Hunting weight and cooler weather

Beginning on 11/11 Cisco had a mini streak catching three cat squirrels on three consecutive hunts. In my exuberance I overfed him a little on the 15th. He was an ounce high the morning I took him next to hunt. I took him out later that day; he was better weightwise and he caught a squirrel. His theoretical ideal weight is 900 g. See the chart below.

Cisco was absolutely masterful today, hunting steadily for about 40 minutes, before he found the perfect squirrel which he nailed. He stayed up in the tree top with it for a long time, killing it very quickly up there I believe. He's now caught five squirrels since November 11th.

Check out this little YouTube clip here:

Labrador Red-tailed Hawk

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No longer under Construction.....

The pictures above are from months ago. on August 11 I'm heading to the Rockies and then the west coast. Arnold will be with me to and from Denver, the two buzzards the entire trip. I'll keep my two readers abreast. Or maybe a wing........ The following are pictures from the summer....... Cisco in a new Jim Ince accordion back hood The "new" Honda Element

Cisco three days in a row....

Cisco is still molting, and more than an ounce heavy. But I'm taking him out to the woods to get him in shape, even though it's a bit warm out, and the woods are overgrown a bit. Today fairly early, Cisco took a long flight from where I released him over to a spot in a tree in the woods. The one good thing about Red-tails and the fact that they're generally lazy is that flights like that actually mean something. A Harris's Hawk might go back and forth two or three times for nothing. So when Cisco made that flight I figured he might be up to something. And sure enough he whacked a nearby tree and missed something. I spent a whole hour out in the woods with him, boring yes, but worth the effort. He got decent exercise. His high weight and the warm weather took away a lot of his motivation, and he flew overhead once or twice croaking slightly. That is an indication that he's not really looking for squirrels, he's in the tidbit mode. This picture was ...

A mid-November update

It's been a while since I've posted, mostly because my two buzzards have been adapting to the warm weather and high weight. The last week or so, both of them have hit their strides on squirrels, with Cisco taking four or five, and Farrah taking a couple also. Yesterday evening maybe a half hour before sunset, about 10 grams heavy, Cisco searched relentlessly but without much fire. He took a couple of high-weight shots at squirrels, but not too impressive. I hunted my way back to the Honda figuring we were done. He quit following, nabbed a squirrel and was hanging upside down for a while. I wasn't sure he would hold it.... Kudos to him. I took out Farrah today and she was steadily looking; we were out of total of a couple of hours. At one point she grabbed a cat squirrel in sort of a brushy trunk tree, lost it on the way down, then grabbed it on the ground, and lost it again. When Cisco comes to the ground with a squirrel, I expect him to hang on to it most of the time....

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