You've got your new bird -- and what's that boom I heard? That was your adrenalin-fueled heart sending your blood pressure blasting through the stratosphere. Savor the thrill and awe while you can, because every next step with your passage bird will make you tense.

It's easy to be tense because training a hawk is linear rather than parallel. Dogs, for example, train in parallel: they sit, they roll over, they heel and it doesn't matter what order you teach it to do those things. Hawks on the other hand need to learn one stage before they can progress to the next. That makes each stage contain the possibility of complete failure. But believe me, failure is surprisingly difficult to achieve with a passage redtail.

The apprentice MUST suppress the tension. It makes passage birds nervous. Whether you're angry, frustrated, happy, excited, the hawk senses it. In the case of the first two it is best if you stop whatever you're doing and leave the room until you've calmed yourself and are ready to try again. Pretend you have the full emotional spectrum of a two ton rock. When you're getting ready to go hunting, if you make your voice sound excited, often they will pick that up and get excited too.

It takes practice, but if you're able to understand and accept the hawk's actions whether or not they meet what you desire of her, you'll have a much better, calmer and more successful relationship with her. Think zen.

Training a bird is exactly that -- training. In those initial months you want to do the same things always. You are teaching that bird that every time you give the call for game, it's there. Every time you give it the return call, you have food. When you put on your boots and change the bird to flying jesses, you're going hunting. Later on, when you two get used to each other, you can slack off a little, so the return call means you stand a good chance of having food. Sometimes the bird will be so excited to hunt that it will ignore the tidbit. Oftentimes you don't want to reward the bird for going up to a pole.

Another part of consistency involves observing your own behavior and the messages you send to your bird that you aren't consciously aware of sending. Here's a simple example: you are training your bird on a new game and she catches one. Excited by the potential realized, you want to try it again, so you give her a few bites and start hunting again. What you don't realize is you behaved exactly the same as you do when she catches a mouse, something you don't want her to do: you took it away from her. Always try to think outside your own point of view.

No matter what happens. If you catch the flu after slogging through mud, if your truck breaks down, if the bird decides he's going to sit on a pole and observe compass points, if she gets an annoying habit of giving rabbits haircuts: it's still the best bird in the world.

It's also easy to take the bird for granted once you have it trained. The whole process leading up to this moment is so long and arduous. This bird is precious, this bird is good no matter what it does. Enjoy the beauty, savor every moment that the bird does something right. Appreciate the interesting flights, enjoy when the bird tries something new.

Don't let yourself overrate the negative events and let them overwhelm all the good things that have happened. Something good will happen tomorrow. At least the bird came home with you. If you get hit by a car and die, well, it may be difficult for you to appreciate it, but at least the bird's okay.

Apprentices seem to be getting this better now than they did a few years ago. There's a rule of thumb that claims the passage bird's response weight is 10% lower than its trapped weight. I've seen people take this rule as law without taking into account the condition of the bird. This generally happens with those who can't be bothered to carefully observe the bird's reactions and behaviors at different weights. I've seen it in generals and masters as well.

A friend of mine trapped a redtail at 32 oz. Its weight implied the bird was a tiercel; being an apprentice he had no experience judging its physical size. At that stage in the game ANY bird will look huge and magnificent. If he'd followed the 10% rule blindly he would have killed her because she was actually on her last legs -- no breast, major infection. Her head size declared her a female, and a pretty good-sized one at that; her field weight seems to be 38.

I've recently had the experience of knowing some falconers who will look at a bird and declare a flying weight. I've heard of a falconer advising another to take an eyas bird down more than 10% in order to get it to learn to take ducks instead of jacks. This is insane. NOBODY can specify a bird's weight just by looking. The muscles must be felt, the behavior under different weights observed, and even then it can only be approximated.

'Weight control' as used by Harry McElroy (and other master falconers) is the method of maintaining a bird at a specific weight throughout the hunting season and not deviating from it by more than a few percent. This term is frequently abused by certain falconers to justify their starving a bird into submission.

If you fly your bird too high, the worst thing that will happen is you lose her. If you fly her too low, you can kill her.

Yes, it makes it harder for them to catch game. But remember that game count isn't the main issue in falconry. You want to build a better and better bird.

Closely tied in with LG5, variety will teach the bird how to deal with different kinds of terrain.

Reasonably obvious once you think about it.

Also reasonably obvious once you think about it.

This is typical glove-hawker advice. The passage redtail's mainstay is hunting from poles and they have an advantage from the height. Pole hawkers take this as a blessing, but glove-hawkers believe that allowing them to continue this habit reminds them that they got along just fine without you. One day, they might decide they'll just stay up there for the afternoon. Correspondent to LG8, if you train your bird to hunt from the glove, you can train them to pole-hawk later, but it's harder to go from poles to glove.

