Beginning conditioning.

It appears that there will be a hawking season this year. It is still very dry and almost none of the ponds have any water in them, but there will be hawking this year. It just remains to be seen what the quality will be. There is always the ditches for Jessie, who will be 10 this year. There appears to be a good number of Jacks this year, unlike 2013. We have about 15 that are helping with the lawn trimming. Last year I was afraid to kill even one Jack for fear of slowing the recovery of the species.

I picked up Jessie for the first time on Saturday. Her weight was about right at 835 grams. I just need to get her back in the groove of flying. After all she has sat for two years now without any real hunting. I put her on a creance to call her to the lure for her meal, and she did quite well. Of course she hates the hood, but that is normal. I let her eat her meal on the lure and then called her to the fist for the rest of her meal.

I picked up Yogi on Sunday, and Karen and I stood about 20 feet apart and took turns calling her back and forth to each other. She did very well when she discovered that there was a tidbit involved in each flight.

She is of course very out of shape, and didn't take long to land on the chimney to rest. She did quite well. Once she regains some of her normal strength she will be her normal rascally self.

Its been a fairly interesting year so far. We have hosted two fly-ins, which were a lot of fun. I did not work any this summer. The fires were such that they had enough crews to handle them without calling the company that I work for. That was good and bad, but I will live.

I seem to have a bit of "old age" creeping up on me. I have something wrong with my right foot, such as a bone spur, that is causing me a lot of pain when I try to walk. I have an appointment this Friday to get it checked out. It won't bother me with the falcon, but would be a serious problem with hawking Rabbits.