Peg and Curly

This morning I decided to give Curly a chance, and take him hunting with us. He has been pretty downcast that I have been leaving him at home. I was concerned that he would be flushing too far in front of us to do us any good. When we are bird hunting he ranges pretty far out. Betsy is of course much further out, and she is pretty excitable, so she got left at home.

Curly is a 7 year old Brittney Spaniel, very smart and an all around great dog. I put the Tritronics electric dog collar on him in case he got too far out to do the job. I can't very well whistle for him without feeding Peg, and the collar has a call button that gives a warning signal that I use to alert the dogs to come back. He is also a pretty good house dog, rough and ready, but he loves his comfort as well.

I guess I was worrying over nothing. Curly was right there, stayed close and paid attention to all that was going on. I never had to even raise my voice to him. Peg, who flies off and screams alarms when a ranchers dog show up, paid no attention to him at all.  Peg chased a Bunny under an old garage door lying on the ground, and Curly said that he was still there. I had Karen hold Peg while I stomped all over the door. Nothing! Curly was interested in one of the corners, so I lifted it up, Curly scooted under and the Bunny scooted out, with Curly and Peg hot on his tail. Curly yipping, Peg trying harder than she normally does, and of course Karen screaming at Curly to get back, It was great fun, but they both missed.

Karen finally wore out, and went back to the truck while Curly and I gave her another chance. She just wasn't that serious and seemed to me to be looking for volunteers, so we gave it up and headed back to the truck.

 

It was pretty hot this morning and we were both hot and tired.

 

Karen asked how Peg did, and then cracked up when I told her that if Peg belonged to someone else, I wouldn't even waste my time in the field with her. She only got four tidbits today and will be a lot more serious tomorrow.

     I determined that Peg needed to be a little lighter in weight after she didn't seem to be able to close the deal on the Rabbits that she tried for on the first of Sept. This morning she weighed 709 grams. I decided to use the tee perch this time to give her the best possible chance of getting the jump on any Rabbits that we might find.

 

She actually seems to like the added height, and comes back to it without thinking that she should have a tidbit. 

    We went through the field at Arock and she had several chances of catching either a bunny or Jack, and managed to miss all of them. I had decided that she had enough chances after an hour and was working my way back to the truck. ( I prefer my birds to earn their food and generally do not feed them any more than I have to, if they do not catch anything. If they however do catch something then, they get a good feed and often all they can eat. No welfare allowed here. With that sort of training, you generally have a very serious hunting hawk that doesn't screw around) 

    Karen was tired and asked for a break, of which I was happy to join in. I had forgotten a long sleeved shirt and was wearing a "Sweat Shirt" (mosquito's are really bad here) that was more than living up to its name. So we pulled up a rock and sat down, with Peg still on the Tee Perch.

   While we were sitting there, she took off, back to the area that we had just left and landed by a rock at the edge of a grassy area that was full of water due to the ranchers doing flood irrigation. She hopped back onto the rock and we decided that it was time to leave, so I got up and stuck the Tee Perch up in the air to get her to come back. She ignored me and I did so again, yelling her name. She whipped around and dove off the rock, (about 2 feet high) and we heard the sweet music of  a squealing rabbit. Karen and I couldn't believe it, the total flight was about 3 feet. Apparently she saw it sneaking around and managed to cause it to hide rather than run, and then when it lost its nerve she was able to grab it. The last Jack that she caught, I managed to scare it enough that it was able to get away. Of course the rabbit had something solid to pull against. I didn't know what the situation was this time, but I was not about to have that happen again, so I took my time getting there. When I could see, I found that she had consolidated her grip and now had it by the head as well. They aren't going anywhere with that grip. They always try to kick and the hind leg generally ends up against the leg of the hawk and they are balled up so that they cannot kick.

    I made sure that it was dead and gave her the front leg of the last Bunny that she had caught. This was her forth rabbit that she had caught on her own, and I was not about to scrimp on her reward. As soon as I could get the Jack out from under her enough to do so, I pulled off another front leg and called her up to the fist for that.

 

    She had enough food to last her until we got to the truck and her box, which she was happy to jump into for another little treat. 

