25th of June,2022, Interesting times!

 It has been interesting to say the least, very troubling would be more accurate. Covid was a mess, but I, and all the ones that I care about escaped it. The political situation however has impacted all of us more than necessary, with the blunt club of "Climate change". In an attempt to force all of us to change to electricity, which the infrastructure cannot support at current levels.  I am sorry that I even have to mention politics, but it has affected all that I do.  Gas for my plane currently is $6.45 a gallon. I can only quote "Lets go Brandon!"

It has been an interesting spring. We had no moisture other than the snows that caused a few interesting days. It didn't snow all that much, the wind just rearranged it in interesting patterns and places. Then in May it began raining. Not hard, just continued to lightly rain most every day. It did wonders for the country, the grass and mostly the weeds grew like crazy. Not hard enough to fill all the ponds in the back country, but it helped at least get some water in them. The entire month of May as well as the first part of June were cool and rainy. I cannot see any fruit on any of my Apple or plum trees. As a consequence of the weather, I have read more library books than any winter I can remember. Bless the "Library of Eastern Oregon", an online library. Now it appears with the fuel prices, I will again be reading a lot of the time.

During one of the "cool" nights, I found this guy out in the open to try to recharge his system in the weak Sun. A very hansom and robust specimen of Horned Toad.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=oregon+horned+toad&form=QBLH&sp=-1&pq=oregon+horned+toad&sc=1-18&qs=n&sk=&cvid=ACAEDE2FFE8E471EB51D8C6EFB0EB0E8&ghsh=0&ghacc=0

They are a bit hard to see.

Just as I got the weeds cut down in my garden and rotor tilled it so that I could put in some plants, The Mormon Crickets made their first appearance here at the house.

https://www.bing.com/search?q=mormon+crickets&qs=HS&sk=HS3&sc=8-0&cvid=D1890871820445F193F774895F10CDD8&FORM=QBLH&sp=4

According to the above link they can take up to five years to hatch, but I have not seen them here, and I have lived here since 2006. 

This is something that you have to experience, words cannot convey how many of them there are. They turn the roads brown just from the squashed bodies. They seem to tend to travel in the same general direction, so my hope is that they will move out of my area soon. On my walk this morning they were all walking North. Since the creek is only about200 yards to the South of me, perhaps they will soon move out of my garden.

I did go fishing for the first time in last week. The trail down to the River was really rough as could be, but the fishing was good. The water was low enough that there was a strip of land to stand on. I took my fishing buddy, Sue, with me. No one had fished the spot that I like, and it took no time at all to have more fish than we needed on our stringers.

I kept enough for three meals out and buried the rest in my garden for the plants that I intended to put in the garden.

Thursday my friend J.Bickham, arrived with his two grandkids. They had been to a fly-in in the Idaho back country and were on their way back to New Mexico. It was nice, but they didn't stay long enough.

Its likely to be a quiet summer! Hopefully yours will be better.

The first decent day all year

 Mike Armstrong, a pilot that I helped in 2020 ( I believe) called me and wanted to get an idea of the weather on the Alvord. He had a friend with a T Bird ( Lite sport) plane that he wanted to learn to fly. Well the weather was miserable for the next three weeks after that. He called again last Wenesday and upon checking the forecasts, he decided to come this weekend for their attempt.

I have not flown since September due to my need to fly Bud. While he didn't manage to kill anything, he was at least sticking around, in fact on one of his trips he flew a big circle around the outside of the Ranch for about 30 minutes, then went home. Leaving me out in the field like a spurned lover.

 Starting a Falcon is not at all like starting a Hawk. A Hawk will be hitting on all cylinders within  a month or it will never be worth anything. A Falcon takes at least three years to reach its full potiential. I was content that Bud had stuck around for his first year. Actually a long time out would be beneficial for both of us.

 By then I had burned all the nonethynol gas that I spockpiled when Biden was installed in office, so my incentive to fly was almost non-existant. In Sept all the junk in my left eye had broken loose and my vision was miserable. I couldn't see a falcon anything over 400 feet in the air. There was no question that I wasn't fit to fly.The plane gathered dust all winter. I had a gas leak somewhere and it was dripping off my tail boom. At the last fly-in, Roger helped me take the tanks out and inspect them. They seemed to be ok, so we re-installed them. I still had the leak! The only thing left was a "gascolater" that was supposed to seperate the water from the gas. I had built it from PVC fittings, and glued it together with standard PVC glue. I assumed that it was seeping gas through the seams. Well, it did not. It appears that one of the tanks have a small crack somewhere. So in essence I really didn't care if I flew or not. I find that a unsettling thought.

