Plot Twist

     Today was going really well. I took Petrie outside to fly for the first time and his responses were dead-on. So I backed up a bit, then backed up some more, and really soon, he was making 40 and 50 foot flights to my fist (first outdoor flight). Ya, I was over the moon.
     About halfway through, a juvenile red-tailed hawk flew over my yard and scared Petrie, not because he made any effort to scare him, but just because he was big and scary. Petrie's response time sank like a rock. I started beefing up his rewards, because I had somewhere to be and it would get the session through quicker. Also, because I needed to feed him up a bit today because I noticed a new tail feather growing in.
     We finished the session; I was very proud of it. First outdoor flight, 40-50 foot flights, immediate responses until the red tail showed up. It was awesome.
     Less than a foot away from the door on our way back in the house, Petrie drops a mute with a big blood blot in the middle.
     Crap.
     Petrie is sick. With what, I'm not sure yet. Coccidiosis? Parasites? Internal bleeding? Impacted crop? I have no idea. He shows no other signs of sickness aside from loosing weight kinda slowly, but it's just on the slow side of healthy.
     I rain check on my place-to-be and message my sponsor with the pictures. She messages a falconer friend with the pics. His best guess is internal bleeding from something pointy that he swallowed, like a splintered bone.
     His next couple of mutes look healthy, and it's so late at night that there is nothing I can do until morning. So I put him in the giant hood with some fresh newspaper and make it late to place-to-be a bit late.
     I come back home around 9:30 at night. His mutes while I was gone look healthy. I put him on the scale and immediately he drops a big mute over the side. It's got two little crimson spots in it. So do the next two mutes. At this point it's so late that I can't contact my sponsor, so instead I hop on here to record my thoughts before they're all lost.
     Wish us luck...

The first bloody mute he dropped. 

Day 7

     We did indoor ten foot flight to the fist today. He was really paying attention and nearly immediate with his responses. I started hiding the tidbit in the glove, then handing it to him when he landed. This should cement the reward system with the glove and teach him to look forward to my approaching hand. It's already working. His response time didn't slow at all the first time I asked him to come without showing him a tidbit.
     He sits all puffed out all the time now, rouses, and preens. He'll sit with a foot tucked sometimes too, even on the fist. In fact, on the fist was the first time that he stood like that. He sleeps headless, too. He keeps at biting his jesses and bating, though. It's just because Petrie's a really high energy bird. I assume he will calm down once we really start flying. If not, walks in the morning and flights in the afternoon should keep him calm at home.
     He lets me touch his feet and tarsi now, and doesn't mind too much when I touch his sides. He looks for tidbits when he sees my bare hand coming.
     He doesn't take the hood really well yet, but I can get it on him. I may use his meal tomorrow to tidbit him during hood training. If not we will move outside. It depends on the weather tomorrow, because it's been rainy a bit lately.
     On a slightly unrelated note, I started drivers ed and will finally get my license in June next year. This will make falconry so much easier and up my chances of getting a cooper's hawk next July.
     Wish me luck, and happy hunting!

Paracord Jesses and Anti-Biting

     Petrie is taming down really well, but it seems that over the summer he learned to bite hard and not let go. So I've been working on that with him, as well as hopping to the fist.
     Normally, what I do to keep a bird from biting me is use some thing I've heard called the pencil trick. To do this, you need a pencil with an end that has been sharpened, but there is no lead poking out. What I did, was I took a sharpened pencil, broke the pointed lead off the tip, then sanded it a little so there were no jagged points. With this pencil, you rub the bird down. Rub the pencil tip against their feet, their keel, their crop, their wings, their back, and let them bite the pencil all they want. (Also, do this only with a freshly-trapped bird that hates you already. Doing this with a trained bird may jeopardize your relationship.) As they keep biting the pencil, their jaw will get sore and they will learn that biting things other than game sucks. After they've completely stopped biting the pencil even when you are still rubbing them with it, they are likely to be done biting for the day. (Another side note, they should have already eaten that day.) At this point, you can start touching them with your bare hand. Start at their feet, because they are least likely to be irritated by that, and slowly work your way up the tarsi to their keel, then their crop, then their back and wings. They may bite you a couple more times, so be prepared, but they will probably not. Rub them over with your fingers for a few minutes so they understand that you are not trying to hurt them. As you do this, they will see that there is no need to bite you.
     Petrie, on the other hand, has seen this trick before and is not falling for it. He's done biting the pencil, but he knows the difference between the pencil and my hand. Getting him to stop biting me is proving a challenge. So far, I've been able to touch his feet when we are outside and he is distracted, but I have to lay my hand on the glove for a few minutes and allow him to "accept" it, then I can slowly inch my way towards his toes. It's a very painstakingly slow and tedious process.
     The other biting problem is his jesses, which I think I've found a "cure" for. I was using leather jesses and he was tearing them apart, but tonight I made him some paracord jesses. I use a method similar to the one you see in this video by FalconersApprentice on Youtube. Instead of the plasti-dip he used on the knot of his jesses, however, I took a match to the whole knot for a few seconds, so the surface melted then hardened. In the end, there is a very hard knot with less specialized tools and products. I put these jesses on Petrie. I think that allowing him to bite the knot on the paracord jesses will have the same effect as the pencil trick and will teach him not to bite.
     Wish me luck! If all else fails, I expect he will calm down once I get him really flying.

