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Ben Woodruff here with another falconry video. Today's video is an interesting subject, and that is northern harriers in falconry. Now, before you get too excited or too dismissive, this is a subject that is interesting to every falconer or prospective falconer. I know some people jump to the reaction, ah, harriers can't be used in falconry, and other people like, oh, I've wanted to know this my entire interest in falconry. I promise if you watch this whole video, you will learn something new, you'll find something of interest, and you might be surprised on some of the results. So I want to talk first about harriers just as a species, a little bit of their biology, a little introduction to them, and then of course go into their use in falconry. Now, this video is going to be about the northern harrier. The northern harrier is a species that ranges throughout North America, and there is a similar relative throughout northern Asia and Europe called the hen harrier. There are scientists who think that the hen harrier and the northern harrier are subspecies of the same family. I have no experience with hen harriers, so I don't know if this same information would apply well, but it definitely applies to the northern harrier. There are harriers all over the world. Most countries that have one harrier will have multiple species of harrier. The United States is not that way. The only one we have is the northern harrier. They are beautiful birds. They used to be called marsh hawks. It was sort of a nickname, kind of like calling a kestrel a sparrow hawk or a peregrine falcon a duck hawk, but it's just sort of a nickname. The harrier is a family of birds of prey that branched off from the rest of the other families a long time ago, and they are very different than other hawks and other birds of prey. Harriers are structurally built quite a bit different. If you're a bird watcher or a biologist and you're doing field observations or you're looking at your field guide and you're like, oh, how long are they? What's their wingspan? You get an incorrect perception of these birds because some of their measurements aren't that different as far as wingspan and total length to that of, say, a red-tailed hawk. You might think, oh, they're similar sized birds. Oh, they're nothing like that. They are built very similar in size and weight to a cooper's hawk, but feathers, they have ridiculously overly long wings for their body weight and overly long tails. This makes them incredibly buoyant and incredibly agile. Now, buoyancy is good for not using up your energy. Normally, anytime you're flapping and flying, you're burning calories, but a harrier can do that almost without doing that. So remember, even though their length and their wingspan is similar to a larger soaring budeo like a red-tailed hawk, remember by weight and by structure, bone, skeleton size, they're much closer to a cooper's hawk. Now, they are active hunters, but they are smart enough to scavenge. They love road kills, which normally for a very daintily built raptor with a lot of agility, you don't see that. Usually, the larger the raptor, the more willing they are to scavenge because there's a huge caloric demand, but these birds are small and yet they're happy to scavenge. They've taken that to a very level. They are the only raptor I know of that will predictably go towards gunshots. If you're out target shooting and you go, blam, an eagle or a hawk will normally, oh no, there's something loud and scary, and they'll get away. During the duck hunting season and during rabbit hunting season, people with guns, you'll watch a harrier flying along and it hears, bam, and whoa, it'll instantly turn and go towards the gunshots, and the reason is they are so smart. They have figured out humans, and they figured out that if a human kills something, if they reach that kill quick enough, they might be able to steal it or at least get a few bites. Now, this is very unusual behavior with animals. I do know that gray jays in the crow family are one of the other known birds to do that where if they hear during big game hunting season, they'll hear, bam, they'll fly in the forest, try to find the deer or elk that's been shot, and try to take a few bites near the bullet entry point, but I don't know of any other raptor species that will do that other than harriers where they hear a gunshot and abruptly turn and fly towards it. Now, left to their own devices, they hunt a lot of rodents, but they're happy to hunt birds. They're happy to even hunt insects and invertebrates. They'll hunt lizards and frogs and things like that. They often live in marshes and prairies. That's basically, they'll live in deserts as well as long as there's enough food, but they kind of like marsh land and prairie land. Now, they do not like to still hunt. They don't like to hunt from a perch, which seems weird because normally if you're a red-tailed hawk, you're like, I just sit on this perch and look around and there's a rat, dive down and catch it. You didn't use much energy just sitting there, where if a red-tailed hawk is soaring, there's still enough flapping that you're burning through energy. It's better to perch. Harriers aren't that way. They spend almost all of their awake