Finally, Peg Scores!

We have been busting our butts trying to get Peg to commit enough to actually begin catching some of her food. I have been prolonging the misery by not being willing to cut Peg back to the point that a bit of desperation would spur her to the effort needed to actually catch something. In the wild she would have been catching her own food much earlier. In the wild you are either quick or dead, but I had been trying to keep her weight up, to hopefully cut down on the possibility of her screaming. It of course was an exercise in futility and when I took her over to Christmas Valley to visit the guy that gave her to me, she had plenty of lessons in Harris Hawk screaming while we were there. Now she calls every time she sees me. She will quit it next year, but I would have preferred that she never start, but it was not a realistic goal.

Harris Hawks are designed for survival in one of the harshest climates in the world, unlike most of the raptors, they can actually see possible food sources without actually seeing movement.
Here the little darling has captured the rib cage and spine of a fawn that died sometime earlier this spring.
Here she has captured a dirt clod with some spikey pieces of grass in it. She actually carried it up to the fist, showing quite a bit of disgust when it all fell apart.

She has been hoping that some of the Jack Rabbits would just fall over for her, but they are one of the smartest critters out there. They will lure the hawk into making a strike and dodge around a bush to leave their attackers grounded and in the dust. It takes a serious commitment to actually get a foot on one of these speedsters.

Karen and I have been getting up before dawn every day to give her the opportunity to make a kill

and she has been fooling around hoping against hope that one of them will have a heart attack and fall over for her. It just isn't going to happen. It has been at least 11 days of her getting less and less food and driving me up a wall.

Last night I had a dream that she actually caught something, and I had forgotten to take my camera. Well when we left this morning, I made sure I had my camera. She was 705 grams this morning. When I got her, she weighed 800 grams. 28.5 grams to the ounce.

She was still screwing around, trying to get me to call her, when she would fly to a sage, and give her some free food. I only give her food when I whistle, and that is to establish that when I whistle, she needs to get to me quickly. The rest of the time I just stick up my fist and walk away, she either comes when I am close or she gets to fly a long way to get to me. If she should decide that she doesn't need to come to me, then we go home, no food, no more chances. We had covered most of the field and she had a few chances at Jacks and Bunnies, but had not put forth enough effort to even get close to a rabbit. As with most eyasses she screwed up many of the best slips by being somewhere else at the crucial moment. While she was trolling for a tidbit from me and sitting on a rock pile behind me, I flushed a Jack Rabbit so small that if it had not been for the ears, I would have thought it was a bunny. Of course she didn't see it tottering off into the sage never to be seen again.

I asked Karen to get the truck and follow along the road so that she would not have that long of a useless walk. The area is made up of perfect Bunny habitat, large lava lumps up to 30 feet high with lots of crevices and Badger holes all over the place. She was finally beginning to put some serious effort in trying to catch some of the rabbits that we were bumping. She actually flew through a barb wire fence to slam into the ground in an effort to catch a running Bunny. Luckily she didn't hit the fence. We had two more good slips at Bunnies that she was really bucking some brush in an effort to get her feet on one. Finally she took off the fist and did a quick wing over just about 15 yards in front of me. I was listening for the squeal of a captured rabbit, but was greeted with nothing but silence. Wearily I made my way to where she had went down and found this-
They do not scream when they cannot open their mouth. She has always been a head hunter, which is good. She is actually pretty small and the added handicap of a bum foot would make it extremely difficult to hold a full grown Jack Rabbit by the butt. I cannot recall that many hawks that had the sense to grab them by the head until they have been kicked off several times.


Since there are few JackaLopes around there is not much of a trophy, but a piece of tail isn't anything to sneeze at. A happy camper none the less. Peg with her dirt clod.