Lure?

I'm going to try to get some footage of the creance flying if Hazen ever makes it home at a reasonable hour.

I creance flew her outside in the wind yesterday and she was absolutely perfect! No hesitation, jumped to the fist many times before I was ready (and yes, this is a good sign). She's doing just wonderfully. At this rate, I may be free flying her sooner than I initially expected.

I wanted to post this funny little video. Musket decided to investigate the dog toy. She got nervous when I got too close. I was glad I had the camera nearby.

Progress

We have been doing jump-ups all weekend, and she has been very quick to respond. She has figured out again that she needs to get herself back to her perch and she’ll wait until I present the fist to jump to me (well, most of the time).

I am very impressed with her. At this stage and weight in Jan/Feb, she was slow to respond, but now, she’s jumping immediately when I present my fist and blow the whistle. Some of it has to do with my experience; I understood where her aggression was coming from and I knew what to do to curb it. I also think some of it has to do with her experience; she’s less afraid of me and now sees me as a source of food instead of a predator. Yesterday, I had her on her indoor perch most of the day and she only jumped off of it once in 10 hours! At the beginning of the week, she was jumping two or three times every 5 minutes. Amazing!

Now that she has been spending her days with me sitting on a perch instead of flying around in her mews, she is not loosing weight as quickly. I have some meat “washing” in the fridge, which basically means that it is sitting in a bowl of water where it will clean out a lot of the blood. It will make her feel like she’s eaten, but without the weight-gain. I plan on starting the creance flights again this afternoon, as I got her flying to the end of her leash indoors yesterday. But, I won’t feel comfortable cutting her free until I get her weight down another 100 grams or so. With the cold nights (we were down to the mid 40’s last night) it should help her drop some weight quickly though. If all goes as planned, the weekend after next we can start hunting! I already have some good squirrel spots picked out.

Jump-up success!

It may be too soon to tell if my feeding her up scheme worked or not, but I have a suspicion that it has! Musket has spent the better part of the week with me in the office. She has spent evenings with me on my fist or on her new "bell" perch (picture to come soon) inside the house. She has had two evenings gorging on chicken necks and has not attempted to foot me once since. Yesterday I decided to try my hand at jump-ups again. Jump-ups involve just what you would think; the bird jumps to the falconer from a perch for a “tidbit” as the whistle blows, then returns to the perch for another round. These birds are highly intelligent; they quickly learn what they are required to do for food. Up until this point for the last 6 months or so, Musket has not been expected to perform for her meal, but not any longer.

I cut up the tidbits and readied them in a pouch for the test. I placed her on her bell perch and held out my fist with a tidbit on it. She almost immediately jumped to it and ate her treat. Earlier this week when we tried this, she just about took my arm off with her aggressiveness. I had to hold her jesses tight so she wouldn’t crawl up my arm or jump at the treat. This time she was perfectly calm, but couldn’t remember what to do next. I pointed to the perch with my free hand. She looked at the ground searching for dropped treats; since this is usually my sign to her that she needs to look around. She sat on my fist for a minute or so, trying to figure it out. I didn’t want her to start footing my glove looking for more food, so I sneakily took one treat from the pouch and placed it on the perch. By some miracle, she did not see me do that little maneuver. Once she saw the treat on the perch, she hopped down to it. I garnished my fist again and presented it to her. She popped up immediately and ate the treat and I blew the whistle. This time she still wouldn’t go back to the perch, so I dumped her off the fist by dropping my hand quickly. I had to do this two more times, but then, the lightbulb turned on and she would make her own way back to the perch! Awesome!

By the end of the session, she was jumping to my fist just as I blew the whistle! In January, it took me two weeks to get to this point, I feel very good about our accomplishment.

So I think my little experiment worked. It took the edge off by giving her lots and lots of food. Her attitude is almost 180 degrees from what it was on Monday when I was worrying that I had broken my hawk and made her aggressive. She’s calm and responsive now, all I have to do is get her to start coming to me across the lawn consistently, then I’ll cut her loose and we’ll go hunting! Wish me luck!

Musket with me at Work. I've changed the wrappings in that box... yuck!

Fed up!

I fed Musket 6 chicken necks yesterday; she was a pig! I have been using another “regular” glove to feed her to protect my hands from her sharp beak (and once her sharp talons when she got over-excited and grabbed the morsel with her foot!). I decided that two gloves were too much for her to deal with so I wanted to use my bare hand to feed her. In the interest of saving my fingers, I thought tweezers would work well.

