As many of you will know, at the Trust we really love vultures and we are fortunate to have a variety of species in our team. Some of them you will be more familiar with having seen them star in our flying displays, such as the cheeky team of Hooded Vultures and our impressive pair of African White-backed Vultures.
Here at the Hawk Conservancy Trust we are fortunate enough to have had Cinereous Vultures in our collection for many years. An iconic vulture and one of the largest we house.
Black-chested Buzzard-Eagle
Not only is Azura a beautiful bird, she is also gentle and kind in character, and a very independent girl. She is 7 years old, so a fully-mature adult. She was hatched in a collection in Spain and came to the Trust when she was a couple of years’ old. She was a member of our team when we undertook flying displays at Longleat Safari Park and since her return to our team on site at the Trust, she has proven to be very popular with visitors, particularly for her striking appearance and incredible flying.
She can be particular about who she likes but that just makes it all the more rewarding when we’re deemed ‘good enough’! We’ve caught up with Ben from our Bird Team to discover more about working with the wonderful Azura:
“I have a massive soft spot for Azura: we’re not supposed to have favourites but she is definitely one of mine. I think the main reason why I adore her is because of her gorgeous looks; in my opinion, she is easily the prettiest bird we have. Her nature is just beautiful too, she is so calm, attentive and friendly, and just an all-round lovely bird to work with!
About four months ago, I had the absolute privilege of being asked to help Cedric with training Azura to take part in our Behind-the-Scenes Winter Experiences. I was so excited to start working with Azura closely and up for the challenge, as taking part in experiences isn’t something she’d done before.
The first part of training was to build up a good, strong, positive relationship with her. This was essential as Azura can be quite nervous, despite being such a big and powerful bird of prey. So it was imperative that I gained her trust. It took about three weeks of feeding her on the glove every day and just spending about thirty minutes at a time in her aviary so that she could get used to my company. We got to know one another very well and started to learn more about each other’s little habits and mannerisms.
Once we were quite comfortable with each other, it was time to see what she was like coming out of the aviary and into the arena. This was the next challenge as she didn’t like seeing people she didn’t know. So myself and Cedric used to have to wait until the very end of the day and make sure the paths were clear then we could walk her to the arena. As the days went on, she got more and more confident. Second challenge complete, now on to flying!
Classic training techniques of flying a bird of prey were the same with Azura, we used a creance line, which is a very long bit of string until she is confident enough to fly free. She took to this really well as of course she has been trained already she’s just had a long rest so just precautionary with the line really. She spent about a week on the line building fitness. Then we wanted to introduce new people for her to fly to, just like an experience scenario.
To begin with we asked volunteers to come out with us and see if she would fly to them. This proved very positive to begin with as she flew to them no problem at all. However, we did discover she didn’t like sunglasses and hats, other than that she was fine. It’s something I love with all the birds I work with that they all have such different personalities and they are just like us as people in the sense that they all like and dislike different things, it’s brilliant. Azura didn’t like those things which was fine, just something for us to remember.
We then started to fly Azura free and she was brilliant! The slight problem we came across was that she didn’t want to fly to people that were not staff or volunteers – basically anyone wearing anything other than our cream or green uniform. This was a big obstacle and took several weeks and a lot of patience and time for us to encourage her that people wearing other clothing could also be trust-worthy. We got there in the end and it was so worth it to be able to share this magnificent bird with guests. So she successfully flew during January with Cedric on his experience days.
After January, we continued to fly her but in a very different way. We wanted her to be able to push off and fly like she would in the wild, obviously we don’t have the South American heat for thermals but we do have the beautiful meadow and on a windy day this worked perfectly. During the horrific stormy weather in February, surprisingly it worked out perfectly for Azura and we managed to get her to start circling above us in the wind. She became a popular feature of our final event of the day, in the winter schedule. This was the perfect next step for her to get used to a small audience and properly stretching her wings.
Flying her in the meadow at this time was truly one of the highlights of my career. She has taught me so much in terms of training and learning to read a birds behaviour. She has easily been the most challenging bird I’ve worked with but it’s been extremely rewarding. She is a stunning bird and will always hold a special place in my heart! I still spend as much time with her as I can to keep our relationship strong. She is great just to go in her aviary and she will just come and sit on my fist, I talk to her a lot, she’s a great listener and keeps me super positive in these interesting times!”
Ben Cox, Bird Team
What happens when the park is closed every year? We close for around four weeks at the start of each year to undertake vital maintenance and development projects. We’ve caught up with Gary Benton, our Head of Living Collection, to find out more about what the team actually get up to in this time:
With the end of the year approaching, it gives us an opportunity to reflect. We’ve caught up with Miriam from our Bird Team who has been reminiscing about special moments captured on camera in 2019:
Each year, the training schedule of all new birds is divided among the Bird Team. To get the most out of each bird, we know from experience that it is best to have a one or two people assigned to each bird, at least initially, to build confidence. This summer, Kat Ralph has been working with a young Black Kite and we’ve been catching up with her to find out more about what this process involves:
Winter can be a tough time of year for wild birds of prey, particularly young birds facing their first winter. We’ve been catching up with Cedric Robert, our National Bird of Prey HospitalTM Manager, to find out more about some of the most recent patients:
“November has been an eventful month for me in the hospital, so I am going to give you an insight to just one week last month. We started the week with only one indoor bay available inside the hospital and all outdoor rehabilitation aviaries were full. I was very eager to be back to work for this week because I knew it would be quite challenging and also because I’d have the chance to release a few birds back to the wild – a real highlight of my job.
