Pud too fat, Jasper and close shave.

This is just part of the landscape crew that takes care of my lawn each night and morning. I counted 12 total. Perhaps you can understand why I need a hawk to keep them under control. Unfortunately she is too fat to fly tonight. It appears that her flying weight will be somewhere in the middle 700 gram range. She weighed 810 tonight, so another night with no dinner.

Jasper however was down to 92 grams tonight. We flew him yesterday at 97 grams, and he behaved well enough, just wasn't inspired to chase Black birds, so he didn't get much in the way of dinner either. Tami's mother,brother and sister was down for a short visit, so we had a full house for tonight's flight.

 She called him a few times to the fist, and he once landed on Tami's mother's head before he flew on to where the food was.

 I had the Black Bird hidden under a coffee can, with a string to it so that I could release the bird without being any where around. Jasper took off the fist as Tami walked into position, and most of us either thought that he was going to a new perch or after a Grasshopper. Imagine our surprise when he crashed into the weeds on top of a wild bird hiding in the field. Unfortunately he got kicked off and it escaped. We were all standing around with our jaws dropping, and Tami was in severe danger of hyperventilating. When he came back on the fist and Tami calmed down, I pulled the string on the can, and Jasper gave chase after watching to make sure that it wasn't going to fly off. The bird was pretty scrappy and he had a pretty good fight to subdue it. Tami, moved in to give him a hand by killing it.

Tami held him and let him finish his meal while the gallery took advantage of the pool. I eventually built a campfire and we all sat around and listened to Elise tell Ghost stories. She is five and has quite an imagination.

Now to be completely honest, The last time I flew a Kestrel was in 1963, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing then. I could not say for sure that I am much better off today. So far Jasper is quite willing to take birds on the ground. I guess we will have to try to figure out how to get him to chase them when they fly. He could easily catch any of the ones that I handicap, but so far doesn't chase them. I guess we will keep handicapping them, and eventually he will get so sure of himself that he will give chase. Especially if he goes hungry a time or two.