program next year so the birds will mostly be flown in the summer with only a few days a week during school [3-5 winter vs 6-7 summer].

So here's what i was thinking so far, assuming I can get two kestrels. Raise them together, but imprint as I otherwise would. Plenty of exposure to humans, dogs, cars, etc.

Feeding is one thing I wanted some opinions on. My plan is to use quail as baggies as the birds grow. The reason is 4 fold. First and foremost, it teaches them that birds are food. Second, by the time they are full grown they should be killing nearly full size captive bred quail. I'm not talking the 9oz monsters, i'm talking about normal courtinoux [sp?]. This should give them the brain that they can kill larger birds. Third, it teaches them quail are food. more on this later. Fourth, i can get them very easily.

I am thinking about raising the birds together with one baggie so the birds work together to kill the bags in the hopes they will do the same on quarry.

So about the quail thing. I think that an imprint kestrel can take a quail. I'm not talking about grabbing it in the air on the flush or anything crazy like that. I think that if the quail are flushed and the birds will stick with them, once the quail put in the kestrels could grab them. Opinions? And please only from people who have flown kestrels. Also note i don't expect this to be a common place, i'm just thinking every now and again it might work. The primary quarry would be starlings and sparrows.

So, let the flaming begin toungeout

[sharptail]

Hi Noah,
Why not just teach them to wait on and take birds in the air? I know a guy who did and he took over 100 head of game in his first season, in the air. The vast majority were sparrows but he also took Meadow larks and a dove.

[skooky20]

the first passage female kestrel that i flew i trained using full grown quail. this kestrel took plenty of sparrows and starlings and a pigeon, and chased many other pigeons. my sponcer and other falconry friends that were into small birds thought that is why she went after the pigeons something big and tasty and dad lets me eat a lot of it.

[tobydogg]

I am thinking about raising the birds together with one baggie so the birds work together to kill the bags in the hopes they will do the same on quarry.



Hi Noah; I will start by saying I would encourage you to give this a try. I have to date flown 8 K-birds and this has crossed my mind often. In my opinion it would be better to enter them on baggies individually. I have never flown or trained a cast of.....well, anything but from what I understand, often times one will become proficient at taking game, and the other may become more of a "moocher", for lack of a better word.

[borderhawk]

I have heard the same thing about castes, that they should be entered individually at first.
I knew someone up in Washington state that trained her passage female on coturnix. That bird got so wed on those things that she would pass up easy slips on sparrows and starlings just to chase down a hand tossed quail for 50 yards! I'm sure it's because she learned that, being CB, they were slower than the wild quarry. I had dreams of training Rhino to go strait for the head on dove as I was sure a kestrel could be successful that way (with their shorter toes and all....)

I say go for it!!!! And if you do you'd better post LOTS of updates.

[GyrXPeals]

Noah, you've taken the road less traveled before and made it work, so by all means go for it. There's still a lot to be discovered about these little birds and somehow they always seem to end up surprising you.
I've had some minor success in flying Kestrels in a cast while car hawking, but that was with an imprint and a passage, not two imprints.
The only draw back I can see is getting them to pursue far enough to put the quail into cover. Chances are they will break off as soon as they realize they are beaten, but who knows.
Jeff had an interesting point about getting them to wait on. You can kite train a Kestrel just like any other falcon. I will say this from flying big flocks in the open with EP this year. She tended to throw up hard when she missed. If the birds made the mistake of crossing back in front of her she would put in a hard pumping little stoop. She only connected with two that way, but it was a train wreck. It's like a little miniature Prairie, Kestrels hit everything hard, on the ground or in the air.
One thing is for sure, if you can get the quail pinned in cover the Kestrels will run in there like a little Coop and get em.
Good luck, and keep us posted.
ATB,
Jeff

[Falcon Boy]

I would do the waiting on flights, but where i'm moving the only real source of consistent slips would be urban stuff, not anywhere where the bird could take a pitch to get a slip. If opportunities for open field flights were available, honestly I would pick a bird better suited for it.

