Dec. 9th - Snow day

Keeping Hope inside at night has slowed her weight loss enough that she did not lose enough weight to have much of a chance to catch anything today. We have about an inch of snow on the ground and she weighs 1000 grams today, so I didn't need a crystal ball to tell me that today was not going to be a serious hawking day. However I wanted to see how she does in snow, having never seen any before. If she gets on the ground with a Jack she is going to get very wet, as Harris Hawks have little water proofing in their feathers. I decided to make a short foray here at the house, avoiding as many of the Bunnies as I could, then feed her a maintenance amount of food. Then perhaps fly her Sunday, when the snow should be gone.

I again decided to wear the camera, the lighting is pretty subdued but you can still see what she is doing. I turned the sound on this time, so you can hear me wheezing as I walk. :-/

The extra weight had the effect that I expected. She is still willing, just not as able. The required amount of snap just isn't there. Compare the wing beat in the last video to this one and you will be able to see what I mean. It is this lack that will tell a handler what the high end of his hawks response weight really is. Today, she was too fat to hunt! However I felt what she would experience was worth the "wasted" effort.

If I had wanted her to catch something, I could have arranged for her to catch a Bunny. I don't consider Bunnies in this setting to be much of a challenge. It is of course different in the Willamette Valley, due to the terrain, and vegetation, as well as the Rabbits are different. The Eastern Cottontail was brought into the Valley long ago, and are very much different from our Brush Bunnies.

 
Not a lot of places for this one to go. Brick pointed him out to me yesterday, and he was there again today.

There is about three or four of these little guys living here in the wood pile and under the Pigeon house. There is little reason to kill them, besides I think they are really cute, and I enjoy seeing them.

https://vimeo.com/195027665   password- owyheeflyer

Dec 7th

I spent all afternoon yesterday rearranging the shop so that I could extend the night time perch for both Jessie and Hope. The weather is bone chillingly cold at night, and I don't want to leave Hope out in it.

This is the finished product. I am not all that happy with where I have to put it, but one does what you have to. If I had less stuff it would be easier. Hope was not used to a door swinging in her face so she tried to escape when I came in to take the picture. I weighed her and she was 974 grams. I tied her to her outside perch about 10 AM after it warmed up to 10 degrees.

I decided to wait until after Karen came back from the mail, and go over to a spot at the ranch that I wanted to try. I wanted to take the car as it leaves a lighter footprint on a muddy spot that I have to traverse to get to where I wanted to hunt. It is four wheel drive and does quite well in soft terrain.

I again picked her up around 1:45 PM and found that she had dropped another 10 grams. The area that I wanted to hunt is a bit further along on the back side of the Pothole field, which I think has been supplying water for the Jacks. Whether or not they require water, they still prefer to locate near it, and the grass that it encourages to grow.

Every time that I can hunt here at the ranch saves me 2 or 3 gallons of gas, Not to mention the reduction in time that it takes to get there and back. I prefer to not concentrate my hunts in one area to reduce the pressure that is put on the Jacks to a point that they do not feel so pressed that they relocate. The area that I have been hunting is just a small sliver of adequate cover. It is mainly Grease Wood, but it is good enough to hold a good number of Jacks. Then comes an expanse of bare gravel with a few clumps of Grease Wood scattered through it. Then an expanse of Alkali that nothing likes. The area that I wanted to try was on the other side of the Alkali and appeared to have some good cover. Not too heavy and not too thin.

I drove on from the spot that I normally hunt by a 1/2 mile or so, and began to see Jacks when we got out of the Alkali part of the field. I brought a video camera today and stuck it on the side of my head since there isn't any where else to put it. It appears that my head is either a bit sloped or the camera is crooked. Your choice. The video is a lot less than I would prefer, but as the saying goes, it is better than nothing.

The entire hunt took less than 8 minutes to a kill and a total of 20 minutes counting the time spent with her eating and walking back to the car.

https://vimeo.com/194752153   password   owyheeflyer

Dec 4th and 5th

While the 2nd dawned colorless, this morning made up for it, but it developed so fast that it was easy to miss.

