Tonight Hazel bound to a starling for the first time. I had given her two others over the last couple of weeks but she wasn't ready for it yet. Tonight she just sat and looked at it for a while and then flew to it but took off as soon as the starling struggled. I brought out Mr. Frosty and set him up in the same spot to see if she'd go for it and she did, rather quickly. Given that performance and the fact that she wanted to eat what she caught I put the live starling out again. It took just a minute but she flew to it and held on with a perfect grip around the neck. Go Hazel! She was very excited even breathing a little heavy. I think next time should go as well now that I have her weight down.
Other events over the last couple of weeks:
I've just been bringing Hazel's weight down to where she'll respond well. I think we're close to a final weight.
I moved my borrowed starling trap from the dairy to a mink farm. I was tired of driving through 4 inches of manure each day in my new car and bringing it home to stink up the garage.
I went out with my sponsor to flush pheasants and on the way back we saw a kestrel just down the street from my house and it looked like the Baron. We rushed the rest of the way back to my house and I loaded up the trap and got back there but he was gone. The next day I saw one near the same spot that looked promising so I put the trap out and that bird was hungry! He flew down to the trap while I was only 30 feet away and still backing up the car. He landed right on the trap and danced a nice Irish jig while I got out my binoculars. I could see his legs very well below his kilt and alas, no anklets. So I drove forward toward the trap to scare him off of it so he wouldn't get caught. Too late. So I released him and let him fly off. The whole scenario from trap set to caught was about a minute. Was fun to get a close up look at him.
I took three of my kids to the Winterfest on Saturday. There were many different birds there and a few I hadn't seen before including: sharp-shinned hawk, peales peregrine (no hybrid), anatum peregrine, gyrfalcon (no hybrid), barbary falcon, finnish goshawk. It's always cold and a bit of a drive but it's cool to see so many birds in one spot.
Earlier this week my wife told me she was driving on the way home and saw a male kestrel on a sign post as she passed by. She turned around and drove back to see if it was the Baron and as she pulled up, another car stopped and the driver was looking at the bird with binoculars. She thought that was an odd coincidence. It turns out she found my sponsor looking for the Baron too. What a great wife and a great sponsor!
This last Tuesday I put Hazel on her indoor wall perch and went to make dinner. I looked over at her and noticed her head was missing. Well, that's weird. I knew she had it when I put her on the perch. Moo went to look at her and figured out that Hazel was sleeping! The Baron never slept indoors in the 5 weeks we had him and here was this wild crazy thing sleeping peacefully (and might I add, deeply) in the middle of a family of 6 making dinner and doing homework and making a general ruckus. And she was only with us one week. She did the same thing again on Wednesday while I was getting her food ready. I had to wake her up to eat. Poor thing is wearing herself out during the day bouncing around her mews.
It was becoming a daily occasion that I would come home from work and find Hazel wound up tight against the side of the mews with her leash all gnarled and twisted into a ball.One day this week she was so tangled up that she bent a tail feather; the outside one on the right. It was sticking out at a 4:00 angle and I felt sick. I had done what I could to help her not get tangled. She had more swivels than you'd ever imagine yet she was so active that she just couldn't help getting tangled up. Of course I called my sponsor and he said that if a bird is that active and wired that it's best to free-loft her. He also told me how to fix her feather. The cure: Stick her tail in a glass of very hot water. Um, ok. That was a lot simpler than it sounded at first. I just sat her on my fist and stuck her tail down into the cup. Since there's no feeling in the feathers, she had no idea what was going on. I asked him how long to soak it and he said it should be immediate. Sure enough, I took the tail out after 3 seconds in the water and it was straight. Amazing! Hurray for sponsors!
About free-lofting. My family would call me and tell me my bird was going crazy in the mews. Making all sorts of noise bouncing from perch to perch and to the window bars and bath pan. I came home one day and my daughter had called me 20 minutes before to say that Hazel was giving her alarm call. She looked for the cat but he wasn't in the garage. She peeked in and Hazel just continued to scream. I got home and sure enough she was a screaming wet mess (from bouncing into the bath pan). If I thought the bent feather gave me a scare, what I saw next made my stomach drop out. Hazel was hopping around on one leg with the other at a strange angle. I also noticed that she had splashed so much water on the door that the corner had warped and I saw downy feathers on the edge. I thought for sure she had broken her leg or hurt it badly. I felt so low. I got her onto my glove and took a look at her leg. It turns out that with all her acrobatics she had managed to get her right leg caught in between her last couple of tail feathers on the right side and she couldn't get it out. What?! "Help, help, it's got me! The sky is falling!" Sometimes I truly believe that bird-brained applies both literally AND figuratively to this bird. Once I freed her from herself she roused and settled right down and we had a normal evening. We even went so far as to have her pluck her first starling.
