Thank you TPC . But what's a hack site?
It probably helps to give you a bit of information on hacking so that you understand what hacking is all about ....
In the beginning of the recovery projects, we didn't have nesting pairs rather we were releasing captive-bred chicks from secure locations across the country - hack sites. We would get the chicks at about 40 days of age, they would go into a hack box (think playpen with a roof) and we would anonymously feed the chicks for about a week. After 7-10 days, we would take the bars off the box and since by this time the chicks (both/all genders) were older than fledge age, most shot out of the box and immediately fledged. By keeping the chicks in the hack box for such a relatively long time it imprinted the location on the chicks and let them become use to a larger world than they were familiar with coming from a breeding facility. As a result, we could continue to anonymously (that's another story) feed the chicks and to keep an eye on them as they tended to return to the building where the hackbox was located in the same way that the Radisson chicks return to the Hotel in the first couple of weeks after fledging. The hacked birds developed the same way their wild cousins do, just without an adult to provide some of the finer points of flight operations and protein acquisition. But the chicks are hardwired to do these things so starting 2-3 weeks after fledging, less of the food we provided would be eaten until finally it wasn't eaten at all and then the chicks were on their own.
And for those of you who are squeamish about "dead bird parts", takes about 3 days on duty as an hack site attendant to get over that condition