life on the wing because their oversized wings are so buoyant that they can just glide and ride and there's just very little weight on those oversized wings. Kind of similar to a turkey vulture, different build, but same principle. Turkey vultures will travel hundreds of miles without even flapping because they are so buoyant. Now, harriers also don't like to hunt from a great height. Think about a falcon, loves to circle around, weight on, dive down on prey from above. Hawks like to do that too. A lot of hawks like to be above. They're willing to dive down from a soar. Harriers don't. Harriers would prefer to be three or four feet off the ground. They are tackling their prey using an ambush technique. Their heads have a facial disc like an owl. Now, their facial disc is not as well built. It's not as advanced as the facial disc of an owl, but it still functions the same way. It still funnels and channels sounds and amplifies them to the ears and gives them immense directional sound-finding abilities. So, they're scanning and they're just gliding along buoyantly a few feet above the ground. Now, we see these over bushes and over reeds and we're like, oh, it's just some sagebrush. Well, to the prey, think about something from the size of a mouse to the size of a cottontail rabbit. A sagebrush is a tree. That's as tall as a tree. It is to them what a tree is to us. So, this harrier coming in just over the top of this brush could be likened to a silent helicopter coming in for an ambush and they're listening, listening, listening, and the prey doesn't see them and they come over the tree and it's too late. Now, they don't have to be as fast to be able to do that. It works really well. Their facial discs, remember I said, are not as advanced. This is good when it comes to falconry. I'm not to the falconry section yet, but harriers can wear hoods just fine. Now, owls, their facial discs are so structurally elaborate that you don't want to mush those feathers in any way. Harriers, just fine. You put on a hood, those feathers go back and you take off the hood and they pop right back out. The best hoods to use are hoods for cooper's hawks. Their actual skull structure is about identical to that of a decent-sized cooper's hawk. I do like the analogy of the helicopter because I think it gives you a better visual understanding. If you think of a falcon as a jet fighter that's way up high and pursuing an enemy fighter, doing these amazing things. Harriers are just skimming over the ground, scanning, and they want to do a quick, highly effective ambush hunt. Now, that has to be factored in in falconry. I'll get into that in a few minutes. Harriers all over the world live on prairies and they live in marshes. What I've found though is if you're trying to find the density, if you're in just legitimate marsh, like, hey, it's water, water, water with a few reeds, there's definitely harriers there. But I find denser populations of harriers when it's sort of a dry marsh. Like, oh, there's patchy areas where sort of a bog, that's actually you're going to have denser areas. I mean, there are areas that are have a higher denser population of harriers if you're looking for them. One of the strange things about them is they are polygamous. Not always, they don't have to be, but they very regularly are where you'll have a male harrier and he'll be supporting two to three females. Now, sometimes these females have their own separate nests. Sometimes a male and a female will both support this female's eggs. Now, I don't know that a lot of research has been done on how that works or if they rotate from year to year, which female lays eggs. There is a pair that I keep tabs on out in a desert near my house every year and every year it's these three and it seems only one female lays eggs and they all, the male and female, will defend the nest if you get near it and the other female actively incubates the eggs. So, a little unusual behavior with birds of prey, but for whatever reason, it seems to suit them well and seems to give them an edge of survival. Now, as far as nests, harriers nest on the ground, but they don't actually build a nest. Usually, they will nest on reeds, but sometimes they'll even nest where fallen reeds have even some water in them. It seems to defy logic. Why would you do something where water could potentially cool down your eggs and make them not hatch, but they do. They just kind of push some reeds aside or push some grass aside and just lay their eggs directly on the ground. This amazes me that harrier species all over the world haven't gone extinct because that again seems to defy logic. Why would you nest on the ground? Now, as far as not building an actual structure, that's not that uncommon. A lot of birds don't. We know hawks and eagles will build nests, but owls and falcons and caracaras don't build a nest. So, there's a lot of other birds of prey that don't build a nest, but to just nest on the ground seems very unusual. Now, if you are going to a nest for any reason, whether you're a falconer pulling a baby, or you're a biologist doing field studies, or even a bird bander, it's good to be mindful of the fact that humans leave a scent that can be detected. Most birds cannot smell, but mammals can. There's a lot of terrestrial predators