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.

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!

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!!

Alaska!!!!!

Taking a page from Melissa's blog, I'm going to tell our story in pictures!

These were totem poles that greeted us at the Vancouver airport right off the plane.

Vancouver from the shuttle to the train. It looks pretty creepy. The driver said that they built all of these buildings relatively quickly. It looks like Russia. The driver also told us about the corner where you can "get anything." Crazy ride through town.

Our first glimpse of the Millenium. It was love at first sight.

Ahh, the inevitable lifeboat drill. We just want to eat... again.

This is Hazen's friend Steve the Hero. He realized the day before the criuse that his passport had expired. He is pictured here celebrating his 23rd hour with his new passport. He hopped a plane from Orlando to Huston Texass to go to the passport office. They took pity on him got it to him in 4 hours. He made it to Vancouver with 12 hours to spare. Amazing!

Here are Hazen and I posing at the inside passage. The land was this close on both sides of the ship. I'm amazed that something that big could fit down the passage. The scenary was beautiful! We stayed out the whole time and saw lots of bald eagles and whales.

Hazen and I perched on Evan and Caroline's (the bride and groom) veranda on the first formal night. Isn't he handsome?

Here we are in rainy Ketchikan Alaska. They get about 200 inches or rain every year. I can't even count the amount of times where we heard that they had beautiful weather for 2 months that ended 3 days before we got there. Oh well, we got authentic.

A fun scupture in Ketchikan that I made Hazen pose next to.

Creek Street. Beautiful! There were salmon running this stream, though we saw many more further north.

Hazen seeing a bird. I love this picture. We later discovered that it was a swallow that we had both seen before, but the discovery is the fun part.

Black bear fishing for salmon in Ketchican. Earlier, we saw a mother bear and 3 cubs in a tree not 50 feet from us, but my camera wouldn't cooperate.



One of the may totems that we saw in Ketchican. We got to meet the man who made this beautiful scupture.
Hazen feeding reindeer. They told us that reindeer were the first domesticated animal, after cats and dogs.



We toured an abandoned sawmill. Hazen was enthralled by the machines.

This was an amazing piece of scrimshaw. They let me take a picture of it. I think it is from a walrus tusk.

Hazen and I posing in beautiful Juneau just after Evan and Coroline's georgeous wedding.

Our bus driver did us a solid and stopped at the Mendenhall glacier lookout. That's it behind us. It's hard to see, but it was quite a sight.

Hazen took a glass blowing class in Skagway. He was the only one from our ship to take it, he had such a great time and made an awesome blown sculpture.

Hazen snapped this picture of me outsideo our cruiseship in Skagway. We were watching a distant glacier peaking over the mountain range and new birds.

I was facinated by this building. Our tour gide for the Ghost and Goodtime Girls tour told us that the park service bought this building for a whooping 2 million and it will take 10 years to fix it. It belonged to the town organizer Soapy Smith, it was the unofficial center of town. Soapy Smith ruled the town with an iron fist and pretty much made it what it was. He was pretty corrupt though and eneded up getting killed in a duel. Every year on the anniversary of his death, the town drink to his honor and then go pee on his grave.

Ahh.. our home away from home.

Dungeness crabs in Huna! They were huge, but we didn't eat them.

"Presenting the ship!" I was trying to hold it in my hand, but that never really works for me.
Here's a shot of our cruise ship while everyone is on deck while we are viewing the glacier. I got cussed at by a lady in french for taking this shot. Aparently, I was being rude by standing in her way, but she said some mean words in french and shoved me. Now who's being rude?


The Hubbard Glacier. After seeing this, I think everyone needs to see a glacier in their lifetime. It was indescribably beautiful. I could not stop taking pictures. See those tiny specks in the water at the foot of th glacier? Those are seals. This thing was huge!

Another shot of the glacier. This is not photoshopped folks. It looks even more stunning than this shot!

The sealife center in Seward Alaska. Warren suggested that we visit this place. We were not dissapointed. I got to take lots of shots of puffins. These were the only ones I saw on the trip.

Here's a puffin. Isn't he cute? They all thought I was going to feed them so they came swarming over to me. I could have spent all day with them.

We took a train from Seward to Anchorage where we caught our flight home. The train ride was spectactular! 4 hours of beautiful views and glaciers! We even saw some moose. I loved it.

Well, that's it. We had a great trip and saw some new birds. We had a wonderful time with friends and are looking forward to our next cruise to a warmer destination.

