Peg got to spend the whole day yesterday thinking about why she was so hungry. When I put her to bed she weighed 714 grams. This morning she had only lost 7 grams. This tells me that she doesn't have any more fat to lose, only muscle. Not where I want to be, but where she will find herself if she doesn't get serious.
When I went to pick her up, just after daylight, she was sitting on the edge of the ledge as usual, anxious to get picked up. I normally pick her up from the ledge and put her back on the block to remove her leash. I then offer her a tidbit, and take her to the scale. When I take her off that I give her another tidbit. This morning she was so anxious that she jumped on the fist before I could get a tidbit. She knows which hand gets it out of the bag and I was a bit concerned that she was going to go directly to the tidbit rather than wait on the glove. I didn't give her one, and she looked at my bare hand, then at the fist, then she looked me in the eye as though to say, "What the heck is going on"? She has never done that before. I laughed at her all the way to the truck. She did get her tidbit however.
We went to Arock this morning, because there are more Jacks there, than at Danner. I really wanted her to catch a Jack if she could, and actually, she has a better chance at Jacks than at Bunnies. The little rascals are fast and don't stay above the ground very long. I really needed her to catch something today as her cut up food is beginning to spoil, not to mention I needed a boost and she needed some positive reinforcement.
I told a falconer friend that if she wasn't my hawk, I wouldn't waste the time in the field, and in all actuality she is pretty dismal at this point in her life. It takes a lot of time, failures and disappointment at this stage of her life to become a proficient hunter and to reach her full potential. He said "Nobody's are worth the trouble to go watch in September!!!!!! In September you need to focus on making sure that you can provide spectator sport in November!" He is right of course, and I have been putting a lot of miles on the truck to get her to the spot that I think will give her the best possible chance. One of my fields is 82 miles round trip the closest is 62 miles.
We started our hunt by going where I knew a Bunny lived, in the hopes that she would be able to put something together. Today was a desperate day. I really needed her to kill something today, other wise she could get discouraged and rather than get better, give up. I didn't need that at all. So much of the process of entering a Hawk to game and hunting relies on just plain good luck. Sometimes it happens, often it does not. How good the bird ends up, depends on this phase of its life. If the falconer makes it too easy on them, they can end up lazy. Too difficult, and they can quit trying. It is a thin line that you walk and requires maximum effort and attention to detail. There are lots of areas that have rabbits here, but not in the right type of terrain, right size of sage and especially the amount of rabbits for luck to actually give you any kind of an edge. You have to jump a lot of rabbits to find one that will make the right type of mistake so that a bumbling novice hawk can actually take advantage of the situation.
This area has a lot of that gnarly Lava that is full of holes, crevices and cracks, that the Bunnies really like. Curly was down by the road and Karen was a bit behind us. Peg was on her Tee Perch being carried by me. Karen yelled "Bunny coming at you". I turned and Peg started after the bunny, which dodged her and ran at me. I jumped forward trying to turn him back with the tee perch. I snagged my left foot on a piece of sage and could not recover. My left hand went into a badger hole, and I banged my right temple on a nice soft piece of lava. I think the ear piece of the frame of my glasses saved me from a nasty cut. There is a ding on the titanium frame. I saw them fall down in the hole along with a nice display of stars. While I was hanging in the hole with half of my body below the surface, the thought crossed my mind," Well my days of grace and poise are behind me, its all down hill from here".
Curly was helping me retrieve my camera.
I ended up with a small raspberry on my temple, and banged both knees. Of course the damage to my self esteem and pride are not measurable. When I was a kid in W.Va. I could run the rocks in the local creek at pretty much full speed, never make a misstep and never get my feet wet. Oh well, nothing lasts forever. :-/
Peg was beginning to worry me, she wasn't really trying on the bunnies that we were jumping, or if she was, it wasn't very hard. I began to worry that she was weak, rather than hungry. We covered most of the field and really wasn't seeing any Jacks. When you start walking the fields, they are all over, but as they begin to watch your pattern, they go to the areas that you don't normally walk, such as the very edges, or out in the open and start to hide. That was the main reason that I started taking Curly with me, since just by nature, he covers much more of the ground than I ever could. I made a swing to one of the edges where we hardly ever go to, and asked Karen to wait where she was as a blocker. I would come back by her and we would go to another field. We jumped another Bunny and again, she couldn't make anything happen. As I was approaching Karen's position, I motioned for her to come on up. Curly was with her and working the heavy brush in front of her. He busted a Jack and it ran towards us. Peg started as soon as she saw him, stroking hard to close. He cut through a Barb wire fence, and I was relieved to see Peg flare over it. She then used her height to dive right up his butt and grab him by said appendage. I cannot begin to convey what that meant to me. It was exactly just what she needed, at exactly the right time with the right type of prey. Lots of hawks, (especially Goshawks) that are fast enough to catch Bunnies, find that they prefer to catch them, because they don't fight that much, and will ignore Jacks. Jacks in a lot of ways are easier to catch, since they don't go down holes usually, but once caught are fierce in their fight to survive.
She caught him in the weeds to the right. During the fight she ended up where she is shown in this picture. If you look at the light tan weeds beyond her and to her right the ground is covered in a stiff little dry weed that I am sure interfered with the Jacks ability to see, because his eyes were right in the middle of it and were being assaulted by them as he ran. Normally they build "runs" in them that they follow, but with her hot on his tail he had to take what ever avenue he could, to try to escape. This is manufactured luck, but luck none the less.
Now that she had caught it, I was faced with the decision of what to do, go right in, or wait for a while for the Jack to give up a bit? There is nothing like a wild eyed falconer with grasping fingers to spur that desire to get away. I chose to wait. A mistake. I thought that she had him by the head, she did not. He finally got his hind feet free and drug her under the truck. She hung up on the bed for a while, but he finally drug her through the hole and under the truck. Thank goodness for the "rubber" feathers that Harris Hawks are blessed with. Anything else would have been a mess.
If you will notice there is a couple of inches of space between the ground and the bed. He kicked enough to knock her transmitter and a few feathers off.
By this time, I am trying to get some way to help her, but he drug her around under the truck some more until she hung up on the rear end pumpkin on the axle. At that point he was exposed enough that I could get to him. She, at this point was down to holding him by one front leg, down by the ankle. Bless her extra large heart, she hung in there no matter what. I was able to finally get her extricated from the undercarriage of the truck. I pulled off a front leg and gave it to her to eat, I picked the Jack out from under her and took it to the front of the truck to clean. I kept the head and neck for her to finish her meal with and was squatted down showing Karen her feathers and the transmitter where the struggle took place, when Peg flew over and landed on the fist to finish her meal. I had no idea that she was even close to finishing her leg.
Curly and I posing for the "hero" shot.
So today, battered though she may be, (no real feather damage that I have seen yet) her crop is full, and hopefully she will remember what it takes to be successful.
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