A Great Day In a Wet Way

Had to brave the cold and go for a minor swim, twice.  The things I'll do to help these falcons.....

And Boom Goes the Dynamite

After my last post about the Gyr, I was sliding into acceptance that this falcon was just "being a Gyr" as some of the old timers have implied about them.  However, my brain finally put together something that I was missing.  Pulling off of ducks while stooping, raking feathers off their backs, not stooping....All signs of too fat.  After a miss one morning last week where he should have easily knocked a Ringbill out but instead just knocked a few feathers loose.  I called him down to the lure for nothing, took him home and put him on the block.  Something I would do for most falcons that I assumed were overweight but somehow I had convinced myself that this bird was at the "perfect" weight.  Later that afternoon the bird was nearly an ounce lower than I had ever had him before and I went out in search of another slip.

Located the ducks, put him up, and lo and behold he blasted off the fist with a ton of energy, ate up the sky, and at about 800' I flushed for him.

No screwing around this time! Teardrop stoop, fell in a little behind an unlucky Gadwall and without loosing an ounce of speed, cut through the ducks wing, smashing the bone inside.  There wasn't much of a wingover, more like a quick pit stop on the ground just past his target, followed by the falcon springing back in the other direction to get to eating. 

I had this bird's weight today at nearly 100 grams lower than I started flying him last year and he didn't loose an ounce of energy.  In fact having a little more edge on him seem to motivate him more to really show what he is capable of doing.

Two days later he was back to weight and ready for more.  I found a pond with 3 Mallards on it, he had blinked these larger ducks in the past but being that he was at his new better weight my confidence that he would take a shot at these was much higher.

Again he took off with a new-found determination and began to mount.  And mount he did, after a brief check over the pond, he turned into the wind and took a long run out.  When he returned he was well over 1000' in the air.  Just a dot to the naked eye.  I allowed him to make one more run over the pond and as he turned and made his way up wind, I flushed. 

I could hear the "sizzzzzzzzzzzzwhouuuu" from way up and I knew that the velocity he was bringing was going to end violently.  After several long seconds, the end came, and I instantly got that sick to my stomach feeling that one gets when seeing a football player get hit and go instantly limp.  The Gyr hit the duck hard and literally bounced off and to the side.  The duck never moved after hitting the ground.  I gathered myself and ran over to the point of impact where I found the duck laying on its side with a compound fracture to the wing and saw Mongo sitting about 20 feet away, leaning back on his tail staring into the sky.

This instantly brought back memories of my black hybrid, Rhythm, and one of my first few blog posts.  Rhythm hit his last duck hard, killing it instantly, but in the process caused himself terminal damage and he died several hours later.  The necropsy showed that he had ruptured his pancreas in the impact.

I picked up the duck and tossed it in front of Mongo.  The falcon just looked at it for a couple of minutes while still acting dazed but eventually did snap out of it and began to pluck feathers from his prey.  After another flew minutes he was back to his old imprint self.  I set him up for a picture and then took him home to put over his crop and relax.  I think I'm gonna give him a couple of days off just to be sure. The amount of force these falcons can endure and survive (most of the time) is simply amazing.

I'm definitely more excited about the future with this bird.  And to think a little over 20 grams made all this difference...

-RVZ

Soaring To New Heights

I've had and seen some high flights in the past week or so.  Wednesday, I was in T-town running some errands and found a few minutes to meet up with Jonathan and his Red-tail of the year.  He was already out in the field when I arrived and was working some cover.  Shortly after we exchanged pleasantries the hawk took off from his perch and kinda half-heatedly chased something for a few seconds.  Instead of landing, the bird found himself in a thermal and since it was a calm, warm day, decided to ride that thermal up several hundred feet.  Jonathan and I causally watched the bird circle higher and higher for several minutes.  As the bird reached what I would call 500' or so, I mentioned, "aren't ya gonna get him focused a little more this way?"  Jonathan agreed that maybe it was time and as he reached for the lure in his bag a cottontail flushed from grass in between us.  The hawk saw this right way and turned his attention back in front of us.  He glided on over into position, keeping up at his same height, and when the moment seemed right, did his best falcon impression stooping toward the ground while gaining a ton of speed.  After the silent rush of the bird shooting past us we heard crashing of cover and the the squeal of success.  One amazing bunny catch.  I've had Red-tails that soared in the past but, 100'-200' tops.  This flight would have been respectable for a falcon!  Jonathan does it again....there is no such thing as a dud Red-tail in his hands!  The proof is in his continued success from year to year and from bird to bird.

