Falconry: How to stop birds from biting

Hello everyone, Ben Woodruff here with another falconry video. Today's video I want to give a little bit of a help, a little bit of advice on what to do if your bird is a chronic biter. If it's always biting you. If you're not in falconry this may seem like a rampant problem. It's usually not. It's actually very interesting. Most bird species on our planet, their feet kind of dinky. They have claws but they're not true talons because they don't grip. Maybe they can grip for perching but very few birds have gripping force in their feet which means the beak is their primary tool to eat, to kill, to hunt, to break open seeds, to manipulate the world around them. It is their hands. Now there's exceptions right like parrots and there's some other birds that can use their feet kind of like a hand as well. But for most birds they're left with their beak and most people who have ever encountered a bird it's a bird like that. You know something like a chicken. Because of that there's this abnormal fear of getting bit or pecked by a bird of prey. That phrase always cracks me up. Is that eagle gonna peck you? I always used to hear that a lot during educational programs. You're holding a bird and you always have somebody come up. Oh aren't you worried that that eagle's gonna peck your eyes out? I used to have one eagle that had recovered from West Nile virus so she was very gentle very kind and more cuddly unlike most birds of prey. I'd always be like oh I don't know you might be right and I'd gently hold her head and close one eye and gently move her so that her beak was touching my eye and I'm like oh my eye's still intact because it's curved you know obviously it's like I'm like but you know she could bite my nose off or rip my face off but she can't peck my eyes out and they're like oh I guess that's right because the beak is curved that you know I did it respectfully just was joking around with him you know but that's the thing is they can't peck they can't stab right like other birds like a great blue heron or something that can stab you so these birds of prey these raptors their beak is primarily the tool for eating not for making the kill now there's all kinds of other predatory birds you know think about like a pelican or a cormorant or a great blue heron any of these birds the kookaburra another good example they are using their beak as a way to kill but raptors you know falcons hawks owls eagles they're using their feet to exert crushing grip with their talons to kill their prey so this is their primary weapon of self-defense and it is their primary tool for killing once they have their prey most raptors will take their two inner talons and stab and stand directly above a and pull their food and if they hit a bone usually they'll go and they'll snap and so the interesting thing about that is that even though most raptors do have fairly strong bite force in their beak it's nothing compared to a comparatively sized parent like say a macaw macaws just have straight up crunch force to crack open a nut or a seed where raptors even though they can bite hard it's the bite and pull or the bite and snap motion so it's as much having a strong neck as it is having a strong bite that being said of course you want to be careful with around both the beak and the feet now we're fortunate in falconry that we have over 5,000 years of history behind us and during this time falconers all over the world have pioneered fine-tuned and nearly perfected our equipment and our training techniques so we are primarily concerned when it comes to physical safety of a bird inflicting damage on us with the feet and i always tell my apprentices when they're getting a new bird especially if they're trapping a bird from the wild i always say they're like what if it bites me i'm like who cares they're like oh they're not gonna bite i'm like oh yeah your bird might bite you but forget about it that needs to be secondary all of your focus needs to be on making sure that the feet are accounted for and not grabbing you because an injury from a bite from a raptor pales in comparison with the damage they can do with their feet and even one foot typically that's four talons impaling at different directions and trying to get them out that's not easy once a bird is trained you know you're you're holding them you have jesses on their legs and you're wearing a glove so that combination keeps the most dangerous part of the bird safe accounted for and away from you that sounds all fine and good and at that point most raptors don't bite but some do every bird is an individual and some birds do have a personality in which they like to bite they like to reach out and grab like that so i want to share with you a technique i use it's nothing special but i have to preface this with a couple things uh first of all i don't use this technique on falcons or owls and i'll explain why in a minute but it works great oh let me rephrase that falcons owls and sea eagles so your sea eagles are like bald eagles or stellar's sea eagles uh african fish eagles things like that it doesn't seem to work i still try this technique on the sea eagles but it doesn't it helps a little but not much uh and i'll explain why on those three in a minute second thing is uh the types of training that i prefer to do are principle based meaning uh i don't like a band-aid approach if there's some sort of behavior being exemplified and exhibited by a raptor that's negative or dangerous to you them or both i want to say what's causing that where is that stemming from what is the psychology behind them what's going on to trigger that in them and fix that rather than the band-aid approach and so i say that because what i'm going to share is is very basic very simple