Mike, I was sure, needed some support.  I needed to go to the Alvord! I of course had two choices, I could either fly the 80 mile trip, or I could drive, take three times longer and put in 160 mile trip. I chose the plane as I wanted to paint the pool while the weather was good. I could also see again, so a flight was the only thing that made sense.

Toby Parker had dropped by after spending the weekend at a Hot Springs about 40 miles south of me. He decided that he would stop by the Alvord as well before going home.

I forgot to charge the batteries on my Virb camera, so it quit on the return trip. I noticed when I edited the video, the Garmin program that I use for the main cut of the raw video has developed a twitch in its programming. I questioned as to whether or not to attach it to the blog, but even though you may have seen the same scenery many times before, some of you may be as forgetful as I, and enjoy it anyway.

  https://vimeo.com/710548610 I don't think that it requires a password but if it does its - owyheeflyer

After remembering to switch the gas selector to an actual tank, the plane roared to life, I warmed it up and departed for the Alvord. 

In the early years I had entertained the idea of buying a T Bird for my first plane, but decided that it wasn't sturdy enough or have the performance that I required. I am very glad that I did so. It was very flimsy and almost impossible to put together. The owner asked me if I was interested in flying it. I had no problem in telling him that I would decline.

                                                                                  Mike Armstrong

He had been taxxiing it but had never lifted off. This time he did manage to take it off the ground, much to our surprise and dismay. Mike's as well my heart rate went up quicker than the plane. He flew around for about 10 minutes, then, as he made a right turn the wing dropped, touched, which slammed the body of the plane down breaking off a wheel. Ending up with bent tail supports. He was unhurt, at least physically. However its tough to crash your dream. Mike had no problem at all with his Mark 3. I saw him safely in the air, and headed on home.   

I tried to fly over the plane with my virb to give you a picture, but the battery was dead, so this long range shot is all I have.

The boundry Hills on the East end of the Alvord

A departing shot of the Steens

I got all my stuff together and started spraying on the new pool paint. Imanaged to spray one coat on and after a bit roll a coat on the bottom of the pool. Of course thunder heads were building all afternoon. It did not rain however. I will let it dry for a couple of days then begin filling it for the summer.

Yesterday morning after an early morning walk, Josie was panting up a storm. I decided that it was time for her haircut. It looked like I had been shearing Sheep when I finished. I was thinking of quitting for the day as she was getting pretty tired of holding still, and while I was considering it, she had decided that I was finished, and left me standing there with the clippers.

Today, (tuesday) I took Nikki to Burns to the vet to get her spayed. I left her at the Vets at 8 am, went shopping, had lunch with my dear friend, Pat and her mother. Gathered up Conie's three cats, then Nikki and made our way back home. I may never get all the cat hair out of my car. One cat on my shoulder another at my right arm on the center console, the other under my feet, and Nikki in a cat kennel.

This particular post is a hodgepodge of a bit of every thing. Months of nothing at all, and with a little sunshine things go to overdrive in one heart beat. I dithered for a couple of days trying to decide if I wanted to bother you with all this. Still not sure its worth while at all.

May 11, 2022

 To say the least it has been a long, protracted winter. With a lot more inaction than anyone would want or need. While it did not get all that cold, only one or two days of below zero weather. Still it has been a constant misery.

I eventually had to take Hope out of the weathering area with Bud. He was teaching her bad habits that she didn't need. His habit of bating wildly at the end of his leash soon convinced her that I was someone to fly away from. The sweet girl that I had previously taken so much pride in, had changed to a bating pain in the ass every time I had to pick her up for a night in the shop. So I set about another plan to help her survive the winter winds of the High Desert. The current thinking is that Harris Hawks  are not able to survive the northern winters. I did think so myself, but am revising that assumption. I have always felt that it was wind that was the primary problem. Its true that their feathers are more suited to high desert heat, but with enough food for fuel and a way to get out of the wind, they should be able to manage.