I had stopped at the trap to water the birds as usual and brought home 8 of them. One I kept alive and let her have a go at it. It was way too noisy and disturbed so she wouldn't launch at it. So I dispatched it and then she jumped at it and we had our first post-catch bonding moment. It gave me an opportunity to learn something new about kestrels. They chitter. Like a squirrel. It was a surprising sound to hear coming out of her and very cute. Though from what I can tell from her behavior and mine while making the noise, it was more of a warning to me than anything cute and cuddly. She would make the noise whenever I moved my fingers around the carcass while she was grabbing it. So I took it as a warning that she didn't like me messing with her stuff. I tried to respect her ownership while helping her easily open it up to eat from it. I think it turned out well. I think that was Wednesday night.
Today I took Hazel outside on the creance for the first time. Well, besides once last week I took her for a walk in the fields on my glove. But today I put her on the Baron's favorite garden bean pole and she seemed to like it too. It's very much like the fence post I found her on. She responded very well at 106.9g and I fed her about 5g which is when she stopped responding quickly. That was the Baron's breaking point as well. But in that time she was able to be comfortable enough to fly back to her perch on the pole and know that was her place.
After that I checked the trap and found 4 sparrows in with the starlings. They always get killed by the starlings after a short while in the cage so I tried to get them out where they could at least be useful. I was only able to get one into the escape hatch so took him home. I set him up in the back yard with a weight and let Hazel see him. After a little bit of head bobbing and looking around she launched at it and missed into the snow. She jumped back at it and after a little chase around in circles she caught it and just sat there. I wondered what she was waiting for but since she wasn't flying off with it, I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to teach her not to carry. I came in and offered her food which she took, but when I got down closer to the ground she did try to fly off. The weight on the sparrow kept her in place and I reassured her with more food. So for a while she just sat there with the sparrow while I fed her tidbits. She would turn now and then and bite at the sparrow but not really killing it or opening it up. I finally dispatched it and helped her break in and continued to feed her bits to strengthen her connection to me while holding prey. Once or twice she did try to bring the sparrow up to my glove but it was too awkward for her and I ended up picking the sparrow and her up together. She took forever to eat it but finished most of it and I'll let her keep the rest in the mews. I put her away VERY fat so we'll see how long that carries her into tomorrow. She has been losing 1.5g/h overnight the last couple nights. I have no idea why other than she is just an active nervous bird. Maybe ADHD? I think I'll keep her on her giant hood at night indoors and see if the complete darkness and regulated temperature helps. The Baron actually lost more weight when I put him in a dark place. Maybe he wasn't comfortable enough yet to get used to it.
Lastly, my sponsor had loaned me a jess that was made by Al Ross for merlins. I looked at the design and because I'm cheap, I figured I'd learn how to make my own (since he sells them for $15 a pair). I found the materials at a three different stores and set about making them. They weren't as hard as they looked and they look sharp and work great. The are designed so that your bird can't pull them out in the field and lose them, making it harder to recover your bird. If you fly jessless then I guess that's a non-issue, but this is what my sponsor recommended. I did have to cast Hazel to get them on her since she gave me a series of nips that ended up in bites while trying to put them on. She handled the casting fairly well and I don't think she hates me anymore than usual.
This is the one made by Al Ross and is a great design. Mine are on Hazel and I forgot to take
pictures first. The head is a 1/4" brass bead for fly tying with a small
and large opening. The end of the braid goes into the small opening and you tie it off and epoxy the large opening of the bead. The jess material is waxed nylon thread for leather
working and is 6 strands braided together as three but the beginning is
just 3 strands braided to make the loop. The leather bit is threaded and braided in place and you fold it down in line with the jess to slip it through the grommet. But once it's through, it pops back in place and can't be pulled out by an overactive kestrel. Not that I know any overactive kestrels, mind you. I'll make a tutorial with
photos if people ask me for it. I probably will make one more pair to have on hand for just in cases.