    Hopefully she will understand what it takes to get her food, but I am afraid that the way that she caught it was totally unproductive for most of the opportunities that she will have. Karen watched her earlier fly after a Jack and go around it and land on the ground seeming to think that somehow it would come to her so that she could eat it. Most of the time what happens is that the Rabbits stop and she lands on the ground. This of course means that she has empty feet. What she needs is to climb up as high as she could to find out where the rabbit really is hiding. She keeps getting rewards for stuff that shouldn't work. Oh well, "Who am I to blow against the wind" (Paul Simon)

    I asked Larry if he put in about almost getting run over by a bunny,before I read this. He told me to add to it. So here goes- while we were stumbling through the sage she chased a bunny my way. Lots of them do come my way but this one was really intent on escape. They sound like they are ten feet tall coming through the brush. Those little feet really,really THUMP!  The Jackrabbits when they are escaping grunt. She again chased one right by me and he was grunting like a pig rooting in the dirt. You definitely get lots of cardiac exercise out in the field. Didn't realize it till this bird. Karen 

Karen and I got out of the house as the sun was rising, a nice clear, crisp morning. The temps. at the house was 67 and when we got to Danner, the temp. was 53.

Peg was at 732 grams this morning and apparently it is just a bit too high. She tried, but just seemed to be a bit too slow and didn't make those kamikazi strikes needed to connect. She of course knows where the rabbits go to hide and is getting so that she doesn't pass up a hole without looking down it and wanting to examine it more closely. In fact it is becoming a bit of a problem.

I had to call her out of this hole and even pull her out of this one by the tail feathers.







Karen actually walked a bit too much, and I had to finally tell her to go to the truck. She had walked until she was exhausted.

I kept on for a while but she still wasn't managing to close the deal. We hunted the one spot for at least four hours with her managing to miss every opportunity.

There was another area that I wanted to look at for a possible hunting spot. It is at the irrigation dam on Jordan Creek. The terrain is much the same as where we have been hunting.


I did find a couple of Bunnies there, but she missed them both. I walked a bit further with her and she tried to catch some of the ducks on the canal. Of course she was too slow and either saw her shadow in the water, or whatever, and tried to land on it, having to swim to the bank. I called her back and began the trip back to the truck when she saw some more ducks and took off after them, she did a quick wing over at the edge of the water. When I arrived, she was sitting in the marshy area holding a small Bull Frog. She did get some chases in on various Lizards and Chipmunks.



We started back and I decided to try one more time, but still found the area to be without the volume of game that she is going to require.

All in all we put in some 6 hours with her today, and all we had to show for it was a puny Bull Frog and some exercise.

Number Three

I, of course didn't feed Peg yesterday as she was too fat to hunt. She had eaten enough from Fridays catch that she wasn't able to put it all over and she threw up some of it on her perch overnight. ( The food all goes into her crop, and if she cannot put it over quickly, it spoils and she has to cast it up) She has a tendency to over indulge when she gets the chance.

This morning she weighed 724 grams and seemed to be very hungry and anxious to hunt. Karen was going to go with us today, which always makes things better. We got a bit of a late start and I had the sun in my eyes all the way there, but I am getting used to not being able to see when I drive. There is nothing on the Desert to block the sun when it comes up.

I am going to have to be a little more lenient on her weight control, today she was into her hunting so much that she was hard to keep on the fist. She was looking down all the holes and into every crack trying to find something to catch. She made a couple of attempts on Bunnies but they would hide, and she would go to the ground, of course allowing them to slip out the back way. She was for her, difficult to get any where with, as she kept going off and wanting to do a little prospecting on her own for something to chase. Normally she sits the fist really well, not flying until she sees something to chase. She had made a shot at a bunny and it had evaded her in some rocks. She was sitting on the rock where she had last saw it, and I was trying to see if it was hiding out a bit from the rocks. Karen walked up to the rocks and Peg went to her rather than come with me. We all took a few steps more and the rabbit bolted right out from under Karen. Peg was off in a flash and made a shot at it in the middle of a clump of sage. I stopped to see if she had caught it, and for a while there was nothing, then I heard a rabbit scream. Peg had chased him down on foot and caught him.

I have been complaining because she keeps losing her advantage by going to the ground, and hoping that she will finally tumble to the fact that height is her friend. Normally she is there running around on the ground and the rabbits are ducking around and going out the back door. Karen was able to see some of the action, and every where the rabbit ducked, peg was on the other side of the bush cutting him off. Now I will never be able to get her to quit chasing them on the ground.