I am sure that there are few of you that actually understand fully the reality that Raptors are not pets. Their interactions with humans consists of need rather than affection. We keep them in peak physical condition to acheive their best results. To do that it is necessary to find their best hunting weight, and keep them on or near it when we are handling them. Each spring they need to molt their feathers, and to do that is dependant on the hours of sunlight and a heavier weight, as it takes energy to grow new feathers. More weight than what is required to be a "sharpset" hunter. They do not molt until they have the excess energy to grow these feathers and if they are deprived of food long enough to do that, the molt stops and the feathers get "ratty", leaving them unable to fly well enough to capture food. In essence if their weight is high enough to molt, that dependance is gone, and the last thing that they want, is have you messing with them. If the molt is interrupted by fright or border line starvation, it will take up to two or three weeks for them to start dropping feathers again. So it is my practice to not handle them any more than absolutely necessary during the winter.

I began with the mews by blocking and insulating the window in her chambers that faces the West, from which the wind always blows. I ran an electric cord to the mews and wrapped her inside perch with a 20 foot heat tape, then covered it with a felt cover, I also left a 12 inch space so that she could either sit on the covered tape or near it which ever she preferred. I also began feeding her all she would eat, as energy produces heat. I checked her each morning to see how she was faring. She seemed to be all right, even though she was spending the nights outside on her perch in the attached 6x6 weathering area.

                                        

Finally after finding her sitting outside when the temp was 4 degrees, I decided that I needed to do more. I clipped a 100 watt light reflector over the top of the perch. That seemed to do the trick. She would sit out till it got dark, then fly inside to the perch. She did very well all the rest of the winter, with the added bonus of being triggered to begin her molt earlier due to the 24 hour light cycle.

After getting my cataracts removed in December, the junk in my left eye did not change. It was like having several layers of plastic over my left eye. I began trying to get the VA to refer me to a specialist that could clear that stuff out. I use the VA for my health care, and it saves me a bunch of money, but they are convoluted and sometimes very trying to deal with. It took till April to get all the hoops jumped through, and on the 10th of May they finally completed the surgery. Basically they made three incisions in my eye, and vacuumed the crap out of it. When they closed they put an air bubble in the eye to keep everything in place and keep the pressure normal.( I am guessing at the reason)  The bubble got smaller and smaller every day, finally disappearing completly yesterday evening. My vision is now great, only needing glasses to read. It was pretty scary for me, but the results are worth it.

After spending a mostly dry winter, April and so far May have been really nasty. Wind constantly, sleet and icy rain. We had two snow storms yesterday that eventually melted off. So much that I had to sweep off the satelite dish. I am still burning fire wood for the first time since moving here. Glad I had extra. The bonus is that the grass and flowers have begun to grow. The hills are as green as I have ever seen.

Bud is doing well. He has begun his molt as well. He will be quite pretty when he is done, a bit darker than I originally thought. He still bates when he thinks that I might be coming for him, but will sit and watch as the riding lawn mower roars by his enclosure without batting an eye.

I did add a new critter to the menagerie. A little (now) bob tailed female kitten. I call her Nickie, and she is both a pain and a blessing. She has an appointment with the vet for the 17th to be spayed. 

She is as cute as they get, and still has frequent boughts of the "wild eyed rip arounds". Loves the dogs and they love her. She is very affectionate and goes every where I go, at least in the house.

Yes, she goes there too! 

The weather is due to clear up a bit next week, so perhaps I will be able to roll the plane out to see if I still know how to fly. Then I will have to try to figure out how to pay for the gas to power it. "LETS GO BRANDON"!

First post of the year.

 Sometime in either October or early November a chunk of crap broke loose in my left eye. I might add, my only good eye. My right eye was lasered in the 90's when Karen was set up for an operation to remove a growth on her liver. I stressed out and ruptured a vessel. They sealed it with the lazer, but it left me with very reduced vision in it. It was also distorted, with peoples faces looking more like a "political" cartoon.

I went to a specialist and found that it was more of a nuisance than serious. The specialist recommended that I get my Cataracts removed and give the junk time to settle. Then if it did not settle he said that he could suck it out in the spring.

I was set up to have the first cataract removed on Dec 13, and the second on the 21st. Of course one of the restrictions was to lift no more than 20 lbs for the month of healing. Unfortunately my winter wood supply arrived 4 days before my operation. I had already got and split 2 1/3 cords of wood, and this was my second load that would finish out my winter wood needs. I got most of it split and stacked. Connie came down and helped me finish the rest of it on the day before my procedure. The procedure went well.

