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Good squirrel hawking with Farrah
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No, she didn't catch a squirrel. But it was fun. Farrah chased a squirrel for about a half hour. She was quick and responsive, no hesitating. She just got beaten. Harris's can be fun.
Off to a late start but I took Farrah out again this morning. It's possible we've been out 12 mornings in a row. This morning was mostly dull, especially the first hour. We kicked up one rabbit. I guess a good size cottontail. And that was the only chase we had in an hour. So it was a bit boring. It reminded me of a few of the things about falconry that bore me. Three come prominently to mind. The first is walking through the woods with a usually new apprentice with a fresh passage Red-tail who has no idea that the woods are full of squirrels. The second is having a bird who won't follow in the open field in which you have limited game. That results in no game caught and ruining a good hike. You can't really leave the bird up in the tree, you have to hang around and beat the bush in an area that isn't very productive. I got a lot of that from Farrah this morning. I have to reteach her and she needs to teach herself how to hunt rabbits again. One thing I noticed with
This was another typical squirrel outing with Farrah. If she really wanted to catch squirrels, she could shame Cisco into retirement. Her maneuverability in the trees, her ability to fly almost straight up, and her skipping up vines, make her a potentially deadly squirrel buzzard. She has some downsides. Her footing is sloppy, and her grip is not quite what Cisco's is. Cisco is not the most powerful Red-tail I've encountered by far. His grip is respectable but not close to the crushing grip I've seen on a couple of others. And Farrah doesn't quite match him from what I can tell. Farrah gets to the squirrels and can get her feet on them with little effort when she wants to. But about the time you think she's going to grab one, she'll drift off. She's been bitten enough. Cisco catches an order of magnitude more squirrels almost exactly. And it isn't because I don't expose Farrah to squirrels as much, which I don't. It really doesn't make too mu
I have the birds at the weights that I want them at this point. They both molted quickly with nice feathers coming in and the old one's dropping off fast all summer. But the last little bit is taking longer. I fed them a little bit light during the trip out here; the decrease in their input may have triggered something in their bodies. They're both doing fine. Farrah has not molted a single feather since we were in Houston. Cisco dropped a a few more on the trip. He actually got a little bit low on the trip out. Not dangerously, but lower than he's been in a pretty good while. He dropped a few feathers since early August when I left. Not surprising that he's lagging a Bay-winged Hawk in his molting speed. I'm deliberately keeping them about an ounce over hunting weight, but I'm feeding them everyday, which means something completely different from being an ounce over hunting weight on alternate days hunting season feedings, After every hunt, each bird gets a cou
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