If you have any interest in falconry or raptors, you don't want to miss these two events. Winterfest and Sky Trials. Winterfest is a show and tell where you'll see many different birds up close. Sky Trials is a competition where falcons attempt to catch prey that is specially trained to avoid them. See details below.
If you're interested in carpooling with me let me know.
WINTERFEST 2012
It’s time for the 10th annual Winterfest Falconry gathering.
This year is our 10 year anniversary! Come celebrate with us!
WHEN: January 28, 2012 10:00 AM
WHERE: Lone PeakPark Pavillion 10140 South 700 East Sandy, UT (look it up on google maps)
Who: EVERYONE is invited. Please bring your family, friends, scouts, interested parties, etc. But please support the potluck and raffle as well.
History-Winterfest started 10 years ago as a FREE public/family
friendly falconry event. It is not a “meet” or a “trial” by state
definition. It is an opportunity to fly birds, eat food, make new
friends, and share ideas. This event has grown each year and has become a
fun winter tradition.
Flights- These timed
flights are a competition, but meant to be light hearted and fun
spirited. So PLEASE FLY YOUR BIRD! You don’t have to worry about looking
silly or being jabbed for a less than stellar performance. That being
said, if you fly, please make sure your bird is at weight. The flight
competitions will have 3 categories. Kestrel, Red-tail, and Harris hawk.
The flights are timed flights. The falconer can choose to do the
flights to the fist or to the lure, whichever will solicit a faster
response from his bird. Awards will be given in each category for
fastest flights. Please do not hesitate to fly your bird!!! This is
all meant in good fun, and is supposed to cater to newer falconers. So
don’t be shy. Fly your bird!
Potluck-Winterfest is free. And it is our hope to always keep it that way. We will be having an indoor potluck. All food is free, but everyone is expected to bring food! If
you are going to eat food, please see that you bring food. This event
is far more fun if the potluck is well stocked. Everybody likes to eat.
So spend a few bucks, and bring some food. Crock pot items are
especially welcome.
Raffle- Having a raffle is what has allowed us to keep Winterfest
free. Please bring money for raffle tickets, and if you are feeling
generous and community minded, please bring raffle items to put on the
table. Every bit helps. The raffle started as a way that newer falconers
could obtain much needed equipment, but it has come to be a fun and
vital part of Winterfest. There will be
art, equipment, gift packs, and many great non-falconry items as well.
This year should be a fun raffle. Please support the raffle if you can.
We will be set up to use credit cards if needed. The park and pavilion
rental was several hundred dollars. We hope to recoup some of this from
the raffle.
Bird yard- After the
flights are over, an outdoor bird yard will be set up. PLEASE BRING
YOUR BIRDS even if you are not flying. The bird yard is a huge part of
this event. It is fun for everyone to see all the birds. Guests will be
free to look at and photograph birds. This is always a fun part for
everyone, especially families and newcomers. The bird yard will be roped
off and manned. If you have a perch with a spike base, this year we will have a drill with a masonry bit to drill holes if the ground is frozen.
Please make sure your equipment is strong and reliable. All species are
welcome. There will also be a “beauty contest” done in conjunction with
this that everyone gets to vote on. This too is meant all in good fun,
and is done with comical categories.
Please come and help support this fun
tradition. Please help by bringing food, birds, raffle items, etc. This
should be a great year! We hope to see you there.
The tradition continues! Join us again in Rush Valley along the Pony
Express Trail in Central Utah for the Utah Sky Trials, now in its 37th
year. Come see high-flying falcons, and get up close to eagles, owls
and hawks of every sort. Swap stories and check out the latest falconry
gear.
February 16-18, 2012 (You'll want to be there on the 18th for the finals)
Rush Valley, UT
Witch Hazel is a demon. I was actually thinking of naming her Tisiphone which is the name of one of the three furies in Greek mythology. The name means "vengeful destruction". Yeah. I'm still keeping a look out for the Baron around the area. Please come back!
