Red-tailus interruptus

-
A pretty good squirrel week for one of my two hawks; though Farrah made no contact. Farrah got cheated by time constraints twice and on Saturday got bogged down chasing squirrels into viney thickets. Cisco bagged two cat squirrels this week, after catching and losing one on Monday. That was apparently a premature removal/extraction on his part. He had that squirrel for several minutes.

Movie:


On Friday, just as Cisco started to pressure a squirrel, a wild adult Red-tail flew over. Cisco screamed and took off in pursuit. This always means a minimum of a twenty minute delay. Soaring, screaming, and sitting on tree tops is part and parcel of this routine. Fortunately he settled in again, caught a squirrel. As he parachuted straight down he bounced fairly hard on a couple of branches. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Fourth

-
Image
 Happy New Year's Eve My apprentice Isaac reported that he caught his fourth squirrel with his passage Red-tail. My foster apprentice, Stephanie, caught her fourth. And today, Cisco caught his fourth lifetime fox squirrel. This is out of about 240 squirrels.  It was really stressful, at the same time interesting. Here's a text that I sent: Cisco's fourth lifetime fox squirrel taken. Stressful. Up in tree for a long time, hanging upside down. Then he dropped it, and grabbed, hanging onto its tail. He was covered in blood after it escaped and I called him. Cisco was super tired. 20 minutes later he pulled the wounded squirrel from nest and killed it. Jeez.  Everything started routinely. I had Arnold with me and released Cisco. He has not flown for more than a week, the season interrupted with a trip to Denver. Cisco took off and started working a squirrel, which he grabbed in some high leaves. The squirrel was squealing some and I could see Cisco hanging below. It went on for
Read more

Superb effort from Cisco

-
Image
Cisco was on the disabled list for a few weeks, after a squirrel chewed on his toe a while back. The day before yesterday I took him hunting. My reference to the hunt in my log book was "Boh-ring!" He was an ounce heavy and it was warm. Today was different. Cisco was at 900 grams after two day fast; the weather was cool, also extremely windy. Cisco is very dependable in the wind, and though sometimes it affects the squirrels, I am not overly concerned about it. Cisco was spot-on. He made a perfunctory swoop at a fox squirrel, then quickly found a cat squirrel. A steady pursuit followed, including one interesting flight. The squirrel was at the top of a tall tree. Cisco flew upwind and used the wind as an elevator to put him very high in the same tree. He took a huge arc out, swung back and landed perfectly. A few minutes later he was on the ground with a squirrel. Arnold was there, worked well, and had fun. This is the last squirrel of the season. I clipped Farrah's talon
Read more