Still at it.

Jessie was at 840 grams, which should be a bit of a drive for her to catch something. Last year I flew her as high as 930 grams. With 28.5 grams to an ounce, she should be very anxious to hunt. She is however (I think I have mentioned) a very different bird. I have already admitted to having spoiled her, but there is a point that I get cranky. I am there. Even my neighbor, who follows the blog, said today that she needed an attitude adjustment. I agree.

I decided to fly her first just in case she caught something, I intended to let her eat all she wanted, which could have taken some time. I checked and found ducks on the pond close to where I intended to hunt the Harris Hawks. We walked down to the pond and I turned her loose. She flew around and over the pond to check to see if there were indeed ducks, then turned and landed on a rock outcropping. We stood around for about 20 minutes, which was how long it took me to get that cranky attitude that I mentioned earlier. Karen and I walked back to the truck, where I tied a quail leg on the lure. She started immediately my way, but would not land or strike the fist for the lure and the quail leg. She of course remembered the last time where I secured, hooded and took her to another pond. She would circle me, but would not land on the fist. She landed on the rocks near, and would try again and again to finagle the lure away from me. She did land on a fence post, and I walked up to her. She took a bite out of the leg, but would not stay. I eventually threw the lure on the ground and called her to the fist with another leg. She is going to be really hungry when she gets to go out again. While she was eating, she kept an eye on the sky and found that there was an Eagle up there at about 1500 feet or better.

They had put a bunch of cows in the field where we normally fly, so we decided to go somewhere else. The far end of the field did not have any cows in it so we decided to go there. As we started walking towards that area, I see an Eagle pop his wings out at about 200 feet over the ground at the far edge of the field. He then did a couple of feints and slammed into the ground at the edge of the hay field. I can see Pheasants running around all over the place, and one of them flushes across the open towards a brush line about 100 yards away. All of a sudden another Eagle drops down into my line of sight and grabbed the Pheasant as it was flying. A pretty impressive display of cooperation between two birds. We elected to go to another field to hunt the Harris Hawks.

Peg is doing much better and pushing harder at the Rabbits. She is still dumber than two boxes of rocks however and the Jacks snooker her almost every time. Sylvester in my opinion was a bit too low, so we cut the hunt short and fed both birds, going home early.