Day 3

     Petrie is falling back into the swing of being a falconry bird. He hopped to the fist today! He jumped about 5 times from 6-18 inches inside at 100g.
     This is about the part where I start beating up on myself for letting this blog lapse the whole time I had Petrie last year. We had some of the greatest days last year, and I don't have them in this record.
     Our best hunting day last year, we'd just gotten permission to hunt on this local dairy farm. We were over there in a spot where they used to store hay bales, but they'd used them all at this point. There were still little clumps of hay lying around everywhere and a tarp crumpled and lying off to the side. And there were mice everywhere. These particular mice had gotten very good at hiding from predators in the little hay clumps and very bad at running, so when I flushed them, Petrie was on them in seconds. He caught 6 or 7 mice. I lost track; it was that good. Unfortunately, Petrie was good at carrying these small prey items, so he'd pick them up and head off with them. Fortunately, he was so lazy that he wouldn't want to bother breaking into them, so he'd just drop them and come back to me for easier food. After he'd caught several, I was chasing one down with him on my fist (more like following it because it was so fat and slow) and I tried to step right in front of it and make it double-back toward Petrie. But instead I accidentally stepped on its head. So, I just stuck it in the hawking bag.
     Anyway, here's the video of Petrie's first hop to the fist!

New Old Bird

     Petrie's back!
     I trapped him yesterday. It was amazing to watch. He's developed this serious stooping style of hunting. I watched him attack a magpie a couple of weeks ago and he repeatedly dive-bombed it with vertical stoops, then a sharp throw-up and a vertical climb, then he'd flip himself over and stoop again. He used this same tactic on the sparrow in the Bal-Chatri.
     He was on a powerline a ways up a loooong driveway. I dropped the BC about 15 feet up the driveway and he was probably another 45 feet from that. I (on my bike) pulled out of the driveway and around some bushes. He noticed the trap quickly, but waited for a couple of minutes to go for it. He swept in with a smooth glide from his spot on the line, then angled downward and made his first stoop. He stooped at it a few times, making U shapes in the air. Then he hovered about a foot over it, before bailing and going back to the line. He landed closer to the trap than he was at first, and after a couple of minutes he did the whole routine again. Stoop, climb, stoop, climb, stoop, climb, hover, bail. He landed just a few feet away on a fence post. There he waited for several minutes. He made one more try, only to land on another post after a short hover. Then quickly, he turned around and hit the trap. I watched until I saw his angry wings flapping around, then sped my bike over to collect him. It was fantastic.
     I got him to my house, where I weighed him and called my sponsor. He weighed 112.5 at trapping. The first time I trapped Petrie he weighed 100 on the dot. I have my doubts that this is Petrie, because anything could have happened since I released him last spring. But this bird looks about the right age, and I've never seen another kestrel in that field in all the time I've lived here. Still unsure, I refer to him as "Little King".
     I keep him hooded an socked until my sponsor gets to my house. We start to jess him up, but realize that she's forgotten her grommet setters at her house, and I don't have any. So we take Little King back to her house, where she's got her imprint male kestrel, Anakin. He churrups for food as soon as he sees us and Little King squirms in my hand.
     Anakin goes outside to weather and Monica and I get the anklets and jesses on this new bird. I unhood him there. He flaps and flails and bates, but tames down quickly and I soon realize that it is, in fact, Petrie. In the while that he's been a wild bird, he's learned to bite and not let go. He catches my finger and I have to pull his beak out, ripping my skin. Oh, well.
     Two hours later, he is standing fairly calmly on the fist and just starting to regain the glove after a bate. Monica has somewhere to be, so I hood him, which is no simple affair (like it used to be). He's convinced he's dead now, and won't stand upright, so he rides home laying on his back in my lap.
     We spend the rest of the day manning and hood training. He eats some sparrow from off the fist. I still refer to him as Little King, although I know that, yes, this is Petrie.
     I don't know if I'll let him go again.

Yes, I'm still here

     Hey, guys. Nothing's really been going on lately. My sponsor has been sick, so we haven't gone trapping again. I'm just living the birdless life. It sucks. I don't understand how normal people do this for years on end.
     I've been keeping an eye on Petrie. He's still in that field down the road from my house. Guess what that field will be this time next year. A subdivision. "Progress". I just don't have the words or motivation to explain my feelings towards this. Humankind is stupid in so many ways. I really want to trap Petrie, now.

