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

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.