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.
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Post more videos. I like em!
ReplyDeleteI may need to get a videographer since it's hard to manage what I'm doing with the bird and run a camera at the same time. Moo took this last one.
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