Trapping

Today was the most problematic trapping experience I have ever had. I went out with my sponsor, Monica, early in the morning (though not as early as I would have liked). We drive out into the middle of nowhere and set out the trap for, what turns out to be, a haggard male kestrel. I pull him off the trap and he is banded, TWICE! We call in the bands, then turn him lose. Hop back in the car and, Guess what? The car won't start; the battery's got a problem. We call my dad and comes with jumper cables and gets us back on the road. But then we realize that neither one of us has out licensing on us. So we go back to my house to get my license. While we're there, dad takes a moment to fix up Monica's battery, just scraping some baking soda mess out of the connection. We head back out, but right as we turn the first corner from my house, the sparrow in the trap gets its head through a noose on the bal-chatri. I cut the line on the noose, but it's still around her neck. So I stupidly try to pull her out and get it off her neck. Then she slips out of the trap and is free in the car. We spend fifteen minutes trying to get her, but we can't. So we head to a local Zamzows and get a mouse. By now, we have less than an hour left to trap, and within that hour we get nothing. This is the first time that I've gone out trapping and not come home with my bird. We're headed out again Monday.
     On another note, I went to a dance tonight. I got out of the car and one of my friends points out a mouse running across the sidewalk. Guess what this little falconer girl does? Of course I catch it. It takes me a while, and I'm worried about the plague that's been out and about. I manage to step on it's tail, though, then thoracic compression it with my feet. So now I'm at a dance, with a dead vole, ten miles from my house and no ride. So I stick the mouse in the freezer that's conveniently in the building and go to the dance. I managed to smuggle it into my mom's car in a fast-food box. Oh, the crazy things us falconers do.

Trapping

     I'm going trapping on Friday; Bellatrix is gone. Yesterday I trapped a pretty female kestrel while I was out looking for Bellatrix. She was an interesting thing. The coloration on her head looked like a male, but the coloration on her tail and chest looked like a female. Her wings had blue and red in them. I knew she was a female, though, because she was hanging out with a male and she weighed in at 122g.

     I'm planning on retrapping Petrie, from last season. He's stuck around where I released him. But I don't always see him, and he's really good an feeding himself early in the mornings, so I don't know how likely it is that I'll get him. I won't stress it too much; retrapping him is just an idea. 

     If I don't get Petrie, I'm going after a passage. I just don't have the resources to keep a haggard. I can't get bag them enough to break the carrying habit, and I can't hunt them on starlings, because I can't drive. Also, I'm losing the season here, so I want to get hunting as soon as possible. 

     Wish me luck.

Lost (continued)

     I go out looking for Bellatrix again this morning. There Isn't much area to look in. I've already heavily checked the most likely places and found resident kestrels everywhere else. Still, I bike around for a few hours with my trap, mouse, lure, and hawking bag. Tomorrow, I vow, I will bring extra jesses. She's probably lost her's by now. But she's no where to be seen, so I don't need them today.
     Finally, I don't know where else to look. I sit on the side of the street for ten minutes trying to decide where to go looking for her. I've checked everywhere, some places multiple times. I can't station myself somewhere and whistle for her; she's not that responsive. If I get her back, it will be because I happened to end up within 50 feet of her and she happened to be hungry. But I have four square miles - which she's not even guaranteed to be in. If I do happen to find her, she's probably wild enough now to ignore me completely.
     I suppose that's why I have the trap, though. Hopefully she won't mind watching me set it out.
     It all suddenly seems hopeless.
     So I bike in the opposite direction from where she's likely to be. Petrie's there in his field, hunting. I watch him, try to call him down to the lure - he was rather fantastic at chasing it. But he's been wild for months now so he pays no attention.
     Seagulls chase him off, but he comes back out a minute later. He hovers over the field, stoops, rises again. I watch him antagonize a magpie, trying to decide if he wants it dead or gone. He swings over to the power line in the property owner's long driveway and I speed my way to him. I try to lay out the Bal-Chatri below him, but he pays no attention. I go to move it closer to him, but he's having none of it and my next peak at his spot shows an empty wire.
     I put my trap back in the basket on my bike, then take a moment with the horse that lives in Petrie's field. He's a gorgeous black Clydesdale that's taken a liking to me. I've heard his name is Jack, but I've never spoken to his owners, so I'm not completely sure.
     I bike out of the driveway and back to the side of the road. Petrie is still hunting. I watch his stoops and almost walk out into the field to set my trap, but there is construction going on to the side of the field and they'd call the police on my trespassing.
     Petrie catches a mouse. He flies up to my stretch of power line to eat it. I set out my bal-chatri, but I know it's useless. Petrie spooks and flies off to an island of trees standing out in the flat acreage to finish his meal in peace.
     I sit with Jack for a while longer, but eventually I realize that it's 11:45 and I promised myself I'd be back home by noon to do my schoolwork. So I leave.

