I'll most likely pick up a kestrel this coming winter but will leave the Cooper's hawk for a time when my life is a little less stressful.
A few parting shots... Adios!
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
A Hard Decision
The last few weeks I've noticed I'm not handling some of my normal life stressors very well. Was wondering why those issues were seeming to get worse. My wife pointed out that she didn't notice them getting worse but had noticed my ability to handle them was getting worse. So we put two and two together and it equals Ember. The amount of extra stress this bird adds is just enough to put me over my limit. Given that my normal stressors can't be given away and this is supposed to be a fun hobby, I made the decision to transfer Ember to another falconer. I with them both good luck and maybe I'll be able to tag along with them on a hunt once he's trained up.
I'll most likely pick up a kestrel this coming winter but will leave the Cooper's hawk for a time when my life is a little less stressful.
A few parting shots... Adios!
I'll most likely pick up a kestrel this coming winter but will leave the Cooper's hawk for a time when my life is a little less stressful.
A few parting shots... Adios!
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Ember
When thinking about names I kept having fire come to mind. I saw a car last week with a fire fighter symbol license plate and the license was EMBER. That stuck in my head so Ember it is.
He has lost most of his fluff and his tail is almost fully grown. He is showing three black bars and the fourth will be coming very soon. His tail was looking kind of grimy and gross, kind of like a teenage boy's hair when they don't shower often. Yeah. So recently while feeding him out in the yard I brought a pan of water and set him in it after he was done eating. He started drinking and dipping his bum in the water pretty quickly. He didn't take a full bath but he sure did want his bum clean. He dried off in the sun afterward and now his tail looks gorgeous. I'll be making the bath a regular meal time event for him. My kestrels never touched the water, but then I was working with them mostly in the winter so perhaps they would have taken it if it wasn't so cold.
My main focus with Ember now is to get him completely comfortable eating on my glove. Each meal is loaded onto the lure and I present the lure to him while he's on a perch in the yard. He jumps right to it and after a minute I pick the lure up with him on it and sit in a chair while he eats his meal. If I'm quiet and don't move around a lot he's fairly content. But if I talk to him while he is eating he chirps at me (which sounds cute but really is the equivalent of "Don't annoy me").
I recently gave him a whole thawed starling to give him the chance to pluck and tear into it himself. He did well and knows the drill so that's checked off the list. Bella thought it was very interesting and came over to watch. She's usually afraid of the birds because they can make a lot of fuss some times. But she couldn't resist the interesting smells I guess. Ember didn't have a problem with her being there either.
One thing I should document for future is how to avoid tangled jesses. He has longer jesses on while he's still in training so it's easier to handle him, but he gets tangled in them easily. They wrap around his legs and it's just a mess. My friend told me to get a piece of tubing and slide it up the jesses to pull them together so they are "shorter" though they still retain the length. So instead of the jesses making a V shape from each anklet to the clip, it's a Y shape. The shorter free ends make it so he doesn't get tangled and the swivel doesn't bounce in between his jesses and get tangled up as easily. The piece of tubing I used was three inches of the straw from my boss's Dr. Pepper. How's that for cheap ingenuity?
He has lost most of his fluff and his tail is almost fully grown. He is showing three black bars and the fourth will be coming very soon. His tail was looking kind of grimy and gross, kind of like a teenage boy's hair when they don't shower often. Yeah. So recently while feeding him out in the yard I brought a pan of water and set him in it after he was done eating. He started drinking and dipping his bum in the water pretty quickly. He didn't take a full bath but he sure did want his bum clean. He dried off in the sun afterward and now his tail looks gorgeous. I'll be making the bath a regular meal time event for him. My kestrels never touched the water, but then I was working with them mostly in the winter so perhaps they would have taken it if it wasn't so cold.
My main focus with Ember now is to get him completely comfortable eating on my glove. Each meal is loaded onto the lure and I present the lure to him while he's on a perch in the yard. He jumps right to it and after a minute I pick the lure up with him on it and sit in a chair while he eats his meal. If I'm quiet and don't move around a lot he's fairly content. But if I talk to him while he is eating he chirps at me (which sounds cute but really is the equivalent of "Don't annoy me").
I recently gave him a whole thawed starling to give him the chance to pluck and tear into it himself. He did well and knows the drill so that's checked off the list. Bella thought it was very interesting and came over to watch. She's usually afraid of the birds because they can make a lot of fuss some times. But she couldn't resist the interesting smells I guess. Ember didn't have a problem with her being there either.
One thing I should document for future is how to avoid tangled jesses. He has longer jesses on while he's still in training so it's easier to handle him, but he gets tangled in them easily. They wrap around his legs and it's just a mess. My friend told me to get a piece of tubing and slide it up the jesses to pull them together so they are "shorter" though they still retain the length. So instead of the jesses making a V shape from each anklet to the clip, it's a Y shape. The shorter free ends make it so he doesn't get tangled and the swivel doesn't bounce in between his jesses and get tangled up as easily. The piece of tubing I used was three inches of the straw from my boss's Dr. Pepper. How's that for cheap ingenuity?
