Good Times, In The Summer Heat

Hey Hey Hey!!!! Hope the moult is going well for everyone! Life, as always, has been crazy around these parts. It's getting hot as heck outside, and the prairie is taking her sweet time about molting. She dropped her fist tail feather yesterday, so that brings us up to a grand total of 5 so far. Pretty lame, but hopefully she will start hurrying things up a bit :-).

To hold me over through the long summer months, I ended up snagging this little guy. He is a male red shoulder, and is coming along really nicely if I do say so myself! I pulled him from the nest when he was around 30 or so days old, and he promptly became my 2 year old's new buddy. The name Scooter was given to him, and once his feathers had come down enough, he was put out on tame hack. He got his little butt kicked all around the neighborhood by the Cooper's hawks and Mississippi Kites, and as a result, picked up the whole flying deal pretty darn quickly. It was pretty amazing to watch how much he would improve day by day, and I must say that the results have been really pleasing. He started catching stuff pretty much from the start (caught a mouse on day two), and it was fun watching him sneak on through the yards, to go mob the neighbors bird feeders and such.

I have had the pleasure of seeing some pretty neat flights, and though I have yet to see him actually score a bird, he has been catching mice and what not pretty consistently. After a week or so out on tame hack, my family and I moved to a new home, so he just chilled out in the weathering area while we did the whole moving deal. That took a couple weeks, but once we wrapped that up, he went back out on hack. This time though, we went with a full on hack. We did this for two weeks, and though I kept tabs on him of course, I only called him down one time to replace the transmitter battery (and to give him a nice crop....). The fields surrounding my new home are LOADED with game, and he was out catching stuff daily. He pretty much didn't leave the area, and tops, maybe flew five or six blocks away. I ended up finishing up the hack about a week or so ago, and I have just been bringing his weight down since then. I have had him down to 545 grams so far, and he is still pretty darn fat.

Yesterday was our second day of creance training out in the field (i.e. away from our normal training areas), and we got a half length flight out of him (but we had a little bit of hesitation.....). This morning though, he was keyed in, and we had instant response both to the lure, and back to the fist when we were finished. I plan on dropping him until I have decent enough response to start hunting, and then will finish out his training while doing that.

I'm of the opinion that car hawking is a GREAT way to drop weight with a baby bird, because it gets the bird out killing quickly, pulls the focus away from you, and allows them to get some of that excess energy out while they are in that "in between" stage (hungry enough to be a dork, but not hungry enough to get after it 100%). I'm guessing he will fly some where around 400, but I really have no idea.

I won't get him down to his "true" hunting weight very quickly though, because I'm going to be careful about how much weight I pull off per day during that time period (don't want to make him start talking or anything!) By the time that's all said and done though, he should be riding on a really nice confidence high from all of that car hawking, and then we will transition to the field.

The only bummer so far, is that he had a feather broken off in the blood, while out on tame hack. Like I said, he was getting the run around pretty much the whole time while out on tame hack, and I saw him get taken darn near to the ground on a couple of occasions. What I found to be interesting, is that though the coops would stoop and hassle him pretty much all day long, it was the Mississippi Kites that would actually knock him out of trees, and bind to him while flying. If anything, I was expecting the opposite from that, but I guess you learn something new every day! Anyways, it was the third from the outer most primary, and I'm pretty worried about him snapping those outer two feathers, since they are missing part of their support system. We shall see how it goes though, and in the scheme of things, it's only made him a LITTLE bit ugly :-).

Anyways, he is going to be my "little bird" hawk, and I'm going to fly him off the fist like a coop. I'm pretty excited to get through the next week or so, and am definitely ready to get out for some hawking.I'm not a very patient person, and after flying passage birds that are out killing stuff in a couple weeks, this baby bird raising is trying on the patience!!! It's been a blast though, and I'm thinking there are going to be a lot of hacking experiences in my future. Anyways, that's what's been up in a nutshell. I continue to wish you all a speedy moult, and look forward to talking at you all again soon.

All the best, -D-