Looking Forward Without Moving On

It's been a month and a half since I found out Petrie was dead. It feels like longer. Nevertheless, I have my apprenticeship to finish, so I've been keeping my eyes open for passage birds in the area.

I wasn't legal to trap until now (nor did I want to), because I'd trapped my 2 birds in 2015. But now it's 2016 and I can trap again.

Here are my options:

1) Misty. She roosts in my neighbors porch and is just the most beautiful female I have ever laid eyes on. The coloration on her chest isn't just brown on white, but black on brown on white which makes for a very beautiful muddled hot cocoa and marshmallows look. I think she's a haggard, but I find that I really like the gusto haggards have.

2) Luke. He lives in the local park and he is a butt. He is the reason I can't train my birds in the local park, or really anywhere near my house because he's claimed such a freaking huge territory. Really, I'm not too enthusiastic about him, but hunting with him would mean that I might finally be able to train in the park. Up until I let him go.

3) Fenoglio. The wild passage I have yet to meet. Really, I only have a few months left of the season to fly a bird, and a passage would mean less training time and more hunting time. This is probably the best choice for my situation, but Misty might have just captured my heart.

I don't really know what I'll do. What I do know is that I need to order some BioThane for making anklets. Luckily, this teenager finally found a suitable job.

And, while I've got your attention, I might as well tell you my plans for next season, because they're one of the few things that help me look forward to life after Petrie. The Cooper's hawk is not an option because my parents are not comfortable with an accipiter in the house. But, I will be moving up to a merlin. I'm planning on trapping a female Columbarius (the ones here are black as black comes) and hunting her on doves by waiting on. Maybe at some starling flocks too, depending on the season and what she takes to.

And I've finally got my telemetry, so things will go better now. No more losing birds.

I'm Back, But Petrie Isn't

This is about to get personal, dramatic, and a little religious, so there's your warning.

This whole season, I've had what I would describe as "a rock in my stomach" about falconry. I love falconry. You should know this by now. I can't fully describe the love that I have for this sport. I am in this for life. But I've had this feeling, like God was letting me know that falconry wasn't a good idea this year.

Now, I'm only a second year apprentice. I can't just skip a year. That's skipping half of my apprenticeship. And even if I could skip a year, there is not a single thing on the earth that would have convinced me to do so.

So, I got my bird; Bellatrix.

Then I lost my bird.

Then I got another bird; Petrie. I worked with Petrie. He was the most perfect bird I could ever hope for, but I couldn't provide enough game for him. That's the reason I let him go at the end of the season. I didn't want him to become dependent on me and end up unreleasable. But letting him spend a summer as a wild bird was exactly what he needed, and he was going to be perfect this season.

We started free flying and he was ready for hunting, but I had things going on that week, so we couldn't hunt quite yet.

On Tuesday, I started getting ready for our outing. We were going to go for a walk through the subdivision so he could get a lesson on following. This is where the bird is released completely and expected to move from perch to perch or in a soar and follow the falconer. Petrie was very good at this last year.

But I had a bad feeling.

So I took my time getting out of the house. I found my good boots. I did my hair. I put on my makeup. I did all the stupid little things I could to postpone our outing that day.

Then we went out, and Petrie was being perfect. He followed me like he hadn't gone anywhere over the summer. He hopped from rooftop to rooftop with little prompting.

Then a wild female came in. I didn't scream at her because I didn't want to freak out the neighbors on their porches, mistake number one.

Petrie ran from her and hid in a tree; her tree. She knocked him right out of it and the two tumbled to the ground. One stood on top of the other, but I couldn't tell which. There was a fence between us, that I should have just vaulted, but I didn't because I spent too many extra seconds worried about my bird and trespassing, mistake number two.

Finally, the two untangled themselves and Petrie took flight over my head. I frantically threw the lure out, even though there was nothing on it, mistake number three. He went for it, then skyed-up at the last moment. She chased him into another kestrel's territory and he chased him into another's until they were too far away for me to even know what to do. I can't drive and no one was home to drive me.

