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