The weather turned cold - single digits at night, so I brought Hope in from her mews and tied her up with Bud in the weathering area. Hope is a Desert bird and thus has no real defense against zero and minus temps. I wrapped a heat tape on her inside perch, but she wasn't going in at night. Spending the nights sitting on her outside perch, leaving me no recourse but to tie her up so that I could take her in the shop at night. She was carrying extra weight, but I had no way of knowing if that was enough so that she would be able to keep her toes.

My first procedure was to my bad eye, and the new lens improved it a lot more than I would have thought. Then just before Christmas we got about 8 inches of snow. Snow here generally does not last more than a couple of days. We had a storm blow through and we got a lot of serious wind, that caused a few drifts around the house. Connie had to go home to take care of some of her business. She had a rental car, due to an accident earlier with her normal car. She loaded up and was going to make a run home , then come back before Christmas. She took off and in just a few minutes called me telling me that she was stuck on a snow bank. The road was drifted about 3 feet high along the side of the gravel pit. It had compacted to the consistency of wet cement. There she was just like a "post turtle", little wheels turning but not touching anything at all. I went up with the Subaru, went around her out in the Sage and tried to pull her off with a nylon rope that I had used before to jerk a tractor out of a ditch in Klamath falls. The rope was ideal as I could get a run at it, and the stretch of the rope would keep me from ripping any thing off. I eventually broke the rope, she never moved!

At first it was kind of romantic and nice

to have snow for Christmas

Then the wind came up and it started drifting.

I was still under weight restrictions, but I still

had to get wood for the fire, not to mention shovel 

some paths.

Dave from next door eventually brought a tractor up and pulled her off the drift. I checked my old John Deere tractor, but the wheel had rusted out since I had last used it. Out came the quad with my four foot snow plow blade. I spent the rest of the day breaking the many drifts apart so as to make the road passable.

Christmas day we traveled to Meridian Id. to have dinner with a friend of Connie's. We left pretty early after dinner but the weather worsened with each mile home. It had drifted again and anything other than my Subaru or a truck wouldn't have made it down the road. It was touch and go, but we made it, threw a log on the fire, went to the hot tub, then to bed.

I again spent the day trying to clear the road of the, this time, frozen wet snow. Again it took most of the day to punch a hole in the 3/4 mile driveway. I was sure glad that I had that plow for my quad.

With all the crap going on I never picked Bud up again. There was no way to get to any place to hunt with him because of the snow, and quite frankly I am happy enough to have him survive the year. We will begin again next year.

This development has worked well for my friend Bruce Haak. He has no hunting opportunities where he is at, so he brings his falcon 130 miles to my house to hunt. Have I ever mentioned that this drought has made it very difficult to find something to hunt one's Hawk on.

The weather is pretty typical for this time of the year and we are in the midst of a temperature inversion, meaning that the outside temperature and the dew point are close together, so its foggy. It did lift high enough that we could fly his falcon today. She did kill a Spoonbill Duck, a rare visitor to this area, today. She was getting pretty hard to see at what I decided was around 600 feet up.

I found it a bit strange, Spoonies have a green wing panel,

 but I could not get it to show up with the camera phone.

Right now there isn't anything much going on so its hibernation time, warm fires, good books, spring will come soon.

    

My Christmas Card to you

 I know that I have not been keeping the chatter of the blog going, but really there has been nothing worth wasting your time with. So I will at least use this occasion to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and to hope that things will be better this next year. However being a curmudgeon at heart, I have my doubts that the next few years will do much that will make things easier for us all.

First a couple of Sun Rises for you.

I put Hope up for the year about the middle of November. Bud was teaching her bad habits since they were tethered within sight of each other. He is still throwing a fit every time that I go to pick him up. Then when on the fist he is so sweet that butter wouldn't melt in his beak. Hope however never saw that side of him. I am sure that she thought I either was or should have killed him as soon as we were out of witness range.

 There was nothing to hunt her on without expending a ridiculous amount of fuel to get to a field that held a few Jacks. You need to understand that the nearest 4 + dollar fuel was about 120 miles round trip. I also began to worry that I was destroying two litters of Jacks that could have been born next year each time we actually caught an adult this year. So Hope is out in one of the enclosed mews with a heat tape perch to keep her feet warm.