Magic Eyes!

I almost can’t believe that it’s happened! I had my Lasik surgery on Wednesday and it went fabulously!

I was nervous that I would get to the Lasik center and they’d tell me, “thank you, now please pay us $5,000 bucks on your way out the door”, but that never happened. I am stunned and amazed at how smoothly this process worked for me. It literally took all of 1 minute surgery time per eye to have to whole process done. First they use a special laser to create a flap of skin above your cornea by creating a layer of bubbles just under the skin. That’s seriously the scariest part because the suction they use to hold your eyeball in place while the laser works is just bordering on painful and then looking through the layer of bubbles is a lot like trying to see through wax paper. I had this small moment where I thought… well, I’m blind now! Then they walk you over to the other laser and use a device to hold your eyelids open. On the table, you lie down and stare at a green dot. The doctor pulls the flap of skin away from your eye and the green dot gets bigger… that was weird. Then the doctor told me that the laser was starting and in 30 seconds, it was done, repeat for second eye. That was it! I must have spent 5 minutes in the operating room. They gave me a pill to sleep it off and when I woke up the next day, I could see!!! It’s nothing short of a miracle! Unbelievable that something so very simple could do so much!

Since the surgery, my eyes have felt like I’m looking through old contact lenses. However, my eyes just continue to get better every day. I’m using a lot of special eye drops but every day as I wake up and have healed a little more the haze gets less and less and the world becomes even more clear and wonderful. It’s amazing how bright and crisp things are, it is different than when I was near-sighted. Wow… when I was nearsighted! What a fun thing to be able to say!

The rest of the trip was fun. Mari and Jeremy brought their little bird Maynard and I had a fun time playing with him. The wedding shower was only a little bit awkward, and it was great seeing the niece and nephews again, they are getting so big!

Now I’m looking forward to spending a few weeks at home before we head back to Cali for the wedding!

Here's me after the surgery and my doctor. They sent it to me in an e-mail. My eyes are numb, so I look pretty strung out.

Spring has... passed??

We went from freezing days to the near 90's in a matter of a week! I think we just skipped over spring and headed right into summer. The good news is that we seem to have planted our vegetables in time this year. We have a few tomato plants that are starting to put out flowers and the Columbine that I planted from seed last year and abused over the winter has decided that it wanted to bloom! I have these spectacular dark purple and white tube flowers, I'm just thrilled!

Hazen and I spent a long weekend with visitors from California down in Orlando. Since I've been in Florida, I have been to the Disney Parks 3 times, and always with the Californios. I guess I'm just not as loyal to the mouse as they are! My parents came over with my Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Taylor and their two youngest. We had a wonderful time casually strolling around the parks, taking in a few rides and shows, but mostly enjoying eachother's company. It was a fun weekend and it's always nice to see my family when I don't have a long plane ride just before and after. I'll take I-75 any day over LAX!

Still no sign of Musket. I made Hazen pull off the road the other day so I could examine a bird carcass that I thought could be a raptor, but turned out to be a very squished turkey. He says that he'll give me until Independence Day to be a spaz about the bird. Though I still keep my eye on the sky, It think it is starting to wear off now. I'm beginning to look forward to the next bird with eager anticipation.

We have a full summer ahead of us with two trips to California and one to Alaska, so there will be plenty of fun stuff to talk about in the absence of my normal obsession.

I love you all, thanks for reading! I promise more pictures soon!

Nowhere

It's been four days now and still no sign of Musket. Hazen and I have gone back and checked three times, but still nothing. As I drive, I have been scanning tree-tops and power poles to see if she'll show up. I haven't seen a red-tail since I let her go.

It's been unseasonably cold the past two days and the wind has blowing steadily. She probably got herself up onto a nice breeze and pushed out of the area. I'm a little sad that I haven't had a chance to see her again, with the cold, I'd really like to be sure she has a nice solid meal. I'll keep looking for her, but I feel my chances of seeing her slipping away with every day.

On another note, I took my first horseback riding lesson in 3 months. Meredith (the lady who owns the barn) has a new warmblood horse that she let me ride for the lesson. He's just huge and his trot is unbelievable! The gal I was taking the lesson with rode him once at a trot without her stirrups and she bounced right out of the saddle and on the ground. She refuses to ride him any more! I had a lot of fun with him, but I'm seriously saddle sore this morning... eesh!