Fires, Flights and Puddy Tat.

We have just gone through a couple of days of Lightning and the resultant fires that come with it. When the temps get into the 100's, the storm clouds build and the dry lightning flashes through the afternoon sky. We were lucky and the two fires that were started were pretty minimal. There is a "Butte" to the South East of us that is a magnet for lightning. I don't know what is under the dirt, but I would not spend a cloudy evening on that Butte for any amount of money. The dispatcher at 911 and I are getting on a first name basis. This one is 12.5 miles from the house.

Since it had burned at least two other times since we have moved here, it soon went out with a little bit of help from the rain.

 Last night it was a bit better, there was no lightning for a change. We did have a little pink Virga falling, that of course did not make it to the ground.

This morning I decided to fly to the Eastern foothills of the Steen's to see if there was anywhere there to bow hunt this fall. I am interested in Elk and Deer. From the looks of the area that I surveyed, it would appear that there is little up there other than Cows. I guess I will forget it and just hunt for Jack Rabbits with the birds. It was a nice flight however. I was gone 1.5 hours, covered 89 miles using four gallons of fuel. I reached a height of 7800 feet, and had a 20 MPH tail wind coming back.

 This is the Steen's current snow level. Not sure how much is up there, but I got cold at 7800 Feet and had no desire to go higher.

This one is Micky Basin. It has finally dried up, that has yet to happen with the Alvord.

I cannot recall there ever being that much water on the Alvord.

There is one road up here, and it appears to be a pretty interesting one to drive up. The main road is almost 3/4 of a mile below the level here. There is a "Cow camp" that I understood belongs to the Mann Lake Ranch. It is an interesting spot and genuinely remote. I was surprised to find some one parked in the yard and standing outside wondering where the hell that mosquito (dart) was going. I didn't see until I looked at the picture that he was standing at the gate waving at me.

Here is a Spot page of my flight.

 It was slow going with a headwind going up there, but I more than made it up coming back. It was quite interesting, at 7800 feet it was smooth going, When I got within a few miles of the house and was dropping altitude, it got choppy as could be all the way down from 6000 to within two hundred feet of the ground. There was no wind on the ground.

Now for Puddy Tat! Perhaps you will remember I said a few entries ago that I thought that it might be possible to encourage a Harris Hawk to fly at a heavier weight by keeping its weight higher than necessary? Well to be succinct, I was full of crap! At least where Puddy is concerned anyway. She was doing quite well and just about ready to start some long jumps or flights to the fist. Well, Randy came and I missed one night of flying her while we exercised our futility by trying to fish Owyhee Resevoir. That of course was when I decided that she had to visit the Vet to get a diagnosis of what was wrong with her.

Well after the worming, I tried to get her to fly to me. Every time I whistled for her to come to me, she flew the other direction. If you have been paying attention to my past blogs, you will know that this pisses me off, so she didn't get fed. I decided to do our flights? in the mornings as it has gotten quite warm of the evening and the wind is generally blowing as well. To make a long story a bit shorter, The last time I fed her was on Thursday night of last week. She finally got down to 819 grams this morning and after a loooooooooooog wait, finally jumped again to the fist, rather than fly away. It took a reduction of over a hundred grams, or  3 1/3 ounces. I spent over four hours holding her yesterday at 825 grams, and she still refused to even deign to pick up a chunk of meat thrown on the ground in front of her.

Now the good news is of course is that she appears to be worm free. No more gagging up yellow liquid, no more discolored mutes. I will check one of her mutes tomorrow with the microscope and make sure that there are no more worms. Normally with most hawks, I only call them three or so times to the fist and then give them the rest of their meal. Generally they are most attentive as to what gets them fed and do not need more than that. I called Pud 10 or 15 times today, as she appears to need more repetition than your normal hawk. Its too early to say that she might be learning impaired, but it sure isn't too soon to say that she is as stubborn as anything I have heretofore seen.

Here is a picture of a hawk running on empty. Notice the fuzzy head and the squinty eyes. It is doubtful that she would have enough energy to be able to catch something in the wild. It seems that each hawk has to learn the hard way that if you don't go get it, you won't get fed. Perhaps now we can get on with the training, and get out in the field a bit and catch some of these rabbits that are around every corner here at the house. It is going to be a good year for rabbits. They are as high in numbers as I have ever seen.