Fecal Test, Free Flights, Bagged Game

     A lot's happened in the last week. My last post was me worrying about Petrie's bloody mutes. I got the fecal results back and they came back negative, so it looks like I went overboard on his weight reduction and shocked his kidneys. All is well, now. Petrie is healthy and acting fine.
     His training has been blowing by, since really, all of this is a refresher course. He's been pursuing the lure like a champ, so yesterday I free flew him for the first time on the lure and it went fantastically. The only thing that I wish would have happened, was I wish he would have taken a wider shot at the lure after missing it. He kept turning immediately after missing it without going out very far.
     But since that went so well, I bagged him on a tethered sparrow today. It also went very well. He hit the sparrow from a good distance away, and bound to it. He started working on it without any efforts to carry. He was quite nervous when I made in. Likely, it was because I did it too quickly and without giving him enough time to get comfortable on his catch. He did trade off of it very easily though. All in all, it was a very good flight.
     I'm trying to figure out what I'll do with him this week, because I have so much going on that I can't start hunting him yet, but I don't want to make him too comfortable on bagged game. I want to get him hunting ASAP, but I don't have the time yet. I'm thinking that I'll just split the week between lure flights and bagged game.
     Wish me luck! Happy Hunting!

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!

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.

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.

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