The Molt
Farrah and Cisco are very close to finishing for this summer. I believed that Farrah dropped her last major (32 total primaries and retrices) today. Wrong. She has a couple of tail feathers to go. Just yesterday I did the first count and came up with 31. So I apparently included some secondaries by mistake. But we may be flying within a month.
This season I carefully weighed the the hawks nearly every morning, and kept their net body weights between 5% and 10% over normal flying weights. The flying weights would be 800 grams for Farrah, 900 grams for Cisco, though Farrah carries more meat on her bones. If they were of comparable condition, the difference between them would be about 130 grams at least. The hawks were fed in their respective hawk boxes each morning, then put outside. Diet consisted of squirrels caught last season mostly by Cisco, and commercial quail, rat, and chicks. Both hawks hunted small yard creatures like grubs, DeKay's snakes, and the occasional hapless toad, including my pet. Cisco eats about 70 grams per day, Farrah about 50. These two numbers are really rough.
Cisco sleeps every night in his hawk box, Farrah on a low perch in my home office. During the day Farrah is free-lofted in an 8 X 4 dog kennel. She sits quietly, never flying and hanging. Cisco is tethered in a 10 X 10 dog kennel until late in the afternoon. Then he spends a few hours perched in the open along my fence. About dusk he gets restless and I put him in. Farrah stays in her enclosure until my bedtime. Then I get her, enticing her with a chick head.
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| Farrah in Office |
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| Farrah is rarely out of her enclosure - Cisco here nearly every afternoon |
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During the freeze last winter
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