I will say some good about her. She is a very quick learner and she has ninja skillz. On the second day she learned to return to my glove when she bates away. The Baron never learned that. She can jump up and turn around in mid air and land back on the glove in the opposite direction and throw you a glare that will tear a scream of fear from your throat. On the second day she flew 4-5 feet to me for food. Very quick progress compared to my slower pace with the Baron.
However...
Each morning when I go to get her out of the mews she bates away from me and gets ready to ninja my brains out. Then I have to slide my hand along the leash to her so she doesn't fly onto my head and then she spends a little time hanging upside down until she decides she wants to stand on my glove. It's like she resets each night and in the morning we start all over again. She's also very difficult to get onto the scale to weigh her. Today I tried to get her to fly a little distance to me, about like what she did the second day. She wouldn't do it that far so we had to basically start over and work up the distance. She's just so inconsistent. When I feed her she's careful enough and doesn't rip it from my fingers; she just takes it gently. But she's ready to bite you any other time. My patient animal whisperer daughter worked with Hazel a bit today to get her to let you stroke her belly. She made a little progress. I think with repeated work she'll get there. But for now she perfectly fits the description I heard of a hawk's mentality toward the falconer: feed me, fly me, or leave me alone!
I noticed that a couple of the scales on the top of her feet are white and asked my sponsor about it. He told me to put some sort of cream on it to keep it moist and clean so I used some anti-bacterial cream to make sure there was no infection starting. Of course to do this I needed to hood her so she wouldn't bite me as I touched her feet. Getting a hood on her is next to impossible without a major tantrum from either her or me. At this stage in the game I have to grab her from behind around the hips with her wings held against her back and keeping her feet below my hand. Then it's a matter of timing the bites to get the hood below her open mouth and onto her head. Mercy. I got the hood on her and expected her to be a wet noodle like the Baron was. Oh no. Not even close. She immediately transformed into the Tasmanian Devil and blindly break danced her way onto my bare hand where she clawed and bit me, drawing blood in three places. Dag, yo!
After we got through all that my sponsor came over to look at her feet. He said that the white scales were loose, probably from the constant bating and the leather I used for her anklets was too stiff and thick. He gave me a small scrap of kangaroo leather to use for her anklets. Yeah. That meant I had to hood her again AND wrap her up so she didn't go all raptor on me. I felt bad having to do it but it was for her own good so I could fix her equipment. So I wrapped her up and changed her anklets and when I was done she was shaking, the poor dear. I put her in a dark room for a bit to calm down while I finished some new jesses I had braided yesterday. These would be lighter weight and easier to slide in and out of the anklets (so I thought). Of course now there was one more drama to perform: changing out the jesses. Theoretically this should be easy, but the ones that she had on were thick leather and didn't slide through the grommet very easily and were very hard to get out. And then putting the new ones in was additional drama and all this with no hood. At the end of the day we were both worn out and stressed and just needed to chill. I fed her a good meal as recompense for the poor treatment she got at my inexperienced blundering hands and put her in her mews for the night. Hopefully we can be better friends tomorrow.
I took the day off of work yesterday to look for the Baron. I went out a couple times in the morning and on starting my first pass I realized I was just fooling myself. It wasn't a despairing feeling but more like facing facts. I saw a few male kestrels but they were the same ones from the day before; none had anklets on. On my second round I saw the same kestrels as before but still no Baron. In one quarter-mile stretch I saw three kestrels, two males and a female, which got me thinking, "Gosh, there sure are a lot of kestrels around here. I could probably trap one pretty easily."
I had told myself that I would wait until February to trap a new bird to have ready for spring when the starlings will be on the ground. I told my sponsor of my plan and he suggested that I not wait; that it takes a while to get a bird fully trained. He also said he would loan me his telemetry equipment until I can afford to buy some.
So...
I drove out to my starling trap to fill the water and asked my iPhone to find me a pet store nearby. There was one that was due to open in thirty minutes so after checking the trap I drove to the store and waited for it to open. They had mice; little gray mice. Woot! I bought two, called my brother-in-law and invited him to come with me since he had offered to help me search for the Baron.