and, you know, raccoons, coyotes, things like that, that if you are around a nest too much, they might smell you and come to investigate and find these baby harriers. Now, it's almost irrelevant in principle because the harriers themselves have a smell and they're pooping around the nest and that smell is increasing. So, again, terrestrial predators can find them too, but always the rule is you should be very cautious around a nest and never disturb a nest more than you absolutely have to, especially be conscious of your scent and what scent you're leaving. So, if you're approaching a nest, I say wear some boots you don't normally wear, like some rubber boots, and get in and get out of the nest really quickly. Otherwise, if you're observing a nest, use binoculars or a spotting scope and keep a fair distance away. Now, the babies grow very quickly and they're interesting because, as with most birds of prey, the female is larger than the male, but their first year their colors are identical and they have these beautiful honey chestnut colors, all these reds and browns and rusty colors, and they're lovely. They're so beautiful and striking and that's both males and females their first year. Now, their second year this changes and the males turn bluish gray. Some of them are very light color and some are legitimately blue and some really are a dark gray, but still, you know, whitish blue, blue, grayish blue, gray, right in there, the males are going to be there. They're indistinguishable. The females change colors as well and they go from those rich honey chestnut colors to a much duller tan, where they're just some dark browns and some sandy tans and khaki colors, and so they're very distinguishable from each other as adults. They're sexually dimorphic in their colors. Now, as for harriers in falconry, a lot of people shoot down the idea and a lot of people are excited by the idea. They see harriers and they think, wow, what a beautiful unique bird does anybody fly them, and I'm going to tell you some pros and some cons of both, and I have flown and hunted a couple harriers and I'm not the only person who has, but before you get into this, stay open-minded. It's good to be open-minded in falconry. For example, if you say, well, even if you can train a harrier, why would you? There's birds that could accomplish the same feat more easily. Well, that's true with a lot of species. Kestrels, when I was a young falconer, you know, 10-year-old, and hearing some of the old-timers are like, ah, kestrel's just a toy, you can't do anything with them, but nowadays, falconers using digital scales and weighing in grams and giving them the time and effort have proven kestrels to be amazing hunting birds. Now, it is true that a kestrel does not have the athleticism and abilities to lend themselves to as amazing of chases as, say, a sharp-shinned hawk or a merlin, but that doesn't mean they can't be trained and hunted, and even hunted very effectively. I love flying kestrels. They're a lot of fun to hunt with, and if they're done right, they can be used on a number of birds. And you can go the other extreme, golden eagles. Many falconers have the dream of flying a golden eagle someday. Well, I've flown both male and females and been very successful hunting rabbits, and I have to tell you, it's a lot easier to, if your only goal is, I want to catch some rabbits. Cool, that's great. Go get yourself a harris hawk or a goshawk. Now, golden eagles are built for rabbits. They do a great job hunting rabbits, but think about the weight on your arm. Think about the food bill. Think about the extra training. It's a lot harder to keep a golden eagle in shape than it is a goshawk. So if your only point is, well, I just want to get rabbits, why would you ever get a golden eagle? Most people who get a golden eagle and work to that point, it's because of a love of the species. They're like, wow, this would be a really neat style of flight to try out, and it is. It's really fun. Same thing with deer falcons. If I want to hunt ducks and pheasants, I'm going to have more success, in my opinion, with a peregrine, but there's something about flying a deer falcon that is less practical, but really exciting and interesting and enjoyable. If we weren't open-minded and just stuck with old traditions, then red-tailed hawks and kestrels never would have been used in falconry, and harris hawks never would have been given a chance. And you think about all over the world, how many people hunt successfully with harris hawks now. They've revolutionized the sport because people were open-minded. Now, that's not to say that I'm saying everybody go fly a harrier. In fact, my main point is I don't think that they should be flown in almost most situations, but I want to tell you how to do it if you're thinking about doing it. Now, I have, like I said, I have flown a few harriers, but the people who have truly explored harrier hunting are the falconers of New Zealand. A lot of people are unaware of this. There are only two, well, kind of three. There were three native diurnal raptors in New Zealand. The swamp harrier, the New Zealand falcon, and the Haas eagle. The Haas eagle is a comparatively recent extinction. It's an eagle so big that it actually ate moas, these giant flightless birds, and