I tried it last night and she only got to me once with her beak, and not too bad. As the feeding went on, she did finally start to calm down, but not until she had the bulging crop that you can see in the video.

She sat with me quite nicely for the next hour or so, content with her full belly. I hope this works. My biggest problem last season was weight management. I think I have a better handle on it now. At this point she does not have a whole lot of fat on her, so feeding her up for a few days should not put too much weight on her. It should make her feel content, and hopefully more willing to work and less frantic.

I have a couple of silly videos I’m going to add here. In watching these, I detect a bit of a southern accent. sigh. "Folksy" is charming though, right?? But if you think this is bad, you should hear me when I'm talking to southerners.

Musket's Reflection.

We Begin Again!

Upon the advice of other falconers, I have decided that it is time to start working with Musket again! There have been significant, if not unexpected, changes to Musket's behavior from the calm, scardey passage to the aggressive, fearless adult.Probably due in part to my feeding her regularly in the mew, Musket has started to become a little footy. By "footy" I mean that she'll aggressively grab me with her foot, the danger end! I am hoping that I have not inadvertently created a monster in my bird. From my reading, second year birds are much different than first year birds. By now, they know that you are not going to hurt them, so they can get more aggressive. This aggression is fine as long as it is directed towards prey and not the falconer.

I was a bit worried about it last night when I went to take her out of her mew. I have allowed her to fly free in her mew, a condition that will be changing soon, so it is somewhat nerve-racking to come into the mew, present the fist to the bird, have her hop up to it, and then hope that she does not foot me when I go to put the jesses in her anklets. So far she has been cooperative, knowing that she will eat when she gets out of the mew, she’ll sit calmly and wait for me to put the jesses on. (She has been allowing me to do this above and beyond my expectations. Last week she would not stand on my fist and let me do this so I had to jess her in the dark.) Yesterday, I got one jess on her, no problem, then she decided that my glove had to have food in it somewhere. She looked down at my glove and deliberately footed it hard. I dropped her to the ground to let her know that this behavior was unacceptable. After 4 or 5 times of her doing this, I left her in her mew and went inside. Half hour later, I came back and tried again. She footed my glove one more time and then stood there and let me jess her. She did not try it again.

My hope is that she is still very wild from being free in the mew for months and eating whatever she wants. I am bringing her to work with me every day now and sitting with her for hours at a time in the house to start from square one. I’m hoping I can quell the demon inside her and that she’ll calm down.

Her weight is also very low right now; she is close to her old flying weight. She has shown aggression during feeding, trying to jump at the food or grab it with her foot. This is the type of behavior I want in her when we are getting ready to fly, not when we are manning. I think I will take her weight up over a few days so she’ll feel fat, and then slowly work it back down as we work. I hope this will make her easier to work with during the re-manning. I think I have my work cut out for me. Wish me luck! I am very excited to start working with her every day again!

Arrr... One Eyed Musket!

Musket on Trapping Day (Early January)

Musket after Hurricane Faye (Late August)

Since Day One I have noticed something strange about my bird’s right eye. Her pupil was not quite round and when I shone light in there, I could make out a milky whiteness deep in her eye. Since I trapped her in early January, I figured if she did have some impairment that she had done well enough to survive for that long on her own so she would probably be okay. We are slowly coming out of the molt, so I have been working with her more and more to man her back down. Her eye has gotten much worse over the intermew! The pupil is all screwy now with the iris moving into it and the milky whiteness that was just barely visible when she was put up for the molt is now very obvious. When I was holding her on the glove this week, watching a movie, I decided to test her to see just how much she could make out. At this point I was sure that there was some visual deficiency, but after my little test, I am now almost positive that she is totally blind in that eye. I could sneak my hand around and just about touch her eye without her noticing. When I did this same test to her good eye, she would pull her head back and react like I was poking her. Not Good.

I posted this comment on the apprentice falconry board that I'm a part of and got back a few responses. One of the members has a red-tail with a very similar condition and she seems to hunt just fine. In fact, he said he'd put up his one-eyed red-tail against any bird out there. He hunts a lot of squirrels with his bird. I have not tried squirrels with Musket, but I am hoping to try my hand at it this year. Squirrel hawking seems like a lot of fun with some dynamic chases and in-the-air dives after squirrles that bail out of a tree.

