Puddy 16, Yogi 7.

Sometimes it seems as if there is someone looking over my shoulder, checking to see if I am keeping to business. Probably my imagination.

Tami brought over Jasper this evening at about 1:30 P, but the Sparrows are getting too smart to be trapped in the Chicken pens and giving Jasper a chance to get after them. So after exausing all of our possibilities, we tied him to Jessie's perch in the shop with the intent to try to fly him after we got back from hunting the girls.

We took the girls to Arock to see if we could catch a couple of rabbits. The Jacks are either getting scarce with all the Eagle depredations, or they are getting smart. Both are probably in play. We found quite a few of fur piles, and the Jacks have started hiding, hard. Finally after a few chases that did not pan out, Puddy launched herself off Tami's perch and slammed into a Jack hiding in his form. Yogi joined in and secured the head.

You will notice that Puddy's wings are pinned by the bush. I had to pry the bush apart so that she could move up on the Jack.

This is a rabbit " Form", they will clear all the grass and sticks and sometimes they hide them inside a Sage Bush, but this one was in a clump of Sage. It just wasn't enough cover to keep Puddy from seeing it. It never got a chance to run. The interesting part of the whole thing is that this Rabbit had had a run in with a Harris Hawk last year.

That is his right ear, and as you can see it is split for about two inches. Either Sue or Peg got hold of him last year. You can run, and you can hide, just not forever.

After we fed the girls a bit, we started back to the car. It was pretty sparse for rabbits in the area that we were moving through, and we didn't see anything until we were right in front of the car. We started a Bunny and Pud slammed into a bush hard enough to make us all wince, but missed him. Yogi had stayed behind on a pile of rocks, and was far enough away that she could play no part in the chase. She finally caught up, and I decided to go just a bit further around an outcropping just in case.

As I neared the outcrop, Yogi took off and cut a sharp circle around the rocks. Pud went to the top of them to watch. When I got on the backside, I could see Yogi down in a crack in the rocks with her feet stuck in the hole and grabbing again and again at the Bunny. I looked in the front part of the rocks and could see the Bunny. All it took was to stick the end of the perch in the hole, and Yogi had something to hold onto.

She drug him out, and we had our second double where both of the birds caught something. We fed them up and made our way back home.

We took Jasper out again and got a fair number of chases, one of which, he caught a Sparrow in the rock pile, but lost him while trying to work his way out of the rocks. Tami had to feed him some cold Sparrow, the first in a long time.

I fed Jessie some Bunny to hold her over until tomorrow when we will try for Ducks again. Sometimes there just isn't enough hours in a day to do every thing that you want to do.