Passage redtails are very forgiving and can accept most strange occurrences provided they're introduced to them in a nonthreatening manner. (See 'Choices and Independence') It also does good if the falconer keeps her tension level down when the unexpected happens (see LG1).

That word 'regular' is contentious and I'm not talking grammatically. Some people say you can fly your redtail solely on weekends; because their metabolism is so efficiently slow, you almost can't do otherwise.

I don't want to directly say no to that, but the perfectionist falconer in me says if weekends is all you can manage, you shouldn't be in falconry until you can devote more time.

In compromise I will say that flying at least 3 times a week has distinct advantages. The training goes much, much faster. The bird doesn't get as bored. It stays in better condition. And once you are gamehawking, the more often you fly, the hawk both learns more and will become a more consistent hunter.

I had a tiercel redtail that I slacked off with. Our outings fell to twice a week. The bird became less controllable -- he went up to poles and stayed there and wouldn't come down until he spotted a jack 1/3 mile away. Then he would go out and catch it. Lowering his weight made NO difference. So I made the time to fly him at least 4 days a week. Lo and behold: he came back to staying with me and our partnership returned to a normal level.

This has as much to do with the idea of adjusting yourself to meet the bird's needs as it does with your physical stance. It's the falconer's responsibility to understand his bird's habits and work with them. The law behind training hawks is postive reinforcement, which means convincing them that the things you want them to do are good ideas and they will get rewarded for doing them. (See 'Choices and Independence')

This is one of the hardest ones to follow. The anxiety involved with acheiving each step draws time out until two days feels like forever. And falconers old and new will boast that they had this hawk hunting within X number of weeks or days or minutes of trapping.

Within reason, it's safer for the apprentice to ignore it when someone says, "You ought to have done X by now." A hawk's progress varies on the amount of time spent training, the apprentice's ability to sense what next step the hawk is ready for, and the hawk's individual personality. But again, within reason. For example, an apprentice who is not free-flying within three or four months, barring injuries to the hawk, needs to seriously evaluate their reasons for this.

Hunting with other falconers almost always causes some anxiety. Falconers are by nature observant and unfortunately often highly judgemental. They also have a fondness for gossip and telling other people what to do. The apprentice needs to separate the pearls from the mud.

You want your bird to perform and it's terrifyingly easy to get angry at her when she doesn't. And if the bird senses that anger, it only makes matters worse. Do your best to keep that zen to accept that whatever the bird does is good and right.

I want to emphasize my use of the word 'choosing' rather than 'finding.' Once you have taken your test you want to contact general and master falconers, but I discourage having 'getting your papers signed' as the first priority. I know, it's hard! You're excited and you want to get started! But if you take your time and choose, you will be better off.

Simply going out with falconers (other apprentices included) will help you get an idea of what kinds of birds you find the most interesting. Sometimes it's hard to know what to ask, but starting with questions like "Why does the falconer like that particular type", or "What are the differences between this type and another type the falconer has had experience with", or "What other type of bird does the falconer want to try, and why" can open up explanations that lead to more questions. (By "type" of bird I mean both breed and gender.)

Going out with the purpose of observing flying and hunting also gives you a chance to observe the falconer's style. Once you've been out with a few you will start to see differences in how they handle their birds, how they act with other falconers in the field, what their attitudes are toward the bird if she misses the game.

If you find you like a particular type of bird, then go for the falconer who works with that type. If you find you like someone's style, go for him or her. It's going to be a lot more likely that someone will say YES if you can give them reasons why you want specifically him/her to sponsor you.

Everyone wants to hunt game -- after all, that appears to be the crowning achievement, it's the clear evidence that you're a falconer and not a pet-keeper. Because of this a lot of apprentices seem to skip a beat. Once they have the bird coming to them for tidbits on the creance, they want to go after game.

There's one step they're missing, and that is the relationship in the field. You want a strong bond between yourself and the passage bird, because that bird knows it can get along without you.

Apprentices don't always realize they need to anticipate real-life situations. They put the bird on the same spot in the yard, take their corresponding position in the yard, and call her to the first over and over. Once they get in the field, the bird flies into a tree. Now what?! They have never practiced calling the bird down standing 15 feet below. The bird thinks, 'Gee, I'm way up here and that stupid wingless thang isn't a higher perch for once. He's got food, sure, but I really like the view from here. I haven't been up this high in 3 weeks. I can see a lot farther now. Hey...check out that tree way over there - it's *really* high!'

Do take the time to practice calling the bird from long distances (see 'The 100 yard circle'). Put the bird in a tree or other high perch and call her. Put the bird on one side of a low hill, go to the other side where she can't see you, and call her. In other words, try to anticipate the panic-causing situations you may encounter (which you have hopefully observed in your sojourns with your sponsor and other falconers) and head them off at the pass. When she responds with reasonable consistency, then and only then are you ready to hunt.