This morning I got out with the Gyrkin for a little training flight, being that the duck season is closed until the 10th.  He took off from the fist as he normally would, took his run out, and started to climb.  And climb he did.  After just a couple of minutes he was touching the clouds.  Conservatively I would guess 1500' but experience and by my gut feeling he was pushing 2000' easily.  I could really only see him through binoculars.  When he came over heard I served him, but instead of coming down he started to drift off to the west and began a monster stoop to what I knew was a lake full of geese.....

This bird will just not leave geese alone.  He's taken a few to the ground, raked a few, and chased a bunch, but has never been rewarded for these efforts.  I figured he would grow out of it with time but that is not the case.  Ended up being a 40 minute telemetry hunt.  He really wasn't that far away, but was on the ground on the edge of a pond, which is a pretty common place for him to sit after missing on a stoop.  As I walked up to get him the geese flushed again and again he chased but only for a few minutes this time before he made his way back to me for the lure.  

This bird still acts like a first year Hybrid in a lot of ways.  Very impulsive.  I'll hang on to hope that the more we hawk the more he'll keep an eye on me but being that this is his 3rd season of hunting with me I'm not gonna hold my breath.  Good thing I'm good with telemetry....Knock on wood.

Just to round things out I added a picture of my hybrid with a Coot he caught the last day before duck season took a rest.  Nothing spectacular about the flight.  Flushed a bunch of Gadwalls and this stupid Coot decided that he would make a break for it too.  Legs dangling, this pseudo-waterfowl stumbled into the air and off the water.  Feeling the wind beneath his wings for a second or two before those wings were nearly knocked clean off!  Normally Coots are about impossible to get to leave the water around here, I don't know what got into this one.  

I've been told by some falconry buddies that this is a -1 on the head count.  I tend to agree, but in respect to the "quarry" I enacted my own let it lay law and let the hybrid eat his fill.  An act that I have grown to regret since he was too fat for the next 3 days.

-RVZ

Rubbin' Brakes Ryan in Kansas

Rubbin brakes Ryan.....What does it mean?????  I have no idea. We pulled over to watch a potential Prairie Chicken field and as the sun came up I noticed my name on the road.  Weird....thought it might be fate but it was not.

I got into western Kansas on Tuesday afternoon and spent a couple of days looking for what looked like good chicken habitat.  Beautiful countryside was seen from the get go but it took some time to home in on where those elusive prairie grouse were hiding.

On Thursday afternoon Daniel rolled into town and we took in some dirt hawking with Randy, a Kansas falconer who apprenticed under a friend of ours a number of years ago.  Randy's 2nd year passage Harris' Hawk and first year chamber bird were really with it.  They chased hard everything we flushed; pheasants, Bob-whites, dickey birds, bunnies and even a Great Horned Owl.  The younger of the two birds managed to nab a cottontail that was just inches from the impenetrable fortress of a rock pile, and the older bird connected with a bunny as well in some very thick cover.   Quite the showing considering the wind was easily blowing 30 mph!

Friday morning we finally struck gold.  While screwing around trying to trap a prairie falcon, we met an old timer by the name of Francis.  As he slowly crept up behind my truck in his late model Chevy pickup, Daniel and I prepared ourselves for what was surely going to be him coming up to bitch us out for acting weird near his property.  However, as we rolled down our window to acknowledge him, he cheerfully asked, "you boys pheasant hunting?"  We told him that we had guns in the truck and were interested in pheasants but what we were really looking for was Chickens.  Upon hearing this, the old farmer's eyes twinkled and he got a slight smile to his face.  He then informed us that he had just flushed about 40 Prairie Chickens about a 1/2 mile back from where we were sitting and he would take us there!  No one had asked him about Prairie Chickens in years he later informed us.  So we followed Francis on down the road to the cut wheat field where he claimed to have seen them.  Not fulling trusting this old guy yet, we opted to pick up the shotguns and walk the field with my pointer, Lulu.  

We walked for about 10 minutes without seeing anything too promising when a single bird exploded from just upwind of Lulu!  She quickly snapped around and locked on point.  As we approached the dog, another 12 Chickens flushed well out of gun range but we had found what we came for!  