when humans arrived, originally was eating people. It's a large eagle, but it's extinct. So you have two diurnal raptors filling all the roles. New Zealand falcons are very rare, and they're related to oplamato falcons, interestingly enough. And swamp harriers are a type of harrier that have had to fill a lot of roles. Now, they're still active hunters and they're scavengers, but they are the only bird allowed to be used as a trained hunting bird in New Zealand. And so the New Zealand falconers fought for that right, and they have trained them with hoods and trained them to hunt both rabbits and birds. And that is not only their only option, but they've had great success flying the swamp harriers. Now, the northern harrier is a little more diminutively built than the swamp harrier, and that's because in North America, here is the ecological niche that that a northern harrier fills. Where there's very few raptor species in New Zealand, the swamp harrier fills more roles. So it's a little more robust, but still, the principles are the same. They absolutely can be trained to hunt in falconry. When I decided many, many years ago that I wanted to try hunting harriers, I just wanted to give it a whirl. I wanted to see what they were capable of. And my first thought was to remember, this is a species that does not like to hunt from a perch. Now, your hand is a perch as well. So I thought, how do you wrap your head around that? Now, what I had seen is that imprinting, if you're trying to take a species and kind of alter its normal hunting techniques a little bit to better fit your needs, that's easier with an imprint. So for example, kestrels. If you imprint a kestrel, you can train them to chase after anything. They might not be able to catch it, but you can train them to come to an inflated garbage bag because they don't know any different. Where if you trap a passage kestrel, yes, you can train them to hunt birds, but they've spent months or half a year hunting mice and grasshoppers. And now you're like, we're going to chase sparrows. They're like, but there's grasshoppers right here. So I've always had more success hunting with imprint kestrels than I have with passage kestrels. Now, compare that to like a peregrine falcon. A peregrine falcon, they naturally want to circle and dive on prey. And if you're teaching them, okay, leave my fist, go up, circle, follow me, and dive on prey, you're not altering that much. So, you know, it's, you're not gaining or losing a whole lot by an imprint. So I figured that the same thing would work well for me with a harrier. So the harriers I flew were imprints. And in doing so, I was able to like, here's your natural progression. You're getting fed by your parents. And then now I'm feeding you. And now I'm directing your hunting instincts towards certain scenarios. Now, what I had been doing in the years before, is I had been hunting a lot of canal ducks. In Utah, we have, in Northern Utah, we have a lot of canals. They're not very wide. They're, you know, six to 10 feet wide and only a few feet deep. And they usually have trees on both sides. And the ducks that live there are wild, but they're fairly used to humans because a lot of times there's houses there. And I had used Harris Hawks and had hunted a lot of these canal ducks. And I thought, could you do that with a Northern harrier? Could you off the fish, train them to do that? So I tried it first and I got them to fly to a lure. And then what I started to do was I made duck dummies, duck decoys that were upright. Now I mimicked usually mallards. Most of my decoys were mallards. I even tried with a Canadian goose, but I always made them larger than the real birds. And I just constructed them out of fabric and hangers and things. And I'd put them in the canals where ducks would usually be up on the side of the canal. And I would tie a string around the neck of the decoy and put some meat there. And I'd walk along before these harriers were even fully hard pen. So they could fly, but their feathers were just finishing up growing in. And I trained them instead of a lure, like you just go and you grab this duck shaped thing, knock it over and then eat the meat off of the neck. And then I will come over and give you an even bigger reward. They were keying in on that really well. Then once we, once the feathers were in all the way and we're getting into the fall, then I would have friends with a fishing line on either side of the canal pulling. So this duck on the bank is sitting there, a fake duck, like a dummy duck. And the harrier would go grab onto the neck and they would pull. So you have that motion of something big and heavy moving all over. So remember, harriers are similar in weight and build to a Cooper's hawk. So they're not giant despite their wings looking so big. This seemed to work really well. When it came to hunting though, this initial experiment, once I was getting into the fall, was I was walking out and the bird was at weight, their instinct was to want to fly off. They weren't baiting like an accipiter, but remember their instinct is to just kind of always wander slowly and this would flush the ducks. So I practice and eventually was able to fly them out of the hood, similar as to you could with a lot of hawks and eagles, where you have