Lost

     I walk with Bellatrix to the park today for our training session, in hopes that she will learn to be responsive in places other than my backyard, even though I know there is a wild male kestrel that lives in the park. He doesn't normally have the guts to get close enough to cause problems so I ignore his presence (mistake 1). We start with a couple of flights to the fist on the creance so that I can see how responsive she is. She hesitates a bit, but I free fly her anyway (mistake 2). I tell myself that I'm doing so because she's more responsive to the lure than the glove, but really it's because free flying her is so exhilarating. She takes her spot in a nearby tree and I call her to the lure. I drag it a little, but the movement spooks her and she swoops over to a fence. 

     The wild male calls overhead and takes his spot in the tree. 

     I swing, then drop the lure again, whistling for Bellatrix. She comes quicker than I expected, but that is a very good thing. She bates with it immediately, and I completely understand why. I make in to her as soon as I can to ease her discomfort. She eats her reward, the back half of a mouse, while I tid-bit her occasionally. I trade her off and set her loose again, completely forgetting the wild male (mistake 3). 

     She swings up into the tree and is immediately taken after by the wild male. He takes the style of a gyrfalcon, repeated swooping passes from one direction then the other. Bellatrix screams at him and dives from the tree, making a low-altitude escape. But the wild male comes in and grabs her. She screeches and dashes over the rooftops; he lands on the nearest house to watch her leave. I mistake him for her and pause for a moment before chasing after my bird. She's quite some distance away now, but I see where she's going. 

     I sprint in the same direction, pausing in any open areas I can to throw the lure around a few times. A car pulls up to the edge of the empty lot I'm in and watches me. I try to decide if I should stay or go; they probably think I'm a nutcase (not an entirely false accusation). They pull away and I decide to go home and get the car. 

     Mom drives me around to a few different fields where she might have gone. I look for any stand of trees in the direction Bellatrix took that she may have hidden in. No luck, she won't be found. 

     I decide to go home. I have work to do and Bellatrix is not going to move in the circumstances. She's stressed, not super hungry, and possibly injured.

     I beat myself up for all the mistakes. She has no bells on because she chipped her beak biting them and I took them off. She has no transmitter on because I won't be getting it in the mail for another few weeks. She's not wed to the lure or even remotely fond of me. 

     I go out again on my bike later that day, when she will be hungrier. I check the most highly suspect areas. The locals are very accommodating and I'm allowed onto three promising properties. I check every tree, swinging the lure and laying the trap, but she it not there. I cross the rather large portion of land off my mental map. 

     Dad comes to collect me; we're going to my grandma's for dinner. 

     Bellatrix is staying out overnight.  

   

Free Flying Videos

     Today we had our first free flying mishap. I put bells on Bellatrix today and she's getting used to them. I unhooked her from the creance intending to do a couple of flights to the fist and a lure flight. I took her first jess out of her anklet then tried to get the second jess and she flew off. She landed in a nearby tree and started watching. I decided to cut right to the lure flight. She was quite hesitant, probably for a number of reasons including the bells, being on a different perch, maybe being reminded that she is a wild bird, or having to come down to the lure. She waited for a while, then came to the lure from probably 50 or 60 feet away. She bound to the lure and started mantling, then made her killy-killy call, which made me really happy. She let me make-in with no problems and she ate her reward from the lure on the fist while I tidbitted her intermittently.
     Tomorrow I plan to do two lure flights and really wed her to the lure. Then I may be able to free fly her on the last coturnix quail I have. But I won't be able to hunt her until I've bagged her on a couple of sparrows or starlings and practice making-in when she's on a smaller, more portable kill.

First Free Flight

     I free flew Bellatrix for the first time today. It was super nerve-wracking. We started on the creance doing 40+ foot flights to the fist. She was coming immediately at 108g, which is a little higher than normal but she was acting hungry enough to fly. I set her up on the shed for a couple of flights so she had to come down to the fist. She was hesitant, but she did it twice. The third time she went onto the peak of the shed and didn't pay me any attention, so I used the creance to slide her off. She landed on the ground then came to the fist from there. We did a few more 40ft flights from the training perch and she was doing really really well, so I started thinking about free flights. \ I've been super nervous to free fly her because sometimes she just tries to fly off, but this time she was returning consistently to the training perch, so I held my breath and unclipped her jesses. I set her on the training perch, then slowly stood up and slipped about 20 feet away. Tidbit, glove up, whistle. She came immediately. I only had three more tidbits left, but they were smaller so I piled them all up on the glove and called her again. She was immediate and ate calmly while I clipped her back onto the glove.
     Now shes sitting on the screen perch all fluffed up and one-footed with one eye closed, so I'd say it went really well.

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.