Ready, set, go!

Yesterday I got some loaned telemetry gear from my sponsor and I took Hazel out for a ride. I left a baggie on the roadside in the empty subdivision and circled around to come down the road toward it. Hazel was at 101g and pretty anxious. You see, the starling got out of the enclosure I had put it in and started flapping around. So Hazel launched at it and she was tethered to her perch. I had to pull over and stuff the starling back under cover and get Hazel into the front seat again. (You kids are driving me crazy! Don't make me turn this car around!) So anyway, she was really anxious about the starling already.

We drove up the road and she was looking for that starling; she knew it was around there somewhere. She spotted it while we were about 40 feet away and I let go her jesses and just held her on the glove inside the car at about 15 mph. When we were just passing the starling she launched out the window and went straight to it and bound to it, just like in the back yard. Atta girl! I think we're ready to find a real life easy slip to start her on.

First car hawked baggie

In other news, I attended the Utah Sky Trials yesterday with a daughter and son and brother-in-law. We were there about 2 hours and watched the first 5-6 flights and then headed home after that. My sponsor's bird flew and in my opinion was the best of the bunch we saw, at least from a spectator's viewpoint. He stayed above the crowd most of the time and was easy to see when he stooped. The official results say his bird took 5th out of the 22 entries. Yay!

While there a photographer took a couple of shots of Hazel and emailed them to me. I haven't picked up my camera very much since I've gotten a bird and it's hard to do both at the same time.

When I got back from the Sky Trials I had to take my son to soccer and would be passing by the place where I had seen a bird that looked like the Baron. So I took the trap and took a look around after dropping off the boy. I saw the bird I was after and put the trap down. He flew to it and danced on it a little bit but didn't get caught. He wasn't on it very long when a car drove by and bumped him off. He wasn't interested in it after that so I picked it up and replaced it on the other side of him. After a couple of minutes he flew down toward the trap...and grabbed a wild mouse about 20 feet away from the trap. Just my luck. Well anyway, it served its purpose. He flew to the top of a telephone pole and ate his catch and because he was standing on the mouse to hold it down while he ate, he exposed his legs from foot to bloomers and there were no anklets. So that's that.

Friday I turned the starling trap back over to its owner. I have about 200 starlings in the freezer so don't really need to store more right now and am almost out of room in the little freezer. I shouldn't need any more baggies now anyway so my days of starling trapping are over for now. Thanks to the great guy who loaned it to me for the 2 months I had it. Maybe I'll build one next season and load up on starlings that way next year. It sure was great to be able to grab a baggie whenever I needed it.