New bird

It seems awfully early, but I guess Hawking season is upon us. I haven't even had a chance to go fishing yet, but I now have a new bird. She is the off spring of Sylvester, who you might remember hunted with Peg the first year I got her.

http://owyheeflyer.blogspot.com/2009/10/sylvester.html  Sylvester was owned by Lee Mann, and was paired with Tweety, his female. Lee passed the birds to Mike Syring, a breeder in Gresham, and I wanted a replacement for Sue, so Mike sent this bird to me.

Sue finally convinced me that she was dangerous. Her behaviour kept getting worse, so she doesn't live here anymore.

 Josie, the new pup ignores Peg as if she is not there, but this new bird will be different.

 This was her first night here. She is about 13 weeks or so old. She was taken out of the mews where she had been living with her parents and siblings, jessed and stuck in a airline kennel for her flight to Boise. She will live on this perch in the house until she is ready for the outside. In other words she needs to be comfortable with captivity to where she doesn't do herself harm if tethered outside. Normally about two weeks will have her coming to the fist and able to be outside.

Of course she was pretty jumpy the first night, and we made no attempt to do anything other than let her observe and decide that no one was going to hurt her. This afternoon I picked her up on the fist and weighed her for the first time. She weighed 866 grams. She has been without food for at least two days, and her stomach was empty. She may have been picked up a day earlier than her shipping date, so she might have lost a bit of weight as well.

I had thawed some Jack Rabbit for her, in the hopes that she would eat today. We went outside, and I took a comfortable chair to sit with her. She settled right down, so Karen brought me a large pair of hemostats to offer her some food with. She surprised me by taking the first piece with no hesitation. The second and third went the same way. So I offered her a piece on my thumb. She showed no hesitation.

 

I could have fed her a large pile of food, but stopped when I judged that she had enough to maintain her weight. Tomorrow we will do it again, and I want her to be very interested in food.

She did quite well on the fist outside. She even sat through Josie jumping in my lap when Karen scolded Betsey for barking.

I have been racking my brain for a name for her. At my age I have had a lot of birds, dogs and other pets. I try not to recycle names, as the memories of these birds and pets are associated with those names. It gets tough after a while. Finally it came to me. If the parents are named Sylvester and Tweety, then she is Puddy Tat. Pud for short.