Creance time is the time to make some guesses at the hawk's field response weight. I want to emphasize 'field' because I and apprentices I've known initially assumed that there is only one response weight.

At your home or mews the hawk will respond at a certain weight. That's because she's familiar with the surroundings, considers it the safe perch, and feels very comfortable there. She'll come to you at almost any weight there.

In the fields you use frequently, she has another weight which will be lower than the home weight. But these fields she considers 'her territory.' So when you take her to unfamiliar fields, you may want to take her down a bit more to ensure good response.

Other factors are weather, time of day and season. A hawk will often get very keen before a storm is due. Their natural hunting times are morning and late afternoon, with soaring and general hanging out in between. If you regularly fly in the afternoon, switching to morning (or vice versa) can cause some lack of response. The springtime often gets a little hectic because of mating season, not just for your own bird but your resident hawks who feel the need to stake out their territory.

Once you're free-flying the bird, you may see there's a line where, if the bird goes beyond, it's more difficult to get her to return to the glove. In my experience it's actually more like 80 yards, but as a title for this section 100 sure sounds good. Do practice calling your bird from outside this boundary distance because if you're hunting jackrabbits, she will probably end up outside it very frequently. You might her two tidbits instead of one for coming over a long distance.

For me bagging has always been a very awkward situation and rarely works perfectly. Some people like my sponsor can pull it off well. In my foolhardiness, however, I will offer some advice here.

Bagging also suffers from the relationship-building shortage, i.e. the apprentice concentrates on the bag instead of the hunting experience as a whole process. They arrive at the field, set up the bag, walk 20 feet away, unhood the bird and proceed directly to the bagged animal. They hold the jesses so the bird has no idea that leaving the fist is desired (see 'Choices and Independence'). The whole thing is over in 10 minutes.

I feel a more complete experience for the hawk will impress more on its memory. Set up the bag securely, try your best to forget it's there, then start to hunt for real. Take time walking the field and try to get some wild quarry flushes. Don't forget to make the game call. If she chases, this is perfection. The bag will cement the idea that if she catches it, she'll have a good meal. If she watches it, this almost as good because she's thinking about it. Give her a tidbit to make this association with food (see 'Observing the hawk').

One interesting method I've found that ties into emotional cues (see LG2) is chasing the game yourself. When that quarry is spotted, move smoothly but rapidly toward it, not so fast to joggle the bird, game-calling in an excited manner. Forgive some anthropomorphization, but I suspect what goes on in the hawk's mind is this: "You want that? Hell, you're so damned slow, I can certainly get that better than you can." After a few times she may launch after it. It sounds silly, but don't discount the fact that my last two hawks did not require live bags, and the more recent one didn't need a bag at all, dead or alive.

When you're an apprentice, you're probably learning more than the hawk is. If you have no prior hunting experience, you're learning to determine the likely places game will hide, the sounds game makes, and how to judge distance. These, in addition to watching for potential hazards (any other raptor, transformers, dingoes and feral cats, PETA activists and car-radio thieves), learning how to walk over coarse ground without looking at it, and balancing a hawk steadily on one hand while kicking bushes, can make hunting an exhausting experience already.

One can easily forget to look at the hawk in all this. When quarry flushes, what happens? You automatically look at the quarry -- it's impossible to avoid. If your hawk is just learning this quarry, make sure you look at her too. Is she interested? Looking somewhere else? Has she fled in terror?

The falconer's closeness of observation is a key issue in all areas of hawk ownership. The eyes have to be developed to spot minute differences, but it starts from the mind: the desire to make a habit of observing and cogitating about the causes of what you've seen.

You want to notice injuries before they blossom into infections. Bent and broken feathers quickly worsen and threaten their neighbors if they are not immediately attended to. Equipment must be checked regularly for wear and tear. New weathering areas, perching areas and fields must be checked for potential hazards.

I used to take my female passage redtail out for coffee. When I sat in one location, she bated constantly, but if I sat in another, she was fine. I realized that she liked to have something solid at her back, where she would feel certain that no weird threatening things would come from. Thereafter I always sat in the second chair. This also explained her nervous behavior in the car (I let them ride unhooded), which was fixed by hanging a towel in one window to create a similar solid surface. (See 'Choices and Independence'.)

It's difficult to compile a list of hawk behaviors and what they mean, because I'm sure that different birds will have different reactions. But if you develop the habit of observing you will learn.