When I first saw it, it was a bright fan of red light.

A well defined line on both sides, as it is on the left side.

By the time I returned with the camera the right side faded.

This series was taken one after another only taking the camera 

from my eyes only long enough to check my exposure.

While Hope was anxious to hunt, the wind was whipping. Even at this time of the morning it was evident that today would not be a hunting day. The wind at 2 PM was gusting to 41 MPH, with a steady 31 mile per hour wind.

5th of Dec.

The wind has died, and it is 12 degrees this morning. Hope sounds desperate, but I have resisted. She is out of the wind where she is perched, and I am quite sure that she has enough bulk to survive it.

I waited until the temps warmed up to 27 degrees before I went outside to pick her up. She weighed 964 grams. At least 3 ounces more than the day that I got her.

Today was mail day, so Karen needed the car, since the mail box is almost 7 miles away. I decided to hunt at the ranch. It has been about a week since I was last there.

On my way through the Ranch, Sam and Rosie were coming back from the corrals, so I stopped to catch up on current affairs. Sam informed me that a trapper had been working down by the airport and a couple of Golden Eagles had taken up residence there to feed on the Coyote carcasses. As I neared the area that I wanted to hunt one of them, a big young female, was sitting on the fence where I wanted to hunt. She flew upon my arrival and began circling overhead slowly gaining height. I waited about 15 minutes for her to gain enough height to leave the area before I took Hope out of the box. All I need is for her to catch a rabbit and then be in turn caught by an Eagle.

 Something had been going on there as there was a patch of Coyote fur scattered over a 10 foot area. Not sure how it came to be there, but it wasn't a trapper that was responsible for it, since they would have taken the hide.

I have noticed that the first 3 or 4 flights by Hope are the most dangerous for rabbits. She flies harder for the first 15 or so minutes, then slacks off a bit looking for a weakness before really going all out. She had two long range flights to get to the area that a Jack had jumped. On both of them she got up three or more times after the Jack before coming back to me. After the second long flight, a Jack jumped about 15 yards away. The close ones try to turn so sharp that she cannot keep up with them. If they can turn inside of her, then she has lost.

 This one however could not quite make that sharp a turn, and she pulled a double foot full of hair  out of his butt as she hit the ground, He pulled away, and she got up again and again pulled a big clump of hair out of him, but again wasn't able to get her talons in deep enough to secure him. She got up again and this time he avoided her a bit better,  she stayed on the ground after this miss.

The rabbits were not as plentiful as the last few times that we had hunted there. I tried further out, but there was little to no sign there, so I looped back towards the truck, and tried several tacks both further and every trick that I could think of, with little to no success. I decided to go further South to an area that is much more open and when I began hunting there, held few rabbits. I was toying with the thought that I would put her up for a while and perhaps check another area a bit further South around the fence. Apparently the Rabbits had moved there since I had been avoiding it the last few times I had hunted there.

Hope took off the perch towards a running Jack, then changed directions after another Jack that had jumped closer. They had gotten more than a hundred yards away, when she flared up in the air and then pounded down to the ground. This time with a lot more authority. The scream of a hurting Jack Rabbit floated back to my ears. I took off at my best speed to get there.

When I got there I was looking for the Rabbit, as they are generally somewhere trying to pull away from the Hawk. I looked around the bush to the left and couldn't see anything. He screamed again and then I saw the tip of his nose sticking up through the middle of the Grease Wood bush. That was a first!

Not sure if you can see it but there is a foot and a head in there.

I broke his neck. I circled the areas with red so that you could see how high in the bush he was.

It took a bit to get them untangled after I had killed the Jack. When I got them extracted, I gave her the rib cage from the last Jack that she killed, and put this one in my bag. She ate while I walked back to the truck. She finished the rest of the food that I had given her. I put her in the box, cleaned the Jack and saved the liver and the heart for her. I opened the box and gave it to her. She needed the vitamins and warm food.

This makes number 26 for her. When I cleaned the Jack at the house, I was surprised at the amount of fat that he had built up. They are ready for the winter.