App Profile: Falconry Journal

Kittiwake15

Rating: 4/5

A really useful app and impressively accurate predictions! It was predicting my Harris’s Hawks weights almost always accurately with only like a week of data. I’ve also been using it for the education ambassador raptors I work with to try and get a better handle on their weights. There are two things I personally would like to see added when the developer gets a chance: 1. A setting for birds housed indoors. I am tracking one bird housed outside and I like the automatic temperature input based on location, but I think it may be messing with the weight predictions for the other two birds who are housed in heated buildings. I’m considering turning off location again and manually inputting temps for all three, but it would be nice if there was a setting to set a consistent temperature for specific birds. 2. It would be nice if the type of food fed could be taken into account (or an option to track food calories instead of weight). Some food items like rat are significantly higher calorie than others like chick and I think I’m going to have to manually start correcting for this because I think it might be messing with predictions.

Falconerchick

Rating: 4/5

It’s likely that half of us use ounces rather than grams, internationally. Only allowing weight and food metrics to be measured in grams is actually more irritating that it sounds - you’ll have to do the conversions yourself both in data entry and then interpreting the app’s results. Beyond that, I do enjoy the app and will probably continue to use it. The predictive capabilities are really cool and intuitive! Including a settings toggle for ounces/grams would be immensely useful, and I really hope in the future the developer is able to find a way to update this as a feature.

Rating: 5/5

This app has enormous potential to improve the general practice of falconry and expand falconers’ understanding of raptor weight management. Its algorithms are based on long-established formula for calculating a bird’s body mass over time, factoring in food intake and metabolism. The app’s ability to predict weights accurately 24 hours in advance is simply essential to reaching many falconry goals, including of course the healthy maintenance of the hawk. The data sharing and notation features (milestones) are also very useful.The only missing element here is a data visualization package. But presently the app allows data download in CSV, so it’s possible to make your own charts, etc.