First Bind

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.