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!

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.

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.

Anna's Collection of Pink and Squirming things

PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK, PINK.


Two of the three orphaned House Finches

     I got back from BYS yesterday and about ten minutes later my friend called and said, "Hey Anna, You like birds right? I found some little ones in Sister Fractman's lawn." They were pink. I have three pinky birds sleeping in a box next to me as I type this. And they are absolutely tiny! I thought they were hummingbirds for a minute. Now I think they're goldfinches. Those are pretty small and we have a few around here. I'm trying to find them a wildlife rehabber so that I won't kill them accidentally. But I really want to keep them now.




Breakfast's pregnant belly

     Breakfast the Mouse is definately pregnant, she's getting that "swallowed a golf ball" look. She'll probably deliver more pink and squirming things into my room before the month is up.


Yes it's upside down and
you can deal with it.

     While were speaking of mice, my dad and my brother found a wild mouse(?) under our truck topper that was lying in the lawn. When I got home my brother was gone and Dad said that it was in the plastic dog treat container in my room.
     Guess what? It wasn't.
     I spent about ten minutes basically tearing my room apart until I found my brother's note that said it was in the aquiarium above my typewriter. Now it's in the freezer; it should make two or three kestrel meals.
    

A New Aviary

     I caught my fifth house sparrow by way of funnel trap a couple of days ago. My family was waiting for me so that we could continue our nighttime rituals so I just put it in the aviary. After we finished our prayers, I took it out of the aviary and into the garage for euthanization. But it was in the wrong hand and I was wearing gloves so of course I had to switch hands.

     Guess what happened?

     I spent the next hour and a half chasing a house sparrow around the garage. Finally, around 11:00pm I set my trap in the garage and went to bed. I caught it today with the trap.

On a slightly related note:

     I have been a little worried about actually keeping up with a kestrel's food needs. I haven't been catching very many birds and, apparently, the bird won't be able to entirely provide for itself. I think I'll get feeder mice. $8 for a pair and they'll reproduce like crazy. I think that between that, the sparrows from the trap, and what the kestrel should catch I will be able to keep up with its diet.

Footnotes

A couple of nights ago, while reading from a Squidoo lens, falconry was opened to me. I had committed to being a falconer and to start apprenticing ASAP, but, due to my extreme stubbornness, there were some realities I refused to face. Most of those realities no longer need to be faced. I've added "How to Become a Falconer" the Squidoo lens to the helpful sites page. To anybody planning on being a falconer (or not) READ THIS!!

After realizing that this lens's explanation of falconry had saved my falconry-loving butt, I made a list of everything that I needed to get done in order to get ready for this... on my feet.

I have an explanation for this. If I write it on  paper, I know I'm gonna lose the paper. I can't write it on my hands because that's where I write my homework assignments from school. The next thing I think about are my feet. I wanted to have this list with me everywhere I went so that if I had a spare moment, I could get something done. I'm sorta planning on having my feet everywhere I go.