I found that I misnamed Bud. I should have called him Corrigan, as in "Wrong way Corrigan" . (For those too young to know, look the name up on Wicci.) Every time that I put him in the air, he manages to be in the wrong place at exactly the right time, every time. Of course the Ducks do not help either as none of the ones that we have seen so far are interested in committing suicide.

It is true that he seems to think that Ducks are an interesting distraction, but he knows that I will feed him some delicious Quail just as soon as I get tired of his screwing off. I am afraid that I have been too soft on him.

This too is self inflicted of course. There is a "trueisim" that points out that "one must be smarter that the "shit" he is working with." Unfortunately I seem to forget that on occasion. Jessie was mistrustful of me in that she was always convinced that I secretly was plotting to steal her food. This was brought about by a clumsy incident where in I was paranoid about her actions after she had fed fully on a Pheasant. I was attempting to secure her jesses with a leash, and she decided that I was taking her food. She never forgot it in the 15 years that I had her. So to make sure that Bud didn't have that same problem I haven't let him fully feed on the bagged game that he has caught. I have let him chew on the neck, drink all the blood that he wants as well as feed on the brains of the victims, but he much prefers Quail, and thus is in a hurry to leave the Duck for them. As a consequence, Bud is only playing with his food.

A friend of mine, Bruce Haak, came over from Eagle Id. to fly his 12 year old Peregrine. Its been a slow year for every body, as the Northern Ducks really haven't moved all that far out of the North yet because of the mild weather that we have been having. Encroaching civilization has also inflicted a blow to hawking in Southern Idaho, and they are having problems to find fields that they are able to hunt.

His 12 year old Peregrine tends to fly really high, and that is a problem in that the places that I have to hunt. They are covered in little swampy braided creeks very close to the ponds that hold the Ducks. If she takes the pitch that she prefers, the Ducks can get to the swamps and creeks before she can get down to where they are. When Jessie flew these areas she took a 350 foot pitch that allowed her to smack her prey down on dry ground.

Today we had a sharp West wind of about 12 MPH and his bird stayed about 550 feet up. All the other puddles were frozen today, so there was about 30 Mallards on the "lake". She missed her first flush, but there was still about 15 Ducks on the lake. She flew off down wind to remount and when she came over the lake this time the Ducks flew in to the brisk West wind, and she took a Hen Mallard out of the flock.

Bruce fed her the legs and back of the Duck and gave me the 

rest to feed Bud.

Bud has been a pain to pick up, and I should have flown him yesterday, but he threw such a fit that I did not pick him up or feed him yesterday. So today he came to the fist, rather than throw his usual fit, so I gave him the rest of the Duck to eat, rather than his usual Quail. Hopefully he will look upon the next Duck that he sees in his sights with a slightly more interested attitude. I think the high today was just above freezing, and the rest of the week will be the same. I look forward to a more serious attitude towards getting to eat the next time we go out.

I am set up to began Cataract surgery on Monday, and I will get the other eye done on the 21st. So Hawking will suffer a bit for the rest of the month. Normally I would quit by Christmas.

Have a great Christmas and New year

This Sunset will have to be my Christmas gift to you.

May God bless you all!

Nov 21, 2021

 To make a long story a little less tedious,  Nothing much has improved this last week. I still haven't been able to get him a clean shot at a Duck. Its not from a lack of trying. I have come to the conclusion that he is better suited to a heavier weight than I have been flying him at. Sometimes it can take a bit to figure out what weight a bird flies best at. Yesterday I choose to not fly him because his weight was 830 grams, so I just took him along with Connie and I as we walked the runway. He does really well as long as he can't see the dreaded hood.

I forgot to close the Pigeon door last night, so there were no Pigeons in the loft. I had nothing to use to keep him in a position to actually catch a duck. I had taken him over to the Ranch for two different days to see if we could get him overhead, high enough to actually get a good chance at a Duck. The wild variety fly a lot differently than even the best pen raised Duck. The ducks that we flushed for him were almost all Mallards, but there has always been at least one "diving duck" to pull him away from the Mallards. It takes a bit more confidence than Bud has  at the moment to fly into a flock of birds. Imagine yourself going into a crowd of guy's and ripping one of them out. So- he has never been high enough to have enough time to close the distance on a Duck before they dive into a canal or puddle somewhere.

With no pigeons, I am left with just feeding him,  flying him on the drone, or take a chance.  You see, one needs to have something for the falcon to chase, so if there are no Ducks, then you toss a pigeon so that the lesson is not wasted. You want them to understand that you are where things are happening, and to keep close to you, because things to kill tend to show up where you are. 

