Update mid February

Cisco has been struggling a bit since the beginning of 2026, mostly related to the odd vegetation and poor setups I believe. He's taken only a few squirrels over twenty hunts. Ahead of some really nasty weather late yesterday he caught one. The crash sound was amazing. Then Joe Manby and I couldn't find him even though the receiver was giving a good signal. I wondered if Cisco might be dead. Tracking a bird on the ground coupled with major bias as to where he "had to be" made a very stressful half hour at least. Ultimately I found him trying to eat a squirrel under a live oak way out in the open. Cisco broke primaries #3, #4, and #5 on the left side. #3 and #4 primaries had already been broken and imped by Jim Ince. The repairs held up, but both feathers broke again anyway.

A great picture....

Farrah is tied for her all time season record, and has helped contribute to the squirrel catch.

The pictures below are representative....

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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....

Season 2025/2026

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