Michelle- I know that is a common thing for some birds. To prevent this, as soon as the birds are hardpenned they will be flown on wild quarry. I think the mistake people make is waiting too long to expose the bird to quarry. A bird that is just getting hardpenned is still pretty dumb, but a bird that is 6 months old has developed a "what a food should look like" mental image. I also will NEVER throw a handtossed quail. I think that causes problems as well. Any quail would be tossed from a launcher, pointed by a pointer.

Thanks for the advice guys. Should I go through with this, which i am going to try my best to, I will try to keep a log like I did with Goose.

[Falcon Boy]

Jeff,
What problems did you run into with the cast?

[GyrXPeals]

None Noah, the birds worked well around each other. We tried to slip them at the same time initially and never caught a bird. What we found to be a successful combination was to slip one Kestrel, if that bird caught a starling it's buddies would stick around and mob the Kestrel with the catch. That's when we would slip the second Kestrel, it wasn't always successful but the more we did it the better they got and it almost always ended with the second bird being caught in the air if one was caught.
That was car hawking of course and I'm not sure how that would translate to quail.
ATB,
Jeff

[Falcon Boy]

Thanks for the info. Any idea why they didn't catch when slipped together?

[GyrXPeals]

Thanks for the info. Any idea why they didn't catch when slipped together?

The starlings always noticed them when they went out together and would flush long before the Kestrels got there. We never even came close to catching them that way.
ATB,
Jeff

[Falcon Boy]

thanks

[SOF]

Hi Guys,
Hope everyones doing well. My season is going OK, working with a passage RT that I trapped late in the season. I'll get some pics of her up eventually.

Anyway I wanted some advice for next season. I am seriously considering imprint a cast of kestrels. I start my Masters program next year so the birds will mostly be flown in the summer with only a few days a week during school [3-5 winter vs 6-7 summer].

So here's what i was thinking so far, assuming I can get two kestrels. Raise them together, but imprint as I otherwise would. Plenty of exposure to humans, dogs, cars, etc.

Feeding is one thing I wanted some opinions on. My plan is to use quail as baggies as the birds grow. The reason is 4 fold. First and foremost, it teaches them that birds are food. Second, by the time they are full grown they should be killing nearly full size captive bred quail. I'm not talking the 9oz monsters, i'm talking about normal courtinoux [sp?]. This should give them the brain that they can kill larger birds. Third, it teaches them quail are food. more on this later. Fourth, i can get them very easily.

I am thinking about raising the birds together with one baggie so the birds work together to kill the bags in the hopes they will do the same on quarry.

So about the quail thing. I think that an imprint kestrel can take a quail. I'm not talking about grabbing it in the air on the flush or anything crazy like that. I think that if the quail are flushed and the birds will stick with them, once the quail put in the kestrels could grab them. Opinions? And please only from people who have flown kestrels. Also note i don't expect this to be a common place, i'm just thinking every now and again it might work. The primary quarry would be starlings and sparrows.

So, let the flaming begin toungeout

'It won't work!', 'what are you thinking,' 'Kestrels are too small!'

haha, just kidding.

nice work thinking out of the box, I like the idea. I haven't got any experience with kestrels and qual. But I do have my own imprint going right now and plan on clicker training him or her to have immense confidence in catching birds. My idea is to highly reinforce catching larger and larger birds, and never let the bird fail or loose, thus reinforcing his confidence. The police employ this similar technique with Dogs - though they don't really understand behavior theory- they know how to build drive and confidence as well as treating and maintaining the animal bond with a particular person through feedings and a never fail attitude.
Here is the idea:
Always set the bird up to win, and you will have a bird with a huge ego.
If you succeeded at EVERYTHING you did, you would never know what loosing felt like and would have a huge ego, and would try anything because you knew you would always succeed. :P
Now I haven't thought about it enough to come up with a step by step protocol for this desired behavior. But with the idea, i'm sure you could figure out something, create situation in which the bird always catches it's prey.
G luck and keep us up to date.

Cheers,