Trapapolooza '09

Trapping season 2009 opened on September 15th here in Oklahoma. On September 16th, Myself, my apprentice Daniel, and friend Jonathan made the trip out to western Oklahoma to do some trapping with Chris Kimble and others from that area. After a slow start, Things really began to pick up. Not 2 minutes off the Highway we trapped the first bird. The vehicle in front of us threw the trap and the hawk came down so fast she slipped in between the cars to hit the trap and get hooked. We proceeded to trap 5 more birds, for 6 in total, 4 females and 2 males, with one female in particular being 49 ozs and having very interesting markings on her tail. Among the group where 4 apprentices, three of which went home happy with their choice of birds and the other decided to hold off as he was looking for a bird that was a bit smaller. By far the best second day of trapping season that I have ever had! Thanks to Chris for orchestrating such a great time trapping.

Gotcha

Chris and myself inspecting a newly trapped bird.

My apprentice Daniel with his first falconry bird and Jonathan Coleman with his newest.

The trapping party.

Lower left to right: Jonathan Coleman, Daniel Murray, Scott White

Upper left to right: Myself, John Dominguez (Chris' pre-apprentice holding a bird we released), Chris Kimble, Walt Ginn

Oklahoma weather is being its usual self this year. We had temperatures in the low 50's for a week, prime early season falcon training weather, then back to the upper 70's in the morning, then rain every other day, etc. I've got both falcons flying now, although I am not pushing the Gyr to hard, as it is still far to hot to fly him seriously yet. Teal season opened here a couple of days ago and I did have one flight on them with my young Hybrid that resulted in a Teal with a couple of secondaries missing but survived to fly off another day. Good experience for a young falcon and at least I know he will try for ducks, small ones anyway. But, again it is still to warm to seriously be hunting, so most of their time in the air revolves around flying to the kite.

The dot in the upper middle of the screen is the kite at about 1200 feet. My Hybrid is in that picture as well but it is a little hard to see up that high.

Here the falcon has grabbed the bait which is connected to a quick release near the kite. The release pops loose when the falcon grabs hold of the bait and both slide down the line to the ground.

Hybrid Gyr/Peregrine back to earth with bait in hand, although still breathing pretty hard. And that is how the majority of my mornings will go until the temperature decides to finally drop and stay down.

Here We Go

Falcon #1 is inside so I guess falconry has offically started for 2009-2010, eventhough he is not anywhere close to being fully molted. He is only about 70 grams over last years flying weight so it will not be long before he is in the air.

Oklahoma Reg Update

Things continue to progress. Earlier this week Rod Smith submitted the new Oklahoma laws and regs, a new falconer data base, and a new falconry exam to George Allen of USFWS. Following George's review, the director of ODWC will submit a formal letter to USFWS requesting adoption of the new falconry regs. This should all be completed by September 1st, 2009. That will keep us on track to have new regs in place for January 1st, 2010!

USFWS has still not published the final rule regarding migrant peregrine take in Oklahoma. There a couple other states that are on board for a take in 2010. Hopefully, by then the take will be relaxed to a 5% limit.

No News & Moving On

After all the tests, still nothing was conclusive as to why the Cooper's Hawk died. I guess it wasn't meant to be this year. I did go back to the nest and saw that the other 5 birds did fledge, so I highly doubt it was genetic. Mistakes happen and you learn from them, but in this case I don't know of any mistakes made and therefore no good came from it, which makes it all the more disappointing. So we move on.

Both falcons are moulting slowly this summer, but I'll probably pull the Hybrid the last week of July and bring him inside, out of the heat, and get him flying by mid August. I usually wait till mid September to start, but I only flew this bird for a few weeks at the end of last year so an early start should be beneficial to us both. I'll probably hold off on the Gyrkin until he is fully molted.

Nothing too exciting, except that my apprentice has gotten his permits and we are counting down to the opening of the trapping season.

Twist of Fate

After a normal day of hopping around in the weathering yard, taking a bath, eating a sparrow and a quail, Moa had a "fit" of some sort and died around 11:00 at night. He went from acting perfectly normal to dead in about 15 minutes time. I took him to the vet for a necropsy the next day. After a very detailed inspection, there was no sign of trauma, air sacs were clear, all the organs looked normal, there was no punctures in the stomach or crop, mutes in the GI tract looked normal, in short everything looked pretty normal except for a small dark spot on the heart. The vet's best guess was that it was some sort of heart defect, but she did not sound too convinced of that either. So his very abrupt death is unsolved at this time, until we can talk to the avian pathologist on Monday. Maybe he'll be able to give some insight. Needless to say, I'm very dissappointed in this turn of events.....

Still Growin'

Two weekends ago. May 30, 2009

Last Weekend. 6-6-09

Today. 6-12-09

The little guy is growing fast and I expect within the next couple of weeks he'll be flying free learning how to be a hawk. I'm know that he is a male now by his weight, which has topped off around 290 grams. I expect him to get a little bit heavier but there is no chance that he'll get up above or even close to 400 grams (the weight of most felmale Eastern Cooper's Hawks). I think I'm gonna call him 'Moa.'