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!

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.

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.