I had saved a front leg from her last kill and was offering it to her to eat, so that I could clean the rabbit. The older rabbits will have tape worms in them, and I would prefer to prevent her from getting any of them. The meat is no problem, but the guts can be, so I like to get rid of them and make sure that she has only good clean meat.

The girl is showing promise. Now I am going to have to stay in the field until she has caught something, or she gives up.

I had hoped this morning to be posting pictures of the new Harris, but alas that is going to have to wait a while. The guy that bred her was supposed to bring her to Christmas Valley. Unfortunately she died on the trip down. I suspect that he did not provide enough ventilation in the box that he made for her. Karen and I were extremely distressed by this development.

I didn't feed Peg yesterday since she was still carrying a bit too much weight from the Jack that I gave her on Wed. I took the airplane flying instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeYlQW5gwmI

This morning I woke up about 5AM and couldn't go back to sleep, so I gathered Peg up and took off for the Danner area. It is a 40 minute drive and I arrived there just at first light. There are lots of Jacks and lots of Bunnies, so I was hoping to find a dumb one that she could manage to catch.

Peg, while a sweetheart, and very nice, is just not what one would call an over achiever at this stage of her life. She could and should develop into an adequate game hawk given enough time and exposure, which I hope to give her. She of course is very inexperienced and makes mistakes that always cost her the chance to kill some of these Rabbits that jump up in front of her. Harris Hawks generally learn their craft from their family group, and of course all she has is an old fat guy. She is bound to be handicapped.

We were jumping Bunnies around every rock outcropping, and she was trying, but you need to be quick and take any and every opening and chance you get, or they will go down one of the numerous holes that infest the area. For the most part she ignored the Jacks because they were jumping up pretty far ahead of us, the close Bunny slips were what triggered her chase impulse. She did make a couple of good tries at close Jacks, and managed to pull hair from a Bunny, but mostly it was an exercise in frustration for the first three hours. I was watching for her to get discouraged and quit chasing as hard, but she was still as game as ever, when the Gods finally smiled on us and put a half grown Jack in our path that waited just a bit too long to run. It jumped no more than 10 feet in front of us and she caught him in less than that.

I pulled up a rock and rested while she did her best to eat as much of him as she could choke down. When she finally calmed down, I picked her and the rest of her Rabbit up and we walked back to the truck. I tossed a leg into the box which she willingly followed, and we trundled on home. When we arrived home she was still eating. I finally got her out of the box and tied her up on her perch for the day. It may take three days to get her back down to weight. She had eaten enough that she couldn't hold any more.

I of course forgot my camera, so there are no pictures of any of this.

Karen and I are going to Christmas Valley this afternoon to pick up the other bird. I have been thinking about calling her Sue. Whadyathink? Kind of rolls off the tongue naturally doesn't it? Peggy- Sue!

Today Peg was 700 grams, which seems to be perhaps a bit too low. She isn't weak, but she is very intense. Perhaps a bit too intense. We went back out to the Lava lumps that seem to harbor the most Bunnies. They were irrigating and there was water every where and not nearly the number of Jacks that I had seen the last time we were there. She did get a chance at a Bunny and pulled hair, but not enough to have any rabbit inside it. She also had a Jack for a split second, but it too got away from her.

Karen was only wearing tennis shoes and the water was all over, so I asked her to go back to the truck and move it to the spot that I intended to end up. She took a stand on one of the lumps so that she could see and keep track of us. She saw a steady stream of Jacks moving past her well out in front of us. Peg wants the rabbits to get up close to her. I would prefer it as well, but it isn't going to happen until she makes it so hot on them that they begin to hide to try to avoid us.

I decided to go to another spot to see if I could get her a bit closer to them. I have a "Giant Hood" made out of coroplast that doesn't hurt their feathers and that is what I carry her in. She is pretty funny in that she knows the truck, and that she will get a piece of food on her perch when I open the door.




On our way to a new field we came across a flock of White Front Ibis working over the flooded field. We drove right by, without even one of them flying.


We drove up to a hay stack and parked in the shade. We had passed at least four rabbits on the road coming in. When we got out and walked she got several chances at Rabbits, but I think she was getting a bit tired and discouraged. I again wounded a Jack with the 22. She caught it and we gave her a front leg to bring her weight up a bit. We will try again tomorrow at a new spot that we haven't hunted yet. Perhaps I can find one with suicidal tendencies.