Looking for Fenoglio

     Up before dawn, out just after first light. I'd spent the previous night tying tiny monofilament nooses. My fingers are now tuned to feel the tiny ticks and slips of thin strands. Two hours, and I'd hardly gotten fifteen nooses on the trap. Which is probably enough, but I feel the need to add more. This new line I got is fantastic and I'm convinced that it will snag any kestrel toes that touch it.
    I am wrong.
    The wind is blowing too hard and the weather progressively gets worse until leaving the car means getting a face full of stinging hail. The kestrels are all hiding from the wind, close to the ground. We find five males and two females that we can set up on, but none of them are prepared to leave their spots. The ones that do quickly lose interest in the trap and take off.
     The nooses I've tied are too large. They blow in the wind and deter the kestrels. The only thing we catch after two hours is a snag on a rock. The wind is bad and the Bal-Chatri needs work. The mice are freezing and huddle together instead of running around. All-in-all, it's time to go home.
    Fenoglio will live free for a few more days. I will clean the perches again and finish finals week.
    Then we will meet.
    Happy Hawking.

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.

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.

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.