 I eventually decided that there was a possibility I could do both. Connie was still here, so I talked her into going with us. she could go home after we were done. His weight today was at my goal of 800 grams. He was 802 grams.

I brought the drone in and programmed it for 675 feet above he ground. I thought that would give me time to put the drone up, pick up Bud, and release him to climb to the drone, while I got in position to flush Ducks, if there were any, before he could climb to 675 feet.   I put the drone up, and Connie tells me that he got excited when he heard the drone motors starting. I put it up as high as I could, then went to get him. I turned him loose  and hurried to get in position. He definitely knows what is next when he hears the drone. He flashed off the fist without looking around, and started climbing.

I  had only to walk about 75 feet to be where I needed. I double timed it to get in position. I looked around and he was way the hell up there and coming towards my position. I ran for the pond, which turned out to be totally empty of Ducks. I stopped to see what he was doing, and I could already see the parachute following him down to the ground. Shit!!!! He had grabbed the thing before I got even close to the pond.

However it actually worked out for the best. He got to show me how strong his flight really is, as well that his weight needs to be higher than I have been flying him at. You see, too heavy and he goofs off, too light and he doesn't want to fly. I think that I can trust him to not go anywhere other than home. 

When he grabs the lure, he does not try to land any where close to me, but he does want cover from other predators.So I start tracking him with my new receiver. I located him in another pasture filled with Greasewood. I start rolling up the dropper line, while he was eating his Quail leg. Before I could finish he was at my ankle looking up wondering when I am going to offer him the rest of his meal. At least he has one admirable trait.

I think that I am going to work this type of combo flight and see if we can make it work out. You see I have had a lot of attempts at falcons and the one thing I have learned it is that it not hard to teach them to fly low. Once they do, it is almost impossible to get them to take any decent height. They need to be high enough to command the field, but close enough to get to them before they get to another puddle of water.

He is quite capable of flying as high as I could desire, and even more, but it isn't hard to screw that up with the wrong rewards too often. I was blown away at how fast he grabbed the lure today.

A Sunset for you, then-

 Here is the moon rise.

Progress

 I've been going back and forth all evening concerning writing about Bud's progress. Of course I have reexamined the events of the day many times. Although there really isn't anything all that noteworthy about his training other than his tendency to throw a shit fit every time I pick him up from his perch or reach for his hood. The interesting part is that he hasn't allowed that hatred to cause him to "run away from Home". I marvel each time I see this performance. Once the hated hood is stowed away, all his animosity goes away as well.  I have never seen behavior of this type in all my time with raptors. One would never believe that anything that acted like that would ever voluntarily return to the fist that caused such an outburst. Yet he does. Once the hood goes away, he is as sweet as a raptor ever gets. Today we went through the same thing, only with a bit more vocals this time. When he turned over from his fit he grabbed the tidbit off my fist on the way up. He knows that it is always there, so he looks for it. Another contradictory action on his part. He should sulk or continue to act up. He does not, he is fine through the weighing and right up to the time I reach for the hood. Then we start again.

After his "homing" episode, it occurred to me that I had missed a vital part of his preparation before exposing him to wild game. Generally it wasn't necessary with the other falcons that I have trained. They automatically hung around me when they were released, so it was back to basics. 

The basics involved the balancing act of allowing him to fly, hoping that he would also gain altitude, yet stay within range of me. I want him to get up in the sky, but not so far that he can't get to the game before it has reached a point that it can go to cover, or back in the water to escape. You would think that in an area that normally has uninterrupted visibility of roughly 100 miles, it wouldn't matter. Besides cover there are other factors such as Coyotes, and especially, Golden Eagles. Lets face it, I am an old fat senior citizen, my running days are long gone. I can shuffle a bit however, just not far. Both of the mentioned critters would be quite happy to add Bud and his prey to their rather skimpy menu.

When he went home, I had expected him to come back over at some point in time, but he didn't get within a mile of me the whole time he was playing with the Red Tails and the Golden. So the next day I caught up all of my "homing" pigeons as well as a fresh Duck, and went to the pasture of the ranch next door. The first day I tossed a new Pigeon out every time he began to stray a bit. Then when he happened to blunder close to me I tossed the Duck which he caught and killed.

