{"id":29226,"date":"2015-01-29T06:13:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T13:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=29226"},"modified":"2015-01-29T06:22:04","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T13:22:04","slug":"kestrel-cleaning-and-honing-its-beak-and-the-importance-of-beak-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2015\/01\/29\/kestrel-cleaning-and-honing-its-beak-and-the-importance-of-beak-care\/","title":{"rendered":"Kestrel Cleaning And Honing Its Beak (and the importance of beak care)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Both wild raptors and those who care for captive birds must pay particular attention to beak health.\u00a0In the wild the act of dissecting prey and tearing meat off of bones helps to maintain proper beak shape and proportions through the processes of wear and physical stress.\u00a0In addition, raptors instinctively strop and hone\u00a0their beaks as they clean\u00a0them\u00a0on their perch after a meal.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0This male American Kestrel had just finished a meal.\u00a0 He has some food bits and blood on his beak and his posture suggested to me what he was about to do.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a01\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon<\/em> EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM +1.4tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/p>\n

He reached down and cleaned his beak on the top of the post.\u00a0 But it was more than just cleaning\u00a0– he stropped both sides of his beak many times on the hard end grain of the post, similar to what I do when I’m honing my kitchen knives.<\/p>\n

Those who keep captive raptors (falconers, rehabbers,\u00a0zoos\u00a0etc) must pay close attention to the health and shape of the beaks of the\u00a0birds they care for, partly\u00a0because when fed boneless\/soft food beaks tend to become overgrown and misshapen\u00a0which can cause the upper mandible to crack.\u00a0 In addition, captive birds often do not\u00a0have access to proper perches to hone their beaks on.\u00a0 When this happens to the beak of a captive raptor it must be “coped” (shaping a bird’s beak back to its ideal shape) and that can be a traumatic experience for both patient and handler.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a> on the process of and need for\u00a0coping if you have the interest.<\/p>\n

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\"gyrfalcon1\/1600, f\/7.1, ISO 500, Canon 7D, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This drop-dead gorgeous white Gyrfalcon is a falconry bird that escaped last winter. I photographed it locally just before it was recaptured and eventually returned to its owner. Before it was returned its health was evaluated and though its beak had not been neglected it was ready for coping – the tip of the upper mandible had grown past a right angle and is about to curl around under the lower mandible. A natural diet and\u00a0perches\u00a0in the wild would likely have prevented\u00a0the overgrowth.<\/p>\n

This bird escaped\u00a0a second time\u00a0last month and had to be recaptured and once again returned to its owner.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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Both wild raptors and those who care for captive birds must pay particular attention to beak health.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[340,334,1004,1892,395],"tags":[28,2389,2387,848,847,2390,2388],"class_list":["post-29226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-kestrels","category-birds","category-falconry-2","category-gyrfalcons","category-miscellaneous","tag-american-kestrel","tag-beak-care","tag-coping-raptor-beaks","tag-escaped-falconry-bird","tag-falconry","tag-raptor-rehabilitation","tag-white-gyrfalcon"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/american-kestrel-5385-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-7Bo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}