Our little Nankeen (or Australian) kestrel, Rocket, is making great progress in her training to become part of our general free flight show. She made her debut last week in a few special private shows we conducted, and the success of that means she will hopefully be ready to fly for us in one of our main shows very soon.

As with any new addition to our team, Rocket had to go through a series of steps to get her up to the stage where she is now. When we design a training plan for a new bird, we need to take many things into consideration. We look at the species itself - the flying style, hunting techniques and other natural behaviors - then we consider how the bird was raised, how old it is, and its individual personality.

Being a falcon, Rocket is well suited for training using a lure (for a rundown on the idea behind lure training, see my previous blog 'Flying start to 2011). Rocket came to us as young, untrained, and hand raised. This is ideal, as it meant she was already comfortable with people, and her training could begin fresh, without the influences of any previous and unknown training techniques.

The first step we take with a new bird is socialising or 'manning'. Basically, this means that we spend time with the bird to allow them to get know us and us to know them. We soon discovered that Rocket is very confident and very food focussed, a great combination for a show bird! During this phase we also taught Rocket to come to the glove for a food reward, so she will confidentently step up to our glove when required. The next step was to tie a piece of food to her lure and introduce it to her.

At first, she just needed to sit on the lure and eat her food - what we try to achieve here is to teach her to associate the lure with food. Once she did that, we could get her to start actively coming to the lure for food. At first, this was done with small hops, and as she progressed this became long hops, then small flights, and then longer flights to a lure dragged along the ground.

Once we were sure she was confident in doing this, we introduced the swinging lure to her routine. This is where we swing the lure around and the bird must try and catch it. As she approaches, the lure is passed out to meet her and then snatched away. She will miss and then come around and try again. The amount of times she will miss the lure before we allow her to catch it will vary. That way, she will always think she has a chance and will try hard to catch it.

Rocket is now at the stage where is is performing her lure training well enough to be included in the shows, but first we have to get her used to the audience. It is a bit daunting for a young bird to be suddenly faced with a whole group of people watching her when previously there were none! For this reason, we have started easing her in with some smaller crowds. We are hoping in the next few weeks that Rocket will be confident enought to be one of the stars of our show!