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
3 comments:
Hey Ryan. I have been looking in on your post from time to time so I thought that maybe you might be the guy to help with a question I have about passage merlins? I saw your post on hen from juvy kestrels so...Is there a definitive way of telling a passage hen from a juvy in merlins? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
The only sure fire way I know is to look for stress bars on the tail. If the bird has them and they are all at the same length then you have a passage. I know its not easy but I haven't had enough in hand to reliably tell. As for plumage this scientific article suggests that you cannot tell. http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/JFO/v063n04/p0473-p0475.pdf
Or you can go with what some of the guys up north say.... "All female Merlins are passage." :)
I'm sure guys that trap a lot of them can tell better than I. Eric Edwards would be a good one to ask.
http://ericedw.blogspot.com/
Ha! yeah they just may be all passage birds, depending on my luck getting one to fly this winter.
Thanks for the info and the links.
Later.
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