First Wild Kill!

     I was working on a photography project for school and had Bellatrix weathering. I turned around to peek at her and saw her eating something on the ground. Then she hopped back up to her block with it and finished it off. And - stupid me - I had a really nice camera hanging around my neck and didn't even thing to take a picture of her. I did manage to get a picture of a beetle leg dangling off her lower mandible. But I took her inside, since I was finished with my project, and set her on her screen perch in the dining room. She immediately fluffed herself out and started preening, she was so proud of her freaking beetle. The good news is, she hunts in captivity now and I think that means that training is almost over. I have a couple more quail to bag her on, then probably a few sparrows or starlings so she gets used to hunting what I intend to hunt her on. Not that I don't like her killing Coturnix quail, but I live in Idaho, not Japan.

You can see the beetle leg hanging off her lower mandible.

Here it is again.

Death From Above!

     I gave Bellatrix her first bagged game today. I used a coturnix quail where I normally use house sparrows, because the quail are larger than Bellatrix is and will discourage carrying as well as boost her ambitions. I'd love to be able to hunt wild quail and dove with her, and she could handle it as long as she let herself.

     The session went very well. I allowed her to drop a tiny bit below hunting weight, so she would have that extra motivation to take on the difficult prey. Normally she flies at 106.5g but I flew her at 105.7g today. I put her on the creance and started walking towards the quail. As soon as she saw it flapping around on the ground she was interested, but it took her a couple of minutes to actually take it on. She watched it intensely, and a couple of times she made like she was going to go after it. She finally dove from my fist, hit it, and bound to it. She struggled to control it, but eventually she landed on top and started plucking. There were no problems with me making-in; she didn't try to carry. She did mantle a little, but I don't mind that. I made in with a partially skinned mouse and she stood on her kill reaching towards the fist. She ate from the fist while standing on the quail, but eventually stepped off the quail and onto the fist. I let her eat the mouse while I plucked and opened the quail for her. She ended up eating the whole mouse and a good portion of breast meat from the quail. 

     Overall, her first bagged game went really really well. I don't have any pictures from the training session, but here ya go:

Bellatrix with a full crop.

The remaining two coturnix quail

Bellatrix, fat and happy after training.

Restart

It's been a while, to say the least.

     Here's this season's hunting partner. Her name is Bellatrix (raise ya hands Potterheads).She was absolutely amazing to watch hit the trap. I was actually going for a young male. I laid the trap out underneath him, but he was paying no attention. Suddenly the rest of the trapping party jumped and someone shouted "Wow!". I looked back at the trap to see her raining her fury upon my trap. I ran up to get her with my sponsor - side note, I'm a second year apprentice now... that feels weird - and I picked her up with the trap. Even when I had my hand around her she was still staring at the bait sparrow and trying to foot it. I was so excited to see her this tenacious! The top quality I wanted in a bird was to see her totally ready to annihilate the bait sparrow, and that's what Bellatrix did. To get her off the trap, I had to hold her and the Bal-Chatri while a comrade untangled her feet. She was caught on five or six different nooses! He untangled her feet and she tried to foot him while he did it. She was just fantastic. We hooded her and socked her; even all straightjacketed she shook every once-in-a-while to make sure that she was truly stuck and there was no way of getting out. It was amazing.
     She was super sweet back at home. She took the hood so easily; she regained the glove and perches after a bate so quickly and the was hopping to the fist on day two. On day three we found out why: she had frounce and she was starving. Luckily, a falconer friend happened to have to miracle powder that got rid of it in one dose, but this seriously set training back.
     We found several other complications with her resulting in the fist three weeks being a stress-free time for her. No training, no bating, no light unless she was eating. But finally, three weeks later, she was healthy.
     Her training is taking much longer than I expected. In part, it's because she's a later-trapped bird, she was sick for the first three weeks, and honestly it's partially because I'm scared to take her off the creance. I don't trust her well enough yet.
     The next step in training her is to bag her on game. She understands that she comes to me for food and the lure for meals, but she's reluctant to do so because she just wants to hunt. And I would be more than happy to hunt with her if I had a transmitter, but I won't be getting one for at least another month.
    So wish us luck. We wish you the same.