We watched the birds put in into the CRP about 400 yards way and marked the spot using a house on the horizon as a reference.  We emptied the shells from our guns and hurriedly made it back to the truck to pick up my hybrid.  We instantly got the bird in the air and set out to get another flush.  With the falcon above and the dog and Daniel below, we made our way out to where we had marked the Chickens down but unfortunately they had snuck off to elude us for another day.  

Another day was not meant to be though with the wind blowing up in the 40 mph range for the next few days so I took a couple of nice photos of the sky and we bid western Kansas fairwell.  Where are the pictures of the Prairie Chickens?  In all the excitement of course I left it in my bag so the only pictures I've got are in my head.

As luck would have it and with some help from a friend I also found a flock of 41 Greater Prairie Chickens on the way home and about an hour from my house.  So looks like I've still got a chance before the end of the year...

Now that I am back and settled I got the birds in the air again yesterday and this morning.  Yesterday there was a very strong north wind and neither of the birds flew all that well, although the Gyr flew markedly better than the hybrid.  

Today, both birds flew much better.  Mongo, the gyrkin, took a commanding pitch and when the ducks were flushed he put in a great stoop just missing a hen Gadwall, sending her hightailing it back to the pond quacking in her boots.  Tulsa flew better too, but still not taking a very good pitch.  He was pumping and away from the pond so I went ahead and flushed.  For some reason he chose a duck that was dead center over the water and guess where they both ended up......   The duck pulled loose and flew away, leaving the the falcon to do his best Olympic breast stroke to the shore.  At 22 degrees this morning, his feathers froze instantly and he sounded a bit like a rattlesnake as he shivered on our way back to the truck.  

The frozen feathers also revealed some feather damage on his primaries that I had not noticed.  Looks like I'll be imping in a few feathers later this week. 

-RVZ

Gyr's are just different...

...or at least mine is.  Mongo has been flying great.  Aside from a passing goose that he just couldn't convince himself to let pass unharrassed, he has been a model bird so far this year.

His first flight on ducks this year was a good one but he seems to always like to choose the ducks to the rear of the group.  He had a great pitch and I flushed but rather then taking on one of the lead ducks, he chose one of the rear ones that hadn't quite cleared the edge of the pond and knocked it back to the safety of the water.  After a single pass to make sure he couldn't juuuust maybe grab the duck off the water, Mongo leisurely flew over and landed at my feet.  Casually looking up at me, like a confused puppy with his head slightly cocked to the side, waiting for his lure.

This falcon has always been a one shot wonder since I started flying him.  One of the most frustrating parts of flying him has been that he absolutely will not remount after a miss.  After talking with several who have flown imprint Gyrs in the past, I've been told that is kinda par for the course and many do the same thing.

Duck flight 2 for him this year, started out much the same.   The falcon was mounting in a very gusty north wind and with a good amount of effort made his way up into the sky.  Once in position I flushed around 50 mixed species of ducks downwind off the water.  Mongo instantly folded into his drawn out stoop and picked out a couple of Gadwalls that turned away from the group and back towards the water.   The Gyr matched their move and fell in below and slightly behind them.  Then he put on move that I can best describe as a wobble back and forth.  This caused the ducks to feint each way matching his "wobble" and seemed to make them nervous about bailing into the water.  They made another move away from the pond, went about 50 yards out, and then turned to come back and Mongo struck down the leading bird with a monster hit at a crossing angle.  

I've never seen a move like that out of a falcon and it looked too deliberate to not have been intentional.  One of the best flights I've seen in a while if for no other reason than it was different from the standard smash and grab of the hybrids I've flown for the past 5 years or so.

Tulsa continues to catch ducks as well but he has been more of a pain than anything this year.  He just doesn't have the excitement in his flight that he has had in the past.  Ducks have just gotten to easy for him and aside from his first couple of duck flights this year, he hasn't missed since.  He's got another thing coming to him next week when he meets a Prairie Chicken for the first time.....

-RVZ

Week One of Duck Season

Here we are a week into the 2011-2012 duck season and Tulsa finally scored his first duck.  It's been hard to convince him that he needs to go up so far this year.  I suppose having a few dozen ducks under your belt, combined with warm weather makes a bird a bit lazy.  Oddly enough he had decided on his last two slips to try stooping the ducks on the water.  Just as in his first two seasons, all he caught were splashes to the face, and he ended up landing next to me in field soaking wet.  Nothing spectacular in his flight today but considering his goofy start this year I'll take it. 

One week til we head out to find some grouse....