So I went home and cried. And as soon as people got home, they took me to a rehearsal I had for a play I didn't enjoy, that took up all my time. Mistake number four was going to rehearsals. I should have just dropped out. I knew I wasn't going to enjoy it and I knew that it was going to take up my time. And I let it.

Mistake number five was letting other things take up my search time.

Mistake number six was flying him in those oversized jesses.

Mistake number seven was not telling anyone but my sponsor.

Mistake number eight was thinking he would be okay.

A week later I had a borderline panic attack at 10 pm. I vowed to myself that I would go searching for him the next morning and only come back when I had him.

Mistake number nine was letting my mom convince me that she needed my help Christmas shopping. Even if I didn't go with her, though, I wouldn't be able to search half as well without the car. So mistake number nine was also letting myself wait till the next day.

That morning, someone found him dead in their pool.

That afternoon I picked up his body at their house.

That night I buried him.

I can't describe the rest of that week deeply enough. Petrie was dead and it's because I couldn't accept that I wasn't supposed to do falconry this season. I just wasn't.

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!

Fecal Test

     Petrie was getting better for a while. There was less blood in his mutes and he was still acting like he was just fine. But this morning he started losing weight so freaking fast I though I must've messed up on his wight or something. He's losing twice as fast as he normally is. He nearly quit responding to me in the middle of training today, too. He was flying to my fist at 40 feet, dead on immediate. Then he just froze.
     I'm starting to get really, really worried. He was getting better, then he just tanked. I took a mute sample to the vet this afternoon, but there was barely any fecal matter to it. I don't think it's going to work. I don't think they'll be able to draw any conclusions from it at all. But it's already off, because the secretaries seemed confident enough that I couldn't talk myself out of it. I paid $40 for the test, but if it's inconclusive I don't get a refund. Doing this off of babysitting money means that wasting $40 is a huge deal.
     I'm starting to think it's Coccidiosis, but there are a billion other things it could be. It may be a bone shard in his guts, or a parasite, or I may have taken his weight reduction too far. I just really hope these results come back with some sort of conclusion. Preforably, a conclusion that will be quick and easy to deal with.
     Wish us luck!

Plot Twist

     Today was going really well. I took Petrie outside to fly for the first time and his responses were dead-on. So I backed up a bit, then backed up some more, and really soon, he was making 40 and 50 foot flights to my fist (first outdoor flight). Ya, I was over the moon.
     About halfway through, a juvenile red-tailed hawk flew over my yard and scared Petrie, not because he made any effort to scare him, but just because he was big and scary. Petrie's response time sank like a rock. I started beefing up his rewards, because I had somewhere to be and it would get the session through quicker. Also, because I needed to feed him up a bit today because I noticed a new tail feather growing in.
     We finished the session; I was very proud of it. First outdoor flight, 40-50 foot flights, immediate responses until the red tail showed up. It was awesome.
     Less than a foot away from the door on our way back in the house, Petrie drops a mute with a big blood blot in the middle.
     Crap.
     Petrie is sick. With what, I'm not sure yet. Coccidiosis? Parasites? Internal bleeding? Impacted crop? I have no idea. He shows no other signs of sickness aside from loosing weight kinda slowly, but it's just on the slow side of healthy.
     I rain check on my place-to-be and message my sponsor with the pictures. She messages a falconer friend with the pics. His best guess is internal bleeding from something pointy that he swallowed, like a splintered bone.
     His next couple of mutes look healthy, and it's so late at night that there is nothing I can do until morning. So I put him in the giant hood with some fresh newspaper and make it late to place-to-be a bit late.
     I come back home around 9:30 at night. His mutes while I was gone look healthy. I put him on the scale and immediately he drops a big mute over the side. It's got two little crimson spots in it. So do the next two mutes. At this point it's so late that I can't contact my sponsor, so instead I hop on here to record my thoughts before they're all lost.
     Wish us luck...

