Odds and ends

The weather has been just shitty lately and really screwing with my hawking. Wind is a problem for the Harris Hawks. We really haven't had much if any rain, just cloudy and windy.

The Deer of course have been driving me crazy, and I had hoped with car horns and a bit of bird shot, that I might be able to preserve enough of my hay to feed the horse through the winter. Unfortunately these deer are willing to do just about anything for Alfalfa, and any peace that I got was as short lived as their memory. Most generally aversion therapy is effective, but not this time. Time to get serious even if it does cause me a lot more problems.

We started the other day on a "hot wire" fence around the hay stack. Of course I had to wire some post together to make them tall enough that the Deer wouldn't be able to jump over the fence.

We put posts in on all the corners and as you can see doubled them in front to make them tall enough. We stretched three hot wires and I ran a new wire from the "fencer" that I could remove when I needed to get in there to get some hay down for the horse. Karen had gone on to wash windows as I was hooking it up. I asked her if she knew where the fence tester might be, as I wasn't sure if it was working. The fencer is one of the "Hot" ones that will do several miles of fence. The little indicator showed that it was doing pretty good, but I wanted to make sure. About that time I hear a "ZOT" like a lightning strike, and hear a YOWL!  A yellow streak with a really big fuzzed up tail, cut across the yard complaining about every other step. Our new cat, Tiger, likes to help with the chores and he carries his tail over his back. "Never mind" I told Karen, its working pretty good. Josie managed to get into it today, and it really snapped her, she disappeared too, no doubt blaming me.

I set up the trail cam, and had a video of a pretty spooked deer, but no action on tape.  There were some pretty deep tracks in the gravel leaving the area, so I know he got into the fence. There was only one visiting last night, but the herd has been hanging around all day and I am hoping to see some action tonight. They will probably eat all my fruit trees as retribution.

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Tami brought Meg over the other day to fly her here at the house. The Kestrel over there is really crabby and attacks her if he gets a chance. She saw the dogs and began an alarm call. Of course it didn't take long for Jasper to come see what was going on. Tami had an extra Starling with her, so I pulled some feathers and tossed it. Jasper took off after it and put it in by the wood pile. I flushed it and he grabbed it on the other side of the fence. That left us free to fly Meg without interference.

She has caught on to the fact that bagged birds seem to come from the area where I am and is paying pretty close attention to me, so I had put a coffee can out with a string on it to get the bags away from me. We were walking in that direction, and when she started flying to the gate, I pulled the string. The poor Starling didn't have a chance, the flight went about two feet and she had him. Oh well!

The mouse population seems to be at an ebb. Jasper seems to be having a tough time finding enough food to suit him, so when he showed up as I was doing chores. I tossed a dead Starling out in the car yard, and went into the shop to watch. He wasted no time in flying down and grabbing the Starling and flying off with it. I kept the dogs in the house to give him enough time to eat what he wanted. When we went back out, I didn't see him any where.

Karen and I took the Harris Hawks over to Arock in the hope that the wind would be a bit less over there. We spent a couple of hours walking around in the wind and rain trying to catch a Rabbit. Puddy finally got her feet on one, but it drug her through enough bushes that she lost her hold on every thing except a couple feet full of fur. We finally gave up and went home. As we were driving in Jasper got up out of the bushes by the driveway carrying his Starling. He had eaten all he could hold, and then stashed it for later. I gave him another this morning.

Tami called me this morning to help her with a male Redtail that had crawled into her Starling trap in an attempt to eat some of the birds trapped in there. He was apparently having trouble feeding himself as well. He was pretty skinny, but about all we could do was wish him well and better hunting.
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The wind finally died a bit this evening, so I called Tami, and took the Harris' over there for a short hunt before it got dark. There were a couple of new areas that I wanted to try to see if they were holding any Jacks.

In total we jumped only five Jacks and Yogi caught one of them just before it got dark.

 It has been so long since we were able to do any hunting that all my "rewards and tidbits" had gone bad, so I gave Yogi a Pigeon wing. I was able to tear off a front leg for Puddy.

It took Yogi a bit before she decided that it might be food after all.

Hopefully the weather will straighten up a bit, and we can get out some more. It is just a waste to try to hunt the Harris' in the wind.