The day before yesterday I went with only two Pigeons, and a Duck. This time he kept his circles a bit closer to me and when he began to work his way up, ( it was too early for thermals) I tossed the Duck and he caught it. Since the Duck weighs more than him by a considerable amount, I have tried to shield him from too bad of a "wing whipping" when I can. This time for whatever reason he wasn't all that anxious for me to get in there, so he turned it loose. He quickly grabbed it again after it had gotten  out of my range, so I left him to sink or swim. For the first time he broke its neck. I stayed back and let him feed, mostly he picked at it and drank some of the blood flowing from the Ducks neck wound. He really doesn't like the taste of Duck much more than I do, so he kept a close eye on what I was doing, and after a bit I tossed the lure down between us. He automatically started then stopped. I didn't move and eventually he grabbed the Duck around the neck and drug her over to his lure, apparently just in case. After he finished the quail leg on the lure, he jumped to the fist for the rest of his meal, abandoning the Duck.

The Quail that I have are pretty big and actually were getting old enough to begin egg laying, thus they are pretty fat. He will gain weight on a whole quail, so I didn't feel that I should fly him yesterday. I had to go pick him up to weigh him, and of course we went through the whole fit again, so I made him sit with me while I was cleaning up at the wood shed. Mostly I just sat with him, enjoying the unseasonably warm afternoon watching the fire of the burning wood scraps, bark and such. He studies me when we sit, I think trying to understand what I am doing, and why. He seem to be especially curious about the hat that I habitually wear. Perhaps why I wear it without jumping up and down screaming curse words, but then again perhaps I am assigning human traits to him. Apparently neither one of us understand what motivates the other.

Today he was at what I guess to be the proper weight, so I only took two Pigeons with me. I also left the dogs at home, which didn't make either of them happy. A little side story is warranted at this point. Brick, my male Brit. has begun to "register" his displeasure of being left out of the hunt, by tearing up the paper towels that I have set aside for fire starting. I come home from one of these trips to find that (most assuredly Brick, rather than the much smarter female, Josie) the paper towels that might have a bit of former food smears, torn to little pieces scattered around the dining room. I have only to stop and hold his gaze and he slinks off to his bed to hide. I have stuffed his mouth full of the paper and scolded him a couple of times to little avail. Four days ago I set a mouse trap with peanut butter on top of the full paper garbage basket. The paper and the trap has been untouched. Today when I returned one little piece of paper was on the floor, but the trap is still unsprung. He isn't dumb by any measure.

There is a little pool of water in one of the lots where they keep the horse herd some times. The lot is full of Greasewood. The Ducks like to rest in it through the middle of the day when they are not feeding. This was my destination today. I turned Bud loose, and this time he looked around to see just where he was before he took off. 

One of the problems at this point is that it is easy to fix a low height as the desired goal at this stage of his training. One of my friends is disappointed if his falcon can be seen without the aid of binoculars while it is waiting on. I tend to feel that it is some sort of "compensation" :-), I want to have the bird high enough that it can catch the prey before it gets to cover and I like to see the entire flight, not just the last few seconds of it. So for me 300 feet is enough with the desired height of no more than 500 feet. If I serve him too soon, then, I might fix him to 150 feet.

Today he stayed around when I turned him loose. I had two Pigeons that can and have out flown him before, just in case. He began to get a bit of altitude, and the next time he came over me, I flushed the pond. There were 6 Mallards and a couple of diver Ducks, which are smaller. I watched the Mallards and he apparently chased one of the other ones. One of the smaller ones came back to the pond, rather than share the sky with him. I did get to see him dive at a Duck at the Barn puddle. He then came back towards me. I waited until the Duck that came back abandoned the pond and started into the heavy Sage around the pond. I threw a rock at him, and he flew with Bud right on his tail. He again dived into the Sage with Bud "throwing up" enough to clear the Sage. Bud then came around and went on foot looking through the Sage for him. He didn't find him, so I tossed out the lure. He came right to it, and eventually to the fist after he finished the leg tied to the lure.

I have to admit that Bud excites me- a lot! Today was the first day that Bud has found out that bagged Ducks and wild ones are a lot different. He is tenacious and tough. He has the ability to out fly anything other than a Gyrfalcon, and they are very scarce here. I have only seen one other falcon that was bold enough to crawl through Sage and briers looking to kill a bird bigger than she was, that was Jessie. So once he learns the game, he will be formidable.

We will see what tomorrow brings.