We have been very lucky this year to rear 3 very different chicks to become part of our education and abatement team.
Guido our Chilean blue eagle at 22 days
Our first bird of the year was Guido. He is a male Chilean blue eagle, although he spent the first month of his life as Maya. Sexing birds of prey can at times be very difficult - size is usually our best indicator (with females being larger), but only DNA sexing can give you a definite answer. However, Guido and his sibling had both been DNA sexed! We knew in the nest we had a male and a female, and the breeder had marked the birds and eggshell that the DNA samples were taken from. Guido had me fooled too, to me he looked much more like the female Chilean eagles that I'd previously worked with. Now 30x the size of when I brought him home, Guido spends his days on the soar, clearing golf courses of problem crows and hunting rabbit and squirrel.
Oz, a Harris hawk at 7 weeks old
Next was Oz, a Harris hawk who we had the pleasure of imprinting for a good friend for use in pest control in London. Imprinting is the practice of rearing a bird around humans, perfect for birds who will be flown in busy areas because it allows us to negate the fear of man that the hawk would naturally develop and expose it to stimulus from a young age. There can be downsides of imprinting if mistakes are made by the falconer - they can be very noisy and with Harris hawks being social they may not understand the social cues and hierarchy of the pack. So far Oz has been a fantastic hawk to fly, being a great performer clearing pigeons and enjoying his weekends and days off flying at pheasant and rabbit as part of a pack.
Abe our great grey owl at 4 weeks
Abe our great grey owl was by far the most active of the chicks! At 4 weeks he was already very mobile and spent his days exploring wherever he could as a brancher. Before we knew it he was flying, and spent his days flying around his aviary until he was fully feathered. Abe was a joy to train, and before long was flying free through the woodland. Now sporting his full facial disk (the largest of any species of raptor), Abe is unrecognisable from the ball of grey fluff he hatched as!