“During the week, we released four birds that had been successfully rehabilitated, including:
It doesn’t happen often, but I had the chance to release one of the Tawny Owls and the Barn Owl back to the wild. At this time of the year, despite the cold, it’s great because we don’t have to wait too late for it to be dark enough to release these birds. Watch videos of the release of the Tawny Owl and Barn Owl below.
“I was hoping to release an additional four birds but, unfortunately, with further observations of their flying abilities it became apparent that they needed more rehabilitation time before they are returned to the wild. The two Red Kites in our care required additional time to gain strength. There is a Kestrel currently moulting and we’re waiting for it to grow a full set of tail feathers as without these, it is struggling to fly. There is a second Kestrel who was admitted with a wing trauma and who is still receiving care inside the hospital – I hope to move him to an outdoor rehabilitation aviary soon with the ultimate hope of releasing him back to the wild during December.
“Before any birds are released to the wild, Dr Matt Stevens, our UK Conservation Biologist, fits each bird with a leg ring so that if it is sighted again in the future, we’ll be able to gain further insight to its movements and the success of our rehabilitation work.
“With some birds released back to the hospital, we also admitted three birds during the week, including two juvenile Kestrels and a Tawny Owl, all of which are low in condition.
“Overall, it’s been a very eventful week for me in hospital, but a successful one too. Every bird that is admitted to our care requires a tremendous amount of work and care to get to the point when we can release it back to the wild, but the result always makes it worthwhile. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the wonderful volunteers who help me in the hospital, including Caroline, Tony, Ralph, Jeremy, Derek and Don who come in every single week and whose help is invaluable.”
On average, it costs us £174 each day to run our hospital – you can help support this important work by donating or become a supporter.
We’re often asked about breeding birds of prey, so we’ve been catching up with Mike Riley (a senior member of our Bird Team) to find out more about incubation:
Incubation is the artificial brooding and rearing of eggs and is sometimes used over natural incubation for a number of reasons:
Setting up for incubation
To incubate eggs successfully we not only need incubators but the environment that they are placed in also needs to be set up correctly. The room temperature must be lower than 37.7 degrees celsius; large vents in the walls or door can help keep the temperature down, though it can lead to problems with increased moisture into the room. To counteract this, a dehumidifier is used.
The incubators themselves must be set to 37.7 degrees which is why it is critical to set the temperature & humidity of the environment correctly, otherwise the incubators are constantly trying to equalise and the fluctuations will cause the eggs to fail.
If any of these conditions are not correct, it can stop the embryo developing correctly.
Incubating the eggs
Once the eggs have been collected they are candled (a light is shone through the egg to see if there are any signs that the egg is fertile), weighed and recorded. On average, eggs lose 16% of their mass from when it is laid to when it hatches. If we get an egg from the moment it is laid and weigh it, this is known as its ‘fresh egg weight’. Knowing the fresh egg weight and the amount of weight it needs to lose helps us ensure we are providing the correct conditions for the egg. For example, a Harris’ Hawk incubation period is 32 days on average, knowing its fresh egg weight we can work out using an equation that this species needs to lose 0.3g per day. Most eggs are weighed daily to make sure that they are losing the correct weight, If the egg is losing too much weight per day then we can increase the humidity in the incubator to slow it down, or we can decrease the humidity to encourage weight loss. The incubator has rollers inside which the eggs sits between, the incubator turns the eggs 180° one way and then after a period of time it will turn it back the other way.
How the egg develops
As the egg starts to incubate you can see development when candling the egg. The first evidence is the development of veins appearing around the inside of the egg shell, these veins appear like tentacles swirling around inside the egg. Sometimes you begin to see things like the head and later on the chick starting to move about within the egg (if the shell is not too dense).
As the chick develops you will see an increase in size of a pocket of air at the top of the egg; this is called the air-sac and is separated from the chick by a membrane. When the chick is due to hatch it breaks into the air-sac, this is known as internally pipped and gives the chick around two days of oxygen prior to piping the shell itself. When it has internally pipped we move the egg into a wet incubator that no longer rotates the egg. It is kept at the same temperature but with higher humidity levels to allow the chick to move about.
The hard work now starts for the chick, they have to crack the shell of the egg, this is known as externally pip. Once this is done, oxygen can reach the chick from outside so that it can breathe as it starts its long and tiring task of hatching. Hatching can take anything from a few hours to a few days.
If all goes well the chick should hatch problem free at the end of its incubation period.
This is always a funny time of year for our Bird Team; moving from the hectic schedule of our high season into the winter timetable, there is so much change that happens all of a sudden. (more…)
On Thursday 9 March a tiny, fluffy White-headed Vulture chick joined our team and we are now pleased to announce that we have named it Severus.