For some strange reason, I like Musket even more after this little discovery. I feel like it's my sacred duty to find her squirrels and rabbits to chase. I hope she does well. I have this idea in my head of making a hood with a pirate hat and eye-patch. If I figure it out, I'll post a picture of her with the new hood.

I'm going to start taking her weight down and working with her every day starting this weekend! Wish me luck!

Experiments in Bunny Making

Peregrine Falcon

Well, I think I've worked almost 70 hours in the last week. It's been pretty crazy! I had the opportunity to take a work trip down to the Florida Keys to visit some sites that are important stop-over habitat for the Peregrine Falcon as part of a team writing a management plan that is part of the process of removing them from Florida's list of endangered species. I am completely thrilled to be a part of this process! We headed out to Grassy Key and stayed in this beautiful beach house with a hawk watching crew for two days. I saw more birds of prey in one place than I have ever seen before and got two new species (short-tailed hawk and broad-winged hawk)... amazing!

Sunset in Key West


Hazen stayed at home and diligently took care of the crop of rabbits, the dog, and the hawk. I got home late Sunday afternoon, exhausted, and dreading a long busy week of work culminating with a speech on Friday! Sigh.


I was pretty sure at least one of my rabbits was prego. I figured that since the were in the cage with the buck when I purchased them, that she had conceived that day. I had done the math so I could be prepared for the babies if they arrived when I thought she would be due. Last week I had planned on constructing a nursery cage and the nest box I needed for the babies. Rabbits are not like dogs and cats, they cannot pick up and move their young, so the babies need a "nest" where they can stay warm and dry until they are old enough to open their eyes and move around.

Tuesday night, Hazen and I worked diligently making a set of nursery cages to install this weekend for the girls. I was feeling particularly anxious about this because I was absolutely positive that one of them was pregnant. I felt her belly and definitely felt movement! I was pretty excited, but still thought I had at least a week before the babies would be born.

Wednesday morning, I go out and feed the rabbits. The suspect prego rabbit is frantically pulling fur out of her belly! All the books I read said that this is a sign that she is getting ready to have her babies, but you usually have three days from that point before she gives birth. I was planning on making the nest boxes that night, so I figured I had plenty of time to get things in order before she had the kits. However, she had become aggressive of her cage-mate, so I decided to go ahead and separate them. I had an animal crate that I filled with hay and put her in there since she was so frantic about building her nest. I put her inside in the spare bathroom, wanting to keep her cool and away from stray dogs. 20 minutes later, I went in the bathroom to wash my hands and I heard a squealing sound! She was giving birth! I was shocked and amazed and grateful that I had been home and paying attention! I would have been very sad if she had given birth to the litter in her cage and they had died from cold. She gave birth to 8 healthy rabbit babies from an unknown father. She had to have been pregnant before I bought her.


Hazen stopped by the Tractor Supply store and bought another waterer and feeder for the new rabbits. He definitely won points for doing this without being asked! That night, I made the nest box and put the nest mom had made and the new babies in it. All was right with the world.





The next morning, I checked on the bunnies and took the above video. I put the new waterer in the box and left to my meeting. When I got home, I found one baby bunny dead in the front of the cage. I figured he had wiggled out and gotten cold. That was not unexpected so I didn't worry about it too much. These rabbits are meant to be food, and I had seven others still in the back of the nest. That was when I noticed that something was horribly wrong. The water bottle had leaked! The cage floor was soaked! The babies were in the back of the nest box, but instead of being warm and dry, they were cold and wet! Half of them were dead, drowned. Four of them were still alive, but were very cold and thin. I did what I thought was best and tried to warm them. I realized my mistake too late when mom would not touch them because they had my scent all over them. The last few babies died later that night. I was horrified! It was a hard lesson to learn. Such a waste!

I was finally able to breed the other doe rabbit on Saturday, so with luck, there I’ll have a new litter by mid-November. It’s so long to wait, and a disappointing failure for my first litter, though I keep reminding myself that I was lucky to have even caught it in the first place. Even still, I’ll be ready for the next one.

Bunnies!

As promised, here are pictures of my rabbits. I took a little movie because the little buck was so energetic about the camera I wanted to share. I think he's trying to tell me that he's too cute to be hawk food! He might be right.

Enjoy!