I hear it quite a bit........."Prairies are slow." I generally respond with something like "Your mom's slow," but up until recently, I sort of had to agree. When one has been sitting around watching hybrids, or some of the other speed demons fly around, prairies do come off looking a bit sluggish. Maybe it's the wing beat, maybe it's their overall shape....whatever it is, it's pretty darn deceiving. After this weekend though, I have come to find out that it's all just an illusion :-)! This new found epiphany didn't come from my bird though (unfortunately), but from a beautiful little haggard prairie, and a drake mallard, that almost got away!
This past weekend was my sister in law's birthday. Edmund Oklahoma was the weekend destination, and we had a little family get together planned for her. As is my usual custom, I headed down there early in the morning, to meet up with my good hawkin buddy Mitch, and we were out on the road by sun up. We were out looking for ducks, and had just found the perfect pond, for a bird that is still in the process of getting started. We knew that there was at least one diver on it, but I hadn't stuck around long enough, to see what else was there. The peregrine was ready to role, and he blasted off the fist pretty quickly, and started mounting up nicely. We crouched down below the damn wall until he came back over, and then we went in for the flush. The pond erupted with duck wings, and a group of seven or eight ducks tore out of there, followed very quickly by a hungry falcon. His bird keyed in on the lead duck, and you can imagine our surprise, when he comes down and power binds to a drake mallard! I'm the closest to the bird, so I'm running as fast as I can to get to them, but I see the duck kick the falcon off, and start scrambling toward the water. That peregrine wasn't detoured in the least bit though, because he instantly got back up, and bound to it again right on the water's edge. I was still running like crazy, and my heart just sunk, when I saw the little guy get kicked off again! The duck sliped into the water, and Mitch and I dropped to our bellies.
While we are sitting their waiting for his bird to get back up in the air, a haggard prairie came cruising over the pond, and I signal to Mitch, to make sure that he saw it. About the time that the prairie got out of sight, Mitch's bird left the pond bank, and started heading back up. He was climbing strong again, and around the time he hit a couple hundred feet, that prairie came cruising back in, to do a little crabbing. None of it was too intense though, and eventually, it looked like the prairie had lost interest, and was heading on out again. It wasn't but a few moments after that, that Mitch gave the signal to flush, and we ran in on the duck. That mallard was still tucked up in the reeds on the ponds edge, and it wasn't but a few wing beats before he had cleared the pond's edge, and was flying off over a wide open pasture. Since the peregrine wasn't up that high this time, he didn't have the angle to come down and pound it, but he quickly pulled in right on the ducks rear, and was mirroring the ducks every move. They were hauling butt, and we could see the gap between the birds slowly getting smaller!
All of a sudden out of no where, that prairie was back, and was just hauling balls!!!! She came in from way behind, but caught up to the peregrine and duck within two or three hundred yards almost effortlessly. Instead of pulling in right behind the birds though, she started angling up a little bit (the tail chase was going on maybe 25 feet off the ground at this point in time....). The peregrine had been closing the gap during this whole process, and had finally gotten close enough to make a slash at the duck. He gave it all he had, and the duck pulled a crazy sideways move, in order to miss getting hammered. The last thing Mitch wanted, was for his bird to grab that duck, and then get smashed on by the prairie, so he started twisting the lure, and the peregrine broke off the chase. This though, is when it got REALLY good! When the peregrine made his slash at the duck, and it had to make his move to escape, I guess it lost a lot of speed. The prairie went from angling up, to pretty much standing on her tail, and started gaining height like she was pulling out of a stoop. She pumped like this for maybe 50 yards, and then tipped her wings, and folded into a stoop! She brought down the whole darn sky on that green head, and she took it straight to the ground! So ya....prairies are slow? I don't stinkin think so!!!!!!!!!! :-)
As far as my bird goes, the weather worked out last Thursday, and I was able to get a flight in with some buddies......she ended up setting her wings like a dork!!! She started pumping for a moment at one point though, so we flushed, and the gadwalls bailed back into the water. Saturday I flew her in Edmund pretty late in the morning, and after pumping up well over a thousand feet, she set her wings, hit a thermal, and went up to where she was fading in and out of binocular view. She came back over, and though her wings were set, I flushed anyways, and she almost snagged a duck about four hundred yards from the pond. She missed, whipped back up, and almost sealed the deal, but the duck made it over to the next pond. She remounted over a thousand feet, which was incredible(and I REALLY wanted to enforce it!), but right as I was turning to go flush the ducks, she set her wings, started dropping pitch at a crazy rate, and once she saw that I wasn't going to flush, took off chasing black birds. I would have flushed way before she set her wings, simply because it was the first time she had really remounted, but she was so stinking wide, that I kept waiting for her to come back over......I tried to fly her later in the evening after we had met up with a few other buddies, and she ended up sucking, and almost got killed by a red tail. We went out Sunday evening though, and put duck #3 in the bag. She was WAY wide and down wind, so I didn't really think she had a chance when I flushed, but she turned on the after burners, and ended up snagging another ring neck.
The weather was lame yesterday, and chances are, it won't work out for a flight tonight either, but the next couple of days are looking really nice......we will see how it goes I guess :-)
-D-
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