them hooded, but the hood's open and back. And as you approach the ducks, you take off the hood and you yell, ho, ho, ho. And they see him go after it. Did have success doing this technique, but harriers don't like to chase long distances. So even though I did have success and it was able to be accomplished, it clearly was not the best technique. Now, the New Zealand falconers, they have harriers that are a little chunkier and again, are a little more willing to pursue birds that are flushed up. But what I generally saw was that if the duck took off and the harrier started to chase, if that duck went more than 10 feet, the harrier was like, nah. And remember, in that closed setting, they didn't quite know what to do. They didn't know, hey, just fly right back. So it worked, but it wasn't the best technique with those walls. I think if it was open canals where they could circle around you a couple of times and come back to your fist, that would have been more successful. So I figured maybe it's better to try to play to the natural strengths of these harriers, which again, what they want to do is they want to circle around. They want to just wander. Now, I've seen this done a lot of times with fruginous hawks. I've had friends that like to, instead of hunting off the fist with their fruginous hawks, they will let them, they'll be the walking perch and they'll let the fruginous circle around, land back, circle around, land back, circle around, land back. And anything that flushes up, great. So I thought, is this a technique that could be used for harriers? And so we had near my home, a lot of areas of bunch grasses where we had sparrows and quail and cottontail rabbits. And then it's open. There's no trees, there's no perches, there's no distractions. And we would try that same technique and it worked well to just go walking around and let them fly, let them circle, come back, circle, come back. And just us walking out there, anything that got flushed, they would die. Now, this is a really specific technique. This is not something that's generalized. Like think of all the different scenarios that a Harris Hawk would work well in. Well, this is basically just letting a harrier be a wild harrier. You just happen to be coming along for the ride and you're a perch here and there. And again, they have to be, they do fly to the lure well and they can fly to the fist well if they're raised from an imprint. But that, it's not that harriers are bad birds. It's that this style of falconry is not appealing to everybody. The idea of let's just go walking through a field and let this bird wander five feet off the ground and come back five feet around and come back is not super appealing. And not only that, more importantly, are you going to find the prey you need to find? If you live in an area with a high density of quail, this technique actually could work very well for you. We didn't have as many quail, we were mostly flushing sparrows. And so we switch it up to hedgehogging. And this is kind of a combination of two styles. We would find as we got later into the winter which bushes would hold all of the sparrows and starlings that where they would bunch in after they had been feeding for the day and then they go into the bushes to stay away from predators. And we would know, we would figure out where these places were and then we did the technique I mentioned before. Just walking and letting the harrier go and land on all of our fists. Different people, we'd all have gloves. And then when we would get up to that bush I would start swinging the lure and the harrier would notice and start flying over towards me to come to the lure. And then I would run at the bush, charge it and just punch or kick into the bush at the right time. So all of the sparrows and starlings come flying out and the harrier would just meet them head on. Now again that seems like a very strange form of falconry. It works but it's a very very specific type of thing. But humans have come up with stranger things. In medieval times in Europe, hobby falcons were trained to do very odd things. They weren't very good for direct pursuit flights but they knew birds were afraid of them. So they would train a hobby falcon to circle above and scare larks and sparrows into a big bush and they would just throw a net over the bush and then just reach in and grab the sparrows for food. Medieval Europe, they hate sparrows. It's like a miniature turkey, a little roasted turkey. It's like that's clearly even less falconry than what I'm describing with a harrier. But my point is I think it is better to fight for legal rights and if a very few people every few years say I think I'm going to try a harrier and go out and hunt them in these ways, great. I'd rather that than say let's ban as many birds from the sport as possible. Because if you really want to train a harrier, you can hunt them in this hedge-hawking way. They'll do great if you're going to do a lot better hunting a merlin or a sharp-shinned hawk or a cooper's hawk in those same fields if your goal is only I want to catch as many sparrows as possible. But if you have a love of the species and you think harriers are amazing and you want to fly one, then this is the way to do it. They're great. Now when it comes to training and equipment and