Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Trapping Season Blues

Still no red-tail for me. Boo.

I must have put 1,000 miles on my truck so far looking for a bird. It's hard to not get discouraged by the lack of birds. The few I have seen have either been in a soar or I didn't have my gerbils with me. Well, I solved the second problem by buying a small carrying box to take the little goobers with me everywhere. The little fellas fit in my purse! I feel like I'm carrying around a pocket dog or something!

I think we got a nice cold front come through last night though... so I'm going to kick my searching into high gear. The birds have a tendency to follow the cold fronts.

Wish me lots of luck, I need it bad! It's only a matter of time.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

First Day of Trapping Season

Finally Septmber 15th is here!! I've spent all weekend putting together my falconry equipment. I wanted everything to be ready in case I trapped a hawk today.

Well, I came home hawkless, but, we did see a juvenile Cooper's hawk going after a bird (which was awesome!) and we saw two juvenile red-tails. Amazing!!

The first bird we saw was near Alachua, Hazen spotted it. It was a little male, just what I was looking for. Unfortunately, we just weren't ready for it and we spooked it when we set the trap. Hazen was pretty dissapointed, and I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't either, but I was pretty encouraged because I had no expectation of really seeing any birds, let alone having a chance to trap one!

We headed towards home and took a road that I drive twice a day to work. I was remarking to Hazen that I never see birds on that road and sure enough, he spotted a red-tail sitting on a pole. I slowed down and sure enough, it was a juvenile! I slowed down the truck, tossed the trap out and drove away to turn around. Lucky for us there was a nice little road just across the street from the bird. We waited for about 20 minutes watching it. It was clearly looking at the trap, trying to figure out what to make of it. Eventually, it fluffed, pooped, and took a low dive off the pole right for the trap!! We waited a few minutes while the bird tangled with the trap. Finally it looked like it was caught and we gathered our towel and gloves and walked out to it. When I was about 15 feet from it, it took off, not caught. Boo!

When we examined the trap later, it had triggered several of the loops, just not enough to get tangled. But, I'm actually okay with it. That bird was every bit as big as Musket, and I want a male this year. It would have been really really hard to stick to my guns and let her go if it turned out to be a heavy bird. So, it's fine.

We'll try again tomorrow and see what we see. It seems that 6:30-7:30 seems to be the magic hour. I'm really excited that we saw so many birds on the first day of trapping season too!

Wish me luck!

Monday, September 14, 2009

Videos of Alaska

I dont know how well this will work, but here are some videos of our time in Alaska. They speak louder than photographs.


The inside passage where crawled through sprawling hills and mountains that came right out of the ocean.

A view of the Harbor in Ketchikan.

Lovely Creek Street.

Salmon Running in Juneau... anyone know what kind of Salmon these are?

Historic Downtown Skagway

"Soapy" Jeff Smith's Parlor... Skagway. Video says it all.

Leaving Skagway.

A case of mistaken identity. From a distance, this really did look like a seal until I looked at the image in my zoomed in camera... oops. I think the commentary is funny though, I hope it makes you laugh.

This time it really was a seal.

A shot of the Ziprider from the bottom. EESH!

The Hubbard Glacier as we were leaving. It was hard to find a spot to get a clear shot with all the people on the deck.

Puffins and Auklets swimming underwater durring feeding time at the Aquatic Sealife Center in Seward.

The Steller's Sealion, quite a monster!

Well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed the videos. I hope the the next time I post on the blog, I'll have trapped my new hawk! Trapping season starts tomorrow!!