Yogi, catching up!

We first gave Jasper a chance to catch a Sparrow, but unfortunately, he was unable to make it happen. As soon as he opened his wings, the Pigeons all flew, and with them the Sparrows. We has some good chases, but no cigar. He once went up about 150 feet and was circling over top of the Pigeons. I kicked the wall and flushed out a Sparrow. Jasper turned over and was just about a foot behind it when they went around the "cat house". Unfortunately the Sparrow took cover and the flight ended up right in front of us in another rock wall.

We ended up calling him to the fist and letting him sit in the box to contemplate his failures while we hunted the two Harris's.

I loaded them into the back of the Subaru and drove down to the end of the runway to save us a bit of an unproductive walk. Puddy was up to 887 grams while Yogi was down to 1100. Not sure whats up with Puddy, since I consider 840 to be her flying weight, but I am having trouble getting her down that low. Yogi sheds weight like crazy and I have to watch her weight, so that it doesn't get too low. Perhaps it is just that the girl has put on muscle.

I had expected Puddy to be a bit sluggish, but she was anything but. The first Jack that jumped, Puddy was after in a flash and a quick wingover brought a squeal from the Jack. Unfortunately Yogi wasn't close enough to help and the Jack made his escape. We walked quite a bit before we got another chance at any of them.

After a rather lengthy search we had a couple of close slips, and Yogi was really trying hard, but she still has not perfected her technique and although many of them were extremely close, she still wasn't getting it done. Puddy also was burning up the Sage, slamming into the brush and the ground equally. Finally one busted out fairly close to us and Puddy crashed into the ground just on the other side of a Sage bush, followed by Yogi. After Yogi went in, the rabbit screamed once, then the screams were cut off abruptly.

 The one that gets its feet on the rabbit first is almost always on the rear end, since that is the closest thing to grab. That leaves the rabbit momentarily with the front end scrabbling to pull free of the demon on its butt. The other hawk will grab the head quicker than the rabbit can say "Oh shit", which makes the screams quite muffled.

 While this looks like a wreck, and an extremely dangerous situation, it has not been so far. Those feet are flying faster than a rabbit or a man can begin to react, but the accuracy is just as amazing as it is fast. So far neither has so much as scratched the other, but they are a tumbled mess to all appearances.

If you enlarge the picture above you can see that Yogi has ripped a four inch slash almost down to the bone in the Jacks leg. She has one of the Jacks legs on her left side and her right leg up between the Jacks legs and into his belly. In the meantime Puddy has both feet and all eight talons buried in the Jacks head.

I attempted to give Puddy a front leg from an earlier kill, since the Jack rightly belonged to Yogi, but Yogi volunteered to take it. She walked off a couple of steps to eat her reward, leaving me to convince Puddy to let go. To my great pleasure, she did so with little encouragement. Reuben and I went off a bit to clean the Jack. Reuben kindly offered his knife to clean it with.

We gave both birds all the rabbit that they could eat. Yogi, ever the Lady, daintily ate her food on Tami's fist, while the youngster bolted every thing she could get down her throat as fast as she could.