Even though they do seem to defy them at times, hawks are bound by the laws of physics. Time and time again I hear an apprentice-to-be say "I want a big female redtail." A big bird has stopping power with the jacks, a big bird is impressive to everyone, especially the apprentice him/herself. But when he tells you he's going to catch brush rabbits with this same redtail, be nice: bite your tongue and do not laugh. Steer the apprentice-to-be gently but firmly to the fact that it's not physically possible to do so. She's too slow to catch them and much too large to get into the thickets. It's faintly possible for a tiercel, but expect a lot of failures.

If you are an apprentice and you trap a tiercel, don't be disappointed. They're equally capable of taking jacks and are visibly faster the ladies. They like to fly and hunt more than females do.

Another physics issue of importance is energy vs. muscle. A bird needs some excess fat in order to create muscle. A completely fatless bird is burning its own muscle in order to fly. (See LG4).

Something the apprentice may not know is that each year you have the bird, its flying weight will probably increase slightly. This is partly to do with muscle increase (more likely in an eyas than a passage bird.)

But it also has partly to do with the relationship -- the hawk trusts you, knows what you want to do. And hawks do get habit-bound -- you may have observed a wild hawk take the same perch at the same time in the morning, leave for another at about an hour and 15 minutes later, etc.

You may observe your hawk flying at a physically higher level when she's got some extra padding. When they're high in weight they play on the wind more, chase sparrows they don't stand a chance of catching, and generally enjoy themselves. Within limits, this is a good thing for the hawk's flying skill and its relationship with you.

One of the greatest gifts in falconry is seeing that bird choose to come back to you. But that's not the only decision available to your bird. Quite often I see both new and old falconers handle their birds roughly. I want to divide this into impatience and invasiveness, though some fall into both categories.

Into the impatience category I want to put the following actions: swinging the bird back onto the glove after bating, instead of letting it scramble up and lowering the glove to make it easier; picking up the bird by pushing it hard in the chest or behind the tarsi; excessive whistling; expectations of invariably immediate response. Falconry is done best by people who are patient and can put the bird's priorities before their own.

Invasiveness is excessive, aggressive handling of the bird which is justified by the belief that it's part of 'manning'. Handling can be done with dignity, but it's often done badly. A hoodshy hawk will not become less hoodshy if it's turned on its back with its tarsi held, and the hood forced on its head.

My personal opinion is that the falconer who respects his bird as an intelligent creature will give his bird its space and ability to choose. A bird that steps up to the glove without any more prompting than the glove being available is a bird that has decided the owner's glove is a good place to be.

Hoods, both regular and giant, are too often used to keep a bird in a state of unobtrusiveness to the falconer. I believe that hoods are necessary for training, hunting and emergency situations, but have no other purpose. The more exposure a bird gets to the human world, the better manned it will be. Certainly individuals do vary; some may never accept one and some may require a lot. My ideal hawk should be able to accept being hooded anytime, but never need one.

And again, sometimes the bird has learned something the apprentice didn't intend to teach. One of the most common ones is holding the hawk to the glove. Of course this is necessary in the beginning stages, but when you take the bird off the creance she must also learn that leaving your glove is allowed and encouraged. Before you flush a rabbit or set up a bag, she needs to know she will not be held back. Flying the hawk between yourself and a friend is extremely helpful in the late creance to gamehawking period for both this and getting the bird into condition.

There are plenty of times when you want or need to hold your bird to the glove, but in most hunting situations the bird, having vision approximately ten times your own and zoom capability, will likely spot game before you do. You want to let that bird go when she wants to go. After a while, the feel of her stance and the determination with which she takes off will tell you whether she has spotted the game, or she thinks something may be there, or she's going to take a little cruise-around, or she's going to a pole. (See 'Observing the hawk').

On the other side of the coin the bird can become too independent. In my area the lack of game can cause the bird to want to hunt by itself because the falconer isn't flushing anything. Bagged quarry or tidbits can help keep the bird on the glove.

If a bird doesn't do what you want it to do, consider first the external factors. There may be an eagle cruising nearby or some other momentary distraction. A new field will cause some insecurity in a hawk, an injury may be bothering it. A bird newly added to a cast may distrust the other bird or birds. The weather may be too hot, or too cold.

If the bird consistently does not fulfill the falconer's desires, the next guilty party in line is the falconer. (The hawk is never guilty.) Perhaps he's not flying the bird at the right weight. Perhaps his handling makes the bird uncomfortable, or his training is ineffective, or perhaps he's accidentally engendered a bad habit. He must find a workaround method.

Always assume you are the guilty party first and take responsibility. I've seen falconers justify their bird's behavior by on one little phrase or fact they've heard from their mother's cousin's best friend's kid's teacher's wife which, like in the Telephone game, has been mangled by travel into something entirely different from the original fact. All kidding aside, I've heard people say "That's the way X's are," filling in the blank with gender or eyas or passager or breed. Such a statement could be entirely true, but to use it place of serious self-examination is wrong.