Me and Bellatrix after a couple hours of manning, Day 1.

Bellatrix in her tapping attire.

   

Bellatrix, just being plain beautiful.

The Difference Between Dreams and Goals

I've been chipping away slowly at my parents on a particular subject. That subject is me working with something other than a kestrel while I live under their roof. Anyone reading this whom doesn't have much of a connection to falconry needs to know that I stick out like a sore thumb in the falconry community. If you were to walk into an Idaho Falconer's Association meeting, you would see a bunch of 40+ year old men, three women falconers, and me: a fifteen-year-old girl. Yup, I am a peculiar child. Anyway, my sponsor- at twenty-two she is the next most peculiar person in the IFA -  set the terms of my apprenticeship as me working with american kestrels both years of my apprenticeship. I completely agree with her that this is the best way to complete my apprenticeship and become acquainted with falconry. So this fall I will be trapping another kestrel. I'm not sure if I want a male or female, but I am going to be a bit pickier when we are trapping this one. I want a more experienced bird; specifically, I want it to just nail the trap. I don't want to wait for it to find the trap, look from a distance, look a little closer, hover over it a bit, peer inside, wander around it a little, get scared away by a passing car, then have the process repeat a few hundred times before it's actually on the trap and stuck. I want a kestrel that just wants to destroy the sparrow inside the trap. Whether it's male or female, I don't care. It's name will be Fenoglio, from the Inkheart trilogy by Cornelia Funke.   To get a bird like this, I will likely have to wait until November to trap. But I'm going crazy without a bird and I may not make it that long.
But back to the story about chipping away at my parents. After the kestrel this season, I want to get a family group Cooper's Hawk. The thing about getting a Cooper's hawk is they are basically one of the hardest birds to maintain in captivity for falconry. They are high-strung and hard-wired to kill things, because they are an accipiter. They are also a lot bigger than kestrels, therefore by falconry facilities need to be completely replaced to accomodate this bird. And a Cooper's hawk would need a lot more of my time. All-in-all this is a big step, a step that my parents think should wait until I am out of the house. But I am chipping away at them ever so slowly, and I think they may just be worn down by the time next July rolls around and I am looking to trap a Cooper's hawk. Everybody cross your fingers...

Photo Cred: Walter Kitundu 

Technical Difficulties

I had some merging to do with my google accounts. I switched admins on the blog; it's still me, but I'm using a different google account now. But I lost all the pictures I had on here. There aren't very many people following this blog, so I won't bother re-posting all the pictures unless I get complaints. Have a nice day!

Falconry: from study to ... umm, what were we doing here again?

Time for another sporadic update.
A few days after the last post I free flew CeCe for the first time and it went great, but after four total weeks of working with her she was chased of by a pair of wild kestrels during anti carrying training.
My next kestrel was named Petrie, and he was so fantastic that I couldn't believe it. He was super good with people and loved me. It was because he was trapped as a fairly young bird compared to CeCe and he may have imprinted on me a bit. We wrapped up the season with 9 kills, all of them rodents, which was more than my sponsor had between her first two kestrels so I'm pretty happy. And his first kill - a vole - he got on my birthday. But as the season came to an end I was having less and less time to fly Petrie, and he, in result, was becoming more and more dependent on me. I was planning on another month or two with him, but his freeloading spirit got to me and I cut him loose one sunny morning after a week of fattening him up. I'll probably go more in-depth about my journey with him later, assuming I don't let another six months pass between posts again. But for now, some pictures from his release:

Removing the anklets

Eating a final meal

Still connected...

Last goodbye

Away he flew

Oh, Hi. I Totally Didn't See You There!

     So, ya know, sorry about the major lapse there.

     I have a kestrel now. Her name is CeCe. I'm almost ready to free fly her, but I'm still getting her "wed" to the lure. Her manning is going very well. I know that she knows how to kill a sparrow now. I don't think she did when we trapped her. Just getting her attached to the lure enough to free fly her.

     My sparrow trap got stolen, so I built another one but this one isn't working as well. Perfect timing since I will need baggies possibly as soon as wednesday.