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:
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| Removing the anklets |
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| Eating a final meal |
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| Still connected... |
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| Last goodbye |
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| Away he flew |