husbandry, not a lot of people have actually flown or trained harriers. And that's in fact one of the things I point out. The people who say, well they're horrible falconry bird. I'm like, well they perhaps so, but have you ever tried one? Well I don't know. Okay, well I get why you might not want to try one because again you could accomplish things better with another species. But if you haven't tried one, why are you being so vocal about how terrible they are? So when it comes to actual equipment, if you're actually going to train one, as far as the jesses, traditional jesses and anklets, Elmery jesses work. But remember their legs are really skinny and really long. Think of like an oversized sharp-shinned hawk with these tiny little pencil legs. And you do not want to put excessive stress on those long skinny vulnerable legs. So you want to make the anklets broader, deeper, taller. That distributes the weight further out if they bait and helps keep them healthier and happier. I also think that even though they can use a wide range of perches, remember they are not built to do a lot of perching. They mostly are flying all day long. So the perch I definitely came to prefer with both of mine was a bow perch. The reason is not that a block perch or a ring perch couldn't work just fine, but their legs are so long and then if they have those jesses on, that straddle space is really big. And even with good small jesses, it's easy for them to accidentally straddle a perch and damage your feathers, which you don't want, of course. So a bow perch is a good design. It allows them to jump, get back up and feel safe. No problem. As far as the hood, it's an indispensable tool when flying Harriers. And again, I recommend a Cooper's Hawk hood. I use Dutch hoods. I have not tried Cooper's Hawk Anglo-Indian hoods, but it's definitely worth a try. But I found that Cooper's Hawk Dutch hoods worked perfectly for them. Both males and females, they fit them just fine. They ride an imprint Harrier that's hood trained properly. They hood easily. They'll ride hooded very well. And that is good because again, remember, if you've flown an Accipiter of any kind, you know there's kind of this edginess. That is even more so in a Harrier, but it's not because they're an agitated, high-strung species. It's because their instinct is, I've got to be flying nonstop or I'm going to starve. And the longer you've worked with them, the more that goes down. They're like, oh, I'm okay. But hooding them and either flying them out of the hood or just hooding them. And then once you get to the field, taking the hood off and letting them range around, it works great. But I found that having them travel in a dark travel box did not work nearly as well. And their agitation level was higher than you would expect for a visual-based bird. So hood, it's a perfect tool. Keeps them calm. They'll travel well and they hood and unhood with no problem. And again, remember those side feathers flattened perfectly when the hood goes on. And when you take the hood off, they pop right back off. So overall, my general recommendation, if somebody says, I'm thinking about flying a Harrier, my general recommendation is don't. However, if you love the species and you've flown a number of other birds of prey and had a lot of success hunting and training, then I'm all for it. Just a lot of falconers are negative towards the idea of hunting a new species. And it's understandable because they're sharing their views based off of experience and traditions. And again, Harriers are not the best bird for hunting game. This is the reason why owls are not usually hunted in falconry. Owls are wonderful hunters, but the type of hunting they do is not as conducive as forming a hunting partnership with humans. Same thing with ospreys. What bird could be a more perfect hunter than an osprey? Seeing in the water, diving down in the water, multiple feet deep, catching fish and flying off. They're incredible. A lot of people said, I'd love to fly an osprey. But the thing is, that form of hunting is not extremely conducive to working with a human because once they caught their fish, it's not like you're rowing out in a boat to pick them up. Their instinct is to go fly and land in a tree where they're going to eat their food. And then what do you do? Does that mean an osprey cannot be trained in falconry? No, no, it doesn't. And if a person in a country where that was legal had enough interest and enough extra effort they were willing to put in, then an osprey could be trained as well too. So again, I think it is good to keep an open mind. And I think it's good to help people considering a new strange species. It's good to share your expertise. Don't shoot down a dream, but help them understand the reasons why it's not a good idea. And if they choose that they want to follow that dream, help them have the most success and understand that it's going to take a lot of extra effort to have the successful hunting experience. And that is also the case with harriers. Well, if you have any questions about harrier hunting, please let me know below. Again, my experience is limited, but it was successful. And if you have other videos you'd like to see me produce, just let me know down in the comments below. And as always, happy hawking.