-RVZ

Dog Transmitter From an Old Marshall RT

I have several old Marshall  RT transmitters lying around not being used.  Transmitters seem to be like computers in that they are outdated as soon as you use it the first time.  There is nothing wrong with the older Marshall RT's, however they do not have the power of the newer RT+ or Powermax, no magnetic on/off switch, and they have a very long antenna compared to newer models.  Rather than have these collecting dust I decided to make a pouch that goes on my dog's collar so I can at least use these to track my dog when I hit the grouse fields next month.

Lulu above sporting her new tracking device on the side of her SportDog e-collar. (click pictures to enlarge)

No set pattern was used, just made some rough measurements and cut out the parts I thought I would need.  I didn't post the measurements because they will change depending on the transmitter used and the collar that you would put it on.  

A couple of pieces of self stick velcro to keep the transmitter in the pouch.

The picture above is the basic shape with the transmitter inside.

Using a leather stitcher I sewed the velco, sides, and collar loop together.

Not the most pretty stitch job but I'm looking for function more than form in this case.  If I wanted more even stitches I could have used a stitch marker.

Only need to stitch down the top flap's velcro.

Open finished product.

Closed, everything fits snugly inside.

On the collar and ready to go.  

-RVZ

Still busy, but Back

It's been a busy year leading up to this falconry season, but I've managed to squeeze in a few things....

Spent some time in the blind with my youngest daughter.

I think she saw one, "wait one more minute dad."

Turns out it was a dead cow....

If ya click on this picture you maybe able to see the Columbarius Merlin perched on a snag near the middle.  She had a large crop on her and unfortunately had little interest in bait we were offering.

My girls and I imprinted a Gyrkin this summer, as previously blogged about.

He liked watching his dinosaur ancestor.

Sorry cell phone picture, but here we are saying goodbye before he went back to the breeder.

And I've finally gotten my birds outta the chamber this past week.  Mongo, the Gyrfalcon, looks and acts about the same as he always has.

Tulsa, the Hybrid, is still a jerk and has lightened up in color some more.  I expect him to continue to get the job done this year.  Time to dust off the ol' kite, put new batteries in the transmitters, and whip these two into shape.

-RVZ  

Oklahoma Passage Peregrine Take

I'm happy to report that Oklahoma has filled both of its passage Peregrine permits this year!  It has been a lot of work.  First to get passage take allowed and then even more work to retain our permits in Oklahoma due to a lot of pressure to give ours up to Texas by those who didn't think that it could be done away from a beach.

The falcons have to move across the country before they can hit those Texas beaches and lucky for us there are several locations in Oklahoma where fair numbers of Peregrines stop over on their trips south.  I'll be the first to admit though, that it is nowhere near as easy or glamorous trapping up here as would be on a coastal beach, but definitely can be done and we feel it can be done year after year as long as someone has the desire!

Photos courtesy of Mitch Wishson.  This bird couldn't have been trapped by a nicer guy or better falconer.

-RVZ

Tale of Two Transmitters

Unfortunately, as posted in the last post, Daniel's Hybrid got hit by a car after a fly-off.  Very unfortunate; that bird was coming along nicely.  What Dan didn't write about was the search leading up to our calamitous find.

About 9:00am I got a call from Dan that his bird had flown off from the kite, he had a good signal but the bird had gone pretty far and he "wouldn't mind" a little help.  So I grabbed my receiver and jumped in the truck.  I headed down the highway until I saw Dan on the side of the road with Yagi in hand.  We both had a strong signal coming from his Marshall Powermax transmitter, on the far setting, but it was a strong signal.  Just as we were about to get into the truck and continue the chase, the signal disappeared.  Very strange.....  In my experience this can often mean the bird went to the ground behind a large hill or in a valley.  To play it safe though, Daniel took off in the direction we last had signal and I started circling the section roads to see if one of us could regain audio connection to the bird.  After about 1 hour of searching, Dan had made it pretty far away and I had checked about every square inch of the nearby hills and valleys finding nothing.  I had to head back up to work and get a few things done so I had to check out, leaving Dan to continue the search on his own for a while.  

It still was bugging me that we had such a good signal and then it was gone in an instant.  Sure maybe the battery died, but it was a new battery, or maybe the antenna fell off, but it was glued on.  My suggestion to Dan was to go back to where we had our last signal, walk out to the biggest hill and try his backup transmitter, a Merlin Systems Mini-FMV, that was tail-mounted on the bird.