We drove back near my home and saw a male kestrel, not the Baron. We put the trap down and I'm not sure he saw it as he flew off shortly after. We drove further and were only two streets from my house and my brother-in-law spotted a female on a fence post near the road. It was 12:08 pm and I had to pick up my wife from work by 12:30 and it was a ten minute drive to reach her. We dropped the trap on the side of the road and backed up a little ways. She flew past the trap within ten seconds of waiting and perched on the street sign. After another short wait she flew down to the trap and tried to scare the mice out of it. When they wouldn't move she got more aggressive and jumped on top of the trap and back off and on and off and started footing the trap like crazy. She then lost her balance because she had both feet tangled and she tried to fly off but she was caught. It wasn't even 12:15 yet. We moved in quickly and got her off the trap, hooded and socked her, then drove off to pick up my wife arriving only five minutes late. Talk about drive through service! :) She weighed 126.2 without any gear. The Baron weighed 127.8 with anklets and jesses. So roughly the same size.
The Baron took 30 minutes of swinging onto the glove to get him to learn the trick. This girl took a couple of hours. She constantly bated away during those couple of hours. I finally took her into the bathroom with no window and closed the door almost all the way. Then she would stay on my fist. I would slowly open the door to get her acclimated to things and walk out but as soon as she saw light at a window she bated toward it even with the blinds closed. The Baron never bated once. Hard to believe, but it's true. Sure, he'd fly off the glove to get away from being touched, but not just cuz he wanted away from you otherwise. This girl is also a big time biter. The Baron would bite as a last defense but she leans toward you to bite as an offense. However, to her credit (or maybe to mine having gone through this already) I was able to get her to hop to my glove tonight for her food and was able to feed her with my fingers. She still wants to bite the heck out of my glove and I don't dare put my fingers near her without food, but it's progress.
If I spot the Baron in the next week or so, I'll most likely retrap him and let this one go. We'll see what opportunities arise and how this girl is doing by that time.
I first started looking at witchy names for her since she's been so nasty compared to the sweet little boy Baron, but I think she'll tame down fairly well. The family likes the name Hazel. There was a witch Hazel I remember from Bugs Bunny cartoons and the name is also descriptive of her coloring, comparing it to the hazel nut shell.
We took the Baron out to the fields again today with another seeled starling. This time he was 4g lower than the last bird and we figured he'd be on it right away. We released the starling and it flew upward and circled and the Baron did nothing. The starling headed away from us down the hill and my sponsor suggested I toss my bird into the air to get him going. That did it. He took off after the starling but that darned bird was going faster than we thought and the Baron didn't overtake him til he was about 1/2 mile from us and directly over a huge maze of scrub oak. I thought, OK, we can deal with this. (Really?) We drove around to the spot we saw them headed toward and walked through the brush, hoping the magpies would show his location with their scavenging attitude. We ended up following a couple of magpies around from tree to tree and got nowhere on finding the Baron. We finally gave that up and drove around the area to see if he didn't catch the starling and just got up on a wire or tree somewhere. No luck. I still wasn't too upset. We called it quits and I planned to go back and look around the area on the poles and such to see if I could see him after he was done eating, assuming he caught the starling.
Pain/Guilt
Now it's starting to hit me that he's not coming back and while I can go look for him over the next couple of days, I'm not hopeful of finding him. My wife took my son out with her and looked around while I showered and ate some lunch. They saw a kestrel but didn't think it had jesses on. She came back and got me and we drove around. I saw a kestrel but the sun was in my eyes and I had to step out of the road for a car coming by and when I looked back up it had disappeared. I had my wife drop me off in the field where it all started and I walked back through swinging the lure and looking around. I saw another kestrel a ways off but it disappeared before I got close enough to get binoculars on it. I'll give it another try in a couple hours and see if I can find him.
Anger/Bargaining
While looking for my bird, my sponsor was saying we shouldn't have even flown the bird without telemetry. I'm sure he wasn't chastising me more than he was himself as this is the first time he even brought it up and many people (most I've heard of) don't use telemetry with a kestrel. Of course, they're car hawking at close range, not doing long flights like we were. So now I'm giving myself the kick in the pants for being too cheap to spend the $700 on a telemetry system. (Said with sarcasm; I know it was just a bad setup and I know now I shouldn't have thrown him so late.)
Depression
Having to go back to work tomorrow and not be able to hunt for my bird is going to kill me. Our second car is in the shop right now and my daughter is coming home to take me into work so I can't even take the morning to look for him and go in late because she has to be to work by 8:00. I really don't want to hear the I'm sorrys from co-workers either. Ugh.