Sunday, July 7, 2013
A late taken Cooper's hawk
Last Tuesday I headed out with my son and another of my sponsor's apprentices to collect a bird. I attached my ladder to a backpack (it folds into a 3 foot bundle) and we hiked to the nest location. It took us a while to find the tree again. I got us quite a ways off track so we just dropped our gear and worked our way around until we found the nest, then went back for the gear. This time the mother wasn't as aggressive with us, probably since there were 3 of us there.
We looked up into the nest and found 4 faces looking back down at us. The unhatched 5th egg I mentioned in the last post would have made 5. One of them was standing tall and a little higher than the others. He had the least fuzz on his head so we figured he'd be the one we ended up taking.
We set up the ladder and up went our agile friend to retrieve. After the ladder climb he went up maybe another 8 feet and the eyas (baby raptor) that was standing decided he'd had enough and he bailed out of the nest and into a branch about 8 feet from the trunk. (None of the other birds jumped since we didn't approach the nest any further.) Our climber wiggled the branch a bit and he jumped again, this time a little closer and on a separate tree that was very narrow. This turned out great because he was able to grab the tree and bend it toward him and grab the limb the bird was on. He got him by one leg and then the bird got him by the hand. Good trade. :) He had gloves on but not leather. He finally got him off the branch, still gripping a 4 inch twig and the glove and we tried to put him into the carrier. He had to slip the glove off and let the bird keep it, along with his twig. We packed up and headed home, got anklets on him and fed him a quick meal to top off what he had in him.
The next day was spent trying to find big cardboard boxes. We found a lot of boxes but none the size I needed (close to 3 feet square). We finally found a guy who had a box that a couch had come in. I took that home and cut out my own box pattern and taped it together 32" square. It has a couple of windows in it to let the bird see the family's activities and get used to people without being out on a perch. The perch would require that I restrain it and there's more chance of him damaging feathers that are still growing that way than being loose in the box.
The next day was the 4th of July and we packed the box in to Grandma's to hang out with us on the patio for BBQ and fireworks. What an introduction to people he had!
After a lot of headache trying to get him to eat food dropped into the box for him, my sponsor decided we should get jesses on him and feed him on the glove. I got jesses on him that night with the help of my patient wife and the next morning fed him on the glove. He wouldn't take food at his beak but when I tickled his toes with it he would bend down and rip at it and he finally got the idea and ate well. The next meal I gave him by dropping it into his box onto his perch and he ate it by himself. There have been no feeding issues since then. Now it's just making sure he has a good amount twice a day until his feathers grow out completely.
The jesses are attached to an extender and then to a short leash. The leash isn't tied to anything so he doesn't get too tangled but it's easy enough to grab the end of it when I go to pick him up. He's not the easiest bird to pick up because of the size of the box. I have to lean down into it and that makes him nervous. If he is calm enough I can put my hand down and try to back him on to it or he'll foot it (grab it with his foot to attack it) and since he has a hold of it I lift him up.
No name yet. I haven't given it a moment's thought. I may wait until he's at the stage where I am working with him more and see his personality and progress.
We looked up into the nest and found 4 faces looking back down at us. The unhatched 5th egg I mentioned in the last post would have made 5. One of them was standing tall and a little higher than the others. He had the least fuzz on his head so we figured he'd be the one we ended up taking.
We set up the ladder and up went our agile friend to retrieve. After the ladder climb he went up maybe another 8 feet and the eyas (baby raptor) that was standing decided he'd had enough and he bailed out of the nest and into a branch about 8 feet from the trunk. (None of the other birds jumped since we didn't approach the nest any further.) Our climber wiggled the branch a bit and he jumped again, this time a little closer and on a separate tree that was very narrow. This turned out great because he was able to grab the tree and bend it toward him and grab the limb the bird was on. He got him by one leg and then the bird got him by the hand. Good trade. :) He had gloves on but not leather. He finally got him off the branch, still gripping a 4 inch twig and the glove and we tried to put him into the carrier. He had to slip the glove off and let the bird keep it, along with his twig. We packed up and headed home, got anklets on him and fed him a quick meal to top off what he had in him.
The next day was the 4th of July and we packed the box in to Grandma's to hang out with us on the patio for BBQ and fireworks. What an introduction to people he had!
After a lot of headache trying to get him to eat food dropped into the box for him, my sponsor decided we should get jesses on him and feed him on the glove. I got jesses on him that night with the help of my patient wife and the next morning fed him on the glove. He wouldn't take food at his beak but when I tickled his toes with it he would bend down and rip at it and he finally got the idea and ate well. The next meal I gave him by dropping it into his box onto his perch and he ate it by himself. There have been no feeding issues since then. Now it's just making sure he has a good amount twice a day until his feathers grow out completely.
The jesses are attached to an extender and then to a short leash. The leash isn't tied to anything so he doesn't get too tangled but it's easy enough to grab the end of it when I go to pick him up. He's not the easiest bird to pick up because of the size of the box. I have to lean down into it and that makes him nervous. If he is calm enough I can put my hand down and try to back him on to it or he'll foot it (grab it with his foot to attack it) and since he has a hold of it I lift him up.
No name yet. I haven't given it a moment's thought. I may wait until he's at the stage where I am working with him more and see his personality and progress.
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