Member-only story
Zazu Learns To Fly
The adventure of training my very first hawk.
Dear Non-Members, please click here to read this story for free.
In my very first blog post on Medium, I wrote a little introduction About Me — Sandra Lynne, where I briefly mentioned that I was a falconer. So I feel it only fitting to start my Falconry Tale series off with a story about my very first bird I ever trained by myself.
Let me introduce you to Zazu. So who is Zazu you may be asking? Well, Zazu scientifically speaking is a Parabuteo Unicinctus, that's his scientific name, a mouth full I know, thankfully his common species name is “Harris Hawk”.
A quick fact about birds of prey, they look different in their first year to their second year. In their first year of life, they have what is called their juvenile plumage.
From their second year onwards they change their feathers into what is known as their adult plumage or colours. This process is called the moult, and it happens once a year usually at the end of the breeding season. However, it can take a few years (this is all species dependent) for them to reach their full adult colours.
An example of this is the red on the Harris’s Hawk shoulder, in the 2nd year it’s not as bright and defined, as it will become in its third, and subsequently fourth…