About an hour later I get a call back from Dan, that he did indeed get a signal from the tallest hill in the area, but it was faint on the furthest setting on his receiver.  So I headed back his way and the chase was back on.

We found the going down the hill only half way caused the signal to disappear.  So the bird was nearby and behind the terrain or he was still quite far away.  After exhausting our ground search in the proximity we decided to get back in a vehicle and head toward the signal again.

For several miles we got nothing.  As we were driving down the road I saw a tall feed hopper with a ladder down the side.  Last year when my friend Jay lost his bird, the only place we could get a signal initially was on top of a feed hopper such as this.  Couldn't hurt to try it again.  So I hauled my receiver to the top and tried my luck again.  Sure enough, there was the signal, but still weak.  Again we tried to get a better reception on foot but the bird was still pretty far away.

About this time our friend Scott also met up with us to help with the chase.  Encouraged that we still had a signal we kept moving in the direction that we had a beep.  More miles ticked off the odometer before we finally got a faint signal from the side of the road, a big improvement from the weak signals from high places.  As we followed the beep it was getting stronger and stronger until, BOOM.  Our hopes of finding the bird alive were squelched.  There in the road was the bird, a faint trail of feathers blowing across the road....

Upon closer inspection the Marshall Powermax transmitter was still functioning, but the antenna was broken inside the sheath.  We figure that we lost our initial strong signal when the bird was struck by the vehicle, breaking the antenna.  Luckily (term used strangely here) the Merlin Systems Mini-FMV was still intact and it lead us on a path that was well over 5 miles, with far less than ideal conditions for tracking.  I was thoroughly impressed that we could track a signal that far on a Mini-FMV, especially considering it was laying in the road, many miles and many hills away from where we started.

This is not an advertisement for either of these companies since it was a bit of an extreme set of circumstances.  I will continue to use a Powermax on my big longwings, but I definitely have a new found respect for the little guy.

Mini-FMV: Miniature Falconry Transmitter

Weight - 4.0 grams with batteries Size - 1" (26mm) X 0.30" (8mm) Battery Size - Two #377 silver oxide Operating Life - 7 days Range - Field tested at 15 miles direct-line-of-sight under ideal conditions

www.merlin-systems.com

PowerMax Transmitter

HIGH POWER
The PowerMax has about double the range and distance of the RT+. Like any transmitter, the range 

varies with terrain, but tests have given distances of 10 to 80 miles in the open deserts of the 

western United States.
This makes it the right choice for your primary transmitter used to track down a bird in adverse 

situations.

Our engineers also implemented a unique design into the circuit that maintains high power

 levels even

 as the battery drains, or as the temperature drops and the battery current follows suit. 

You can count on the PowerMax signal all the way through the life of the battery.
Signal range will depend on the height of the transmitter, the height of the receiver as 

well as the type of terrain and obstructions.

www.marshall-radio.com

-RVZ

Move 'em Out

I just unloaded a couple of birds.  Rainbow, the Cooper's Hawk has moved on to a true austringer.  Someone who can really appreciate what that Cooper's Hawk is truly capable of.  I liked the bird just fine.   I imprinted her my way, and hawked her my way, and really had relatively few problems.  Nothing like the imprint horror stories that you hear so often.  That bird was only hawked from March through May and ended up catching 136 head.  Not too shabby for such a short time.  But, in the end, hawks are just not my thing.  They don't get me excited to go out and fly each day.  Not to say I wouldn't fly another one...but any hawk I fly in the future will be a passage bird.

Now falcons are a different story.  Something about the true falcons have had my attention since I was a young teenager.  I just don't get tired of them.  So I was glad to help out a friend by raising this Gyrkin for him.

He was fully summed a few weeks ago and moved back to his home where hopefully he'll father lots of baby Gyrs and Gyr hybrids in the future.  (Don't worry my daughters are used to lovin' 'em and leaving 'em, so there is no emotional harm)  Now if we could just get rid of these crazy temperatures, get the ducks migrating, and get this hawking season underway already...

-RVZ

Summer Eyas Fun

I'm raising an eyas male Gyrfalcon for a friend of mine this summer.  The bird will eventually go into his breeding project and hopefully help produce "falcons of the future" through artificial insemination.   My family  and I have been calling him Nanook (or just "Bird" according to my youngest) and he's been a lot of fun so far...

14 days old

~21 days

~26 days old and getting his first taste of the bath pan

~26 days old and already reading

~30 days old

~34 days old

-RVZ