nearly finnished building my mews. my sponsor and her husband came over this morning and worked with me and my dad from 8:30 till 3:00 and got a ton done. my mews is 8' tall, 8' deep, and 9' across. there is also a 5X8 workshop area on the back. we are converting the mews out of an old dog run that was already at our house when we bought it. the original dogrun was 6X16, so we got to use the entire concrete area to build on. the metal pipes in the corners of the dog run added a bunch of stability as do the 2 pipes underneath the 5X9 window in front. the window is made of conduit spaced 2 inches apart. the outside is made of cedar, and i think it looks awsome. we waterproofed the workshop today by surrounding it with a plastic sheet. to cover all the concrete we are putting down some astroturf, probably 2 layers just to play it safe that the hawk doesnt go through it with its talons. about 1/3 of the inside of the mew is regular ground. we are gonna ad a couple of perches later, one being a trappese perch that can swing. i'll try and get some pictures posted of our progres, i think its looking pretty nice. feel free to comment!
it simulates a natural perch in the wild that sways. its not a full out swing, but like a little rocking motion. my sponsor has them in her mews and hawks seem to prefer it over a regular t-perch or shelf perch when they are all available. it only swings when they land on it though then it slowly stops moving
Hadn't heard of anyone doing that. It has been my experience that birds of prey and probably all birds don't like to be off balance, One of the ways that we get an eagle to stop leaning forward to bite you in the face is to roll your hand back and throw them off balance for just a moment. They learn real quick not to lean forward.
well i'll try and post some pictures later when we get the perches set up. it doesnt really throw them off balance, its a like a gental rocking thing, they seem to like it, or at least my sponsor's birds like it. i like watching my sponsors birds land on it b/c its cool so see how their heads remain completely still while the rest of their body moves with the perch. however the perch remains still most of the time as the hawk spends most of its time on that perch, and the perch stops rocking after a few seconds after they land. i like ur idea about throwing the eagle off balance so it wont bite u, i guess u've learned from experience? ouch!
well yesterday we put some finnishing touches on the mew and i think its lookin great. we got the the roof installed over the workshop and set up all the perches. now it really looks like a mew. today i went by my sponsors to watch the banding of her two baby harris hawks from the pair she is breeding. i didnt know that she would let me do it! i got to slide on the bands over the toes while she held the birds. it was a great experience. i'll try and get some pictures of my mew posted soon, but i'm goin to colorado next week so it might be a while before i get the pictures up