We’ve been taking Clarkie, one of the newest members of Bird Show, off site for some training.Today he had a huge media audience who came along to watch his progress.We currently have three Peregrine Falcons. Khan is the resident star and flies on days with strong southerlies or westerlies. Nike and Clarkie both came in over the past two months. Nike is a female so that means she is huge! Girls are always larger than the males in the raptor world. The boys are both around 500 grams and she’s a whopping 800 grams!Clarkie is further ahead in his training. Whilst Nike will be trained for shows, Clarkie is actually being rehabilitated for release as he came in to our vet clinic from the wild. Having hunted in the wild before this makes him a suitable candidate; we just need to build up his fitness levels. As the fastest animal in the world you need to be in peak fitness to catch your food!We took Clarkie to Balmoral Oval. He is currently being trained to fly to a baited lure. The lure is a long piece of leather that somewhat resembles a bird. His aim is to fly to it. Eventually the steps get harder but he started with flying just a few feet to a lure being pulled across the ground … but now he’s putting in much more effort as we encourage him to fly first before hitting the lure.