and it is a band-aid approach which i don't normally like but usually if you have a raptor that's a biter other than a falcon an owl or a sea eagle it's usually just their personality and so band-aid approach it is so my basic thing is if you're training your bird you got the feet secured you got a glove you got jesses the is you have to preemptively show them that their beak is worthless as an as an as a exhibition of aggression if they're doing it but when they're in the process of doing it you have to stop it now remember if you haven't seen my video on disciplining birds of prey you can't you cannot discipline a bird of prey uh but this is this is a good technique so your bird and the i'm showing maddie my harris hawk on this video and she's ancient and gentle and so she's not a biter but she'll at least let me show you this example is on true eagles your aquila eagles like golden eagles uh hawk eagles budeos like red-tailed hawks and ferruginous hawks occipiters like goshawks and the harris hawk man with a pair of any of them when anytime you have them and you're holding them reach up and gently pinch their beak and pull away as you do so it's one fluid motion of gently pull pinching and pulling away and if they go up to bite you before they reach to where they're going to bite you do that from above and pull back and if you and they're like oh and it just kind of resets their brain in a strange way do that all the time and they very quickly get used to it uh even once that behavior is gone i keep doing this so what you're really doing is you are causing the bird to you you are um conditioning them you are conditioning them mentally to realize uh this is doing absolutely no good it's kind of like if every time you went charging towards something a brick wall appeared eventually you'd stop running towards whatever that is it's kind of a similar mentality they just kind of drop the behavior from their repertoire of a ways to show aggression and you're not fixing the psychology you're just rendering that technique worthless and they can still grip grip all you want you've got a glove on so it doesn't matter but if you just do that very simple technique then if just and and again remember when they're fully trained and they're not showing that biting aggression anymore keep doing it anytime you're holding them maybe take off the hood maybe do that a couple of times and it keeps that in their mind that oh yeah it's worthless to use my beak so why even try so it's not discipline it's just conditioning now why don't we do it on falcons or sea eagles or owls so with falcons falcons uh their beak is much shorter and it's much rounder and so if you pinch and the way you if you try to pinch and slide off then what you're doing is you're putting your mouth right in line for them to bite the shape's all wrong and even so they're the way you're normally flying a big falcon most people here in america in the united states when we're flying a big falcon we're doing waiting on flight so you got a bird at home you put on their hood put them in your truck drive out of the field take the hood off hold them up they take off they're circling around thousand feet above you you flush up a pheasant they knock it down carry it to the ground you let them eat up put the hood on take them home take the hood off put them back in the mew who cares if they were being nippy during any of that time the time they're actually on your fist is only two and from the truck and a few moments before they take off so it really doesn't matter if they're being really nippy now owls owls have comparatively short beaks but the beak is very wide they have enormous mouths underneath all the feathers but they have these whiskers uh made out of feathers you know but we call them whiskers that cover all but the tip of the beak in most owls and so to reach and grab and slide on the beak is incredibly difficult to do because it's blocked by feathers and if you're touching those feathers it makes them freak out you don't want to do that uh the more an owl relies on hearing the poofier those face feathers and whiskers are the more they rely on eyesight the more exposed their beak is so some owls like maybe the powerful owl of australia or perhaps burrowing owls some of those types of owls you might be able to attempt this technique but i've just never bothered owls many owls love to nip and sea eagles members of that sea eagle family i don't know why but they're just wired more like a regular non-raptorial bird to use that beak as a weapon even though they have tremendous grip in their feet it's something you just have to deal with uh when i've worked with bald eagles i have still done this technique and it did improve their behavior so they weren't as much of biters but it didn't make it totally go away so still worth trying if you're working with a member of the fish eagle family but don't expect it to have the same wonderful results as it does on say like a golden eagle or a wedge-tailed eagle uh they're just wired differently two different families so simple technique i hope it helps you if you're having a problem bird some birds even that won't fix uh and you just have to deal with it some birds they just have a very aggressive personality and they like to nip a lot i've got a jeer falcon that way right now that wants to shred everything to pieces with her beak and just shred everything and i don't have an easy fix so we understand that they're still individuals and that may be the case but either way i hope this video uh proves useful if you could use the help uh please let me know down in the comments other videos you would like me to make and if you haven't already please hit subscribe it really does help me build this channel up and as always happy hawking