The first bloody mute he dropped. 

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!

Paracord Jesses and Anti-Biting

     Petrie is taming down really well, but it seems that over the summer he learned to bite hard and not let go. So I've been working on that with him, as well as hopping to the fist.
     Normally, what I do to keep a bird from biting me is use some thing I've heard called the pencil trick. To do this, you need a pencil with an end that has been sharpened, but there is no lead poking out. What I did, was I took a sharpened pencil, broke the pointed lead off the tip, then sanded it a little so there were no jagged points. With this pencil, you rub the bird down. Rub the pencil tip against their feet, their keel, their crop, their wings, their back, and let them bite the pencil all they want. (Also, do this only with a freshly-trapped bird that hates you already. Doing this with a trained bird may jeopardize your relationship.) As they keep biting the pencil, their jaw will get sore and they will learn that biting things other than game sucks. After they've completely stopped biting the pencil even when you are still rubbing them with it, they are likely to be done biting for the day. (Another side note, they should have already eaten that day.) At this point, you can start touching them with your bare hand. Start at their feet, because they are least likely to be irritated by that, and slowly work your way up the tarsi to their keel, then their crop, then their back and wings. They may bite you a couple more times, so be prepared, but they will probably not. Rub them over with your fingers for a few minutes so they understand that you are not trying to hurt them. As you do this, they will see that there is no need to bite you.
     Petrie, on the other hand, has seen this trick before and is not falling for it. He's done biting the pencil, but he knows the difference between the pencil and my hand. Getting him to stop biting me is proving a challenge. So far, I've been able to touch his feet when we are outside and he is distracted, but I have to lay my hand on the glove for a few minutes and allow him to "accept" it, then I can slowly inch my way towards his toes. It's a very painstakingly slow and tedious process.
     The other biting problem is his jesses, which I think I've found a "cure" for. I was using leather jesses and he was tearing them apart, but tonight I made him some paracord jesses. I use a method similar to the one you see in this video by FalconersApprentice on Youtube. Instead of the plasti-dip he used on the knot of his jesses, however, I took a match to the whole knot for a few seconds, so the surface melted then hardened. In the end, there is a very hard knot with less specialized tools and products. I put these jesses on Petrie. I think that allowing him to bite the knot on the paracord jesses will have the same effect as the pencil trick and will teach him not to bite.
     Wish me luck! If all else fails, I expect he will calm down once I get him really flying.

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!

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.

Yes, I'm still here

     Hey, guys. Nothing's really been going on lately. My sponsor has been sick, so we haven't gone trapping again. I'm just living the birdless life. It sucks. I don't understand how normal people do this for years on end.
     I've been keeping an eye on Petrie. He's still in that field down the road from my house. Guess what that field will be this time next year. A subdivision. "Progress". I just don't have the words or motivation to explain my feelings towards this. Humankind is stupid in so many ways. I really want to trap Petrie, now.

Trapping

     I'm going trapping on Friday; Bellatrix is gone. Yesterday I trapped a pretty female kestrel while I was out looking for Bellatrix. She was an interesting thing. The coloration on her head looked like a male, but the coloration on her tail and chest looked like a female. Her wings had blue and red in them. I knew she was a female, though, because she was hanging out with a male and she weighed in at 122g.

     I'm planning on retrapping Petrie, from last season. He's stuck around where I released him. But I don't always see him, and he's really good an feeding himself early in the mornings, so I don't know how likely it is that I'll get him. I won't stress it too much; retrapping him is just an idea. 

     If I don't get Petrie, I'm going after a passage. I just don't have the resources to keep a haggard. I can't get bag them enough to break the carrying habit, and I can't hunt them on starlings, because I can't drive. Also, I'm losing the season here, so I want to get hunting as soon as possible. 

     Wish me luck.

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.

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