Hope dies last.

BirdManMike

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Feeling emo. Might delete later.

Two seasons ago, my falcon migrated. Our anatum peregrines spend their winter in Mexico and Central America. Sometimes, falconry birds, especially in their first season, get this urge and there is no stopping them. This season was particularly bad -- I know of 6 birds that left, mine included, with only 1 being recovered. She left near Harlowtown in the morning. I was able to miraculously pick up a signal on my telemetry near Big Timber later that evening, then after miles of trekking thru whoknowswhere had her buzz me and the live pigeon on a string I was swinging round. She wasnt having it, tho, and carried on, other things on her mind. The next morning, I could not get a signal anywhere and having no way to know where to look wished her well. I hope she made it to Mexico, then back that spring.

Last season, my tiercel had a really nice season. He turned into a dynamic, high flying bird, that would remount multiple times, even the 20-30mph winds that seemed to be neverending last winter. Then, late in the season, he died. He ate a bone without first breaking it up. It created a small perforation in his esophagus causing his crop to sour. He was dead within 24 hours, dying as I rushed to the vet in Billings that morning. He was the best peregrine I had flown in the past 5 seasons. The future felt so bright, then heartbreak.


One of the oldtimers - an ancient, even - said he has spent some time thinking about how to explain falconry. One of the ideas he came up with is heartbreaking. The highs are so awesome there has to be a price to pay for the balance. At times this price makes a person feel they don't want to make that deal again.


Ive felt it, never in the 10 years Ive been doing this more than the past 2 seasons, last year especially.

Hope dies last. This is how I would explain falconry. What happened today doesnt matter, tomorrow is a new day.

IMG_9048.jpg
 
Feeling emo. Might delete later.

Two seasons ago, my falcon migrated. Our anatum peregrines spend their winter in Mexico and Central America. Sometimes, falconry birds, especially in their first season, get this urge and there is no stopping them. This season was particularly bad -- I know of 6 birds that left, mine included, with only 1 being recovered. She left near Harlowtown in the morning. I was able to miraculously pick up a signal on my telemetry near Big Timber later that evening, then after miles of trekking thru whoknowswhere had her buzz me and the live pigeon on a string I was swinging round. She wasnt having it, tho, and carried on, other things on her mind. The next morning, I could not get a signal anywhere and having no way to know where to look wished her well. I hope she made it to Mexico, then back that spring.

Last season, my tiercel had a really nice season. He turned into a dynamic, high flying bird, that would remount multiple times, even the 20-30mph winds that seemed to be neverending last winter. Then, late in the season, he died. He ate a bone without first breaking it up. It created a small perforation in his esophagus causing his crop to sour. He was dead within 24 hours, dying as I rushed to the vet in Billings that morning. He was the best peregrine I had flown in the past 5 seasons. The future felt so bright, then heartbreak.


One of the oldtimers - an ancient, even - said he has spent some time thinking about how to explain falconry. One of the ideas he came up with is heartbreaking. The highs are so awesome there has to be a price to pay for the balance. At times this price makes a person feel they don't want to make that deal again.


Ive felt it, never in the 10 years Ive been doing this more than the past 2 seasons, last year especially.

Hope dies last. This is how I would explain falconry. What happened today doesnt matter, tomorrow is a new day.

View attachment 231144
I’m sorry for the loss. I guess I never realized they were kept so free. A beautiful trust..
 
Great InSite to Falconry.
What are the chances he shows back up next spring?
The lost bird? Seeing her again would be like finding a needle in a haystack. If she made it - and there isn’t any reason she couldn’t have - she’d have found herself an eyrie looking over a river somewhere in the Rockies. She’d not come back here to my house.
 
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Curious about her not coming back to your area. Do they ever come back to the same area they were born? Do they come back to the same area after they have established themselves an eyrie?

Sorry, one more question. Do they exhibit pet-like qualities? Like a dog.
 
Once a falcon establishes an eyrie and territory, they will continually return to that same eyrie as long as they are alive. Before this, they wander quite a bit, getting pushed out of occupied territories, looking for good hunting, etc.

Birds of prey are not like dogs, they are far simpler animals. The short answer is that they do not exhibit pet-like qualities. There is a bond, tho, and the level of bond varies in different raptor species. These peregrines bond pretty quickly. They are happy to see me in the morning, excited to go flying for the day, content in their weathering area after the days flight, and then ready to get put up for the night in the chamber or on the shelf perch.

After the initial manning and training period, the bird comes home with me because they want to. I fly every day thru the season (with some exceptions for weather or just life happening), and the bird could leave at any point while flying if it wanted. In reality, losing a bird is very rare. Mistakes happen, but the risk is of loss highest with species/subspecies that migrate. Ive only ever lost the one mentioned above. The tundra peregrines by all accounts are the worst as far as loss goes. These birds spend their summers in the Canadian and Alaskan arctic then their winters in Patagonia as far south as Tierra del Fuego, literally birds of eternal summer - as you can imagine, the urge to migrate is HIGH in these birds.


Anyway, my new tiercel is a couple days in and doing as well as can be expected. He is pretty fiery - extra bite-y and foot-y. The tiercels are always much more angst-y than the falcons. It doesnt take long, tho, and Id expect him to be flying free, chasing pigeons and learning in about 3-4 weeks, then flying game pretty close to the opener. At that point, Ill be his best friend - me the dogs, we creatures that make the fun happen with pigeons to chase magically appearing from seemingly nowhere.

Mayhap Ill post updates on his progress here, or perchance I shant. Youll have to wait and see. 🤷‍♂️
 
Roach - this bird’s name - has been a real challenge. He’s captive bred and stayed in the chamber with mom and dad until 85ish days old, a good 20 days longer than I would have liked. A captive bred bird wasn’t my plan for the season, but he was a freebie from (reputably) some of the best anatum peregrine genetics in the country so I took him. This ‘sport’ is dying, for a plethora of reasons, and the market for these birds and most captive birds, really, isn’t what it was.

Once a bird is fledged with it’s feathers done growing around 60-70 days, the metabolism slows down - if it’s not flying, it’s getting fat, quickly. So not only did I take a bird that had the usual dispersal instinct, where they leave mom and dad to make their own path, they have at this age, I took a bird with copious fat reserves that didn’t need to eat much and therefore had little hunger to use as motivation.

Roach has been an absolute terror.

But, he has turned that corner and we are now buddies. I’m somewhere around 10-14 days behind where I should be in this process, but we are no worse for wear.

What happened today doesn’t matter, tomorrow is a completely new day. And it’s looking bright!
 
Roach has been flying for a few days. I served him his first kill pigeon today. He donned some lipstick for the photo op - he is such a dandy.

burdwyrd.jpg


Now the goal is to A) build muscle, and 3. teach him about height and position. Ill do all this with pigeons, most strong homers that he cant catch and with hindered birds - like today's - mixed in to keep him excited and confident, plus lots of lure stooping which builds muscles quickly and teaches him good banking and how to use his feet. I doubt very much Ill put him up over gamebirds before late of September - he needs to be flying strong and feeling confident.

I love tiercel peregrines, especially these anatums. They just want to fly and chasing pigeons is so exciting for them that theyll be mounting 100s of feet in just a couple weeks to chase then breaking off if they dont catch to remount so they can chase again.

Tomorrow is a new day, and I can hardly wait!
 
Fascinating. Another (ignorant!) question: Can you differentiate between birds in the air? If there were 4 up there, could you easily see which one is Roach?

Geez, I thought of another question again! What game do you target?
 
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