Feathers and Fur

So this weeks blog is all about when it goes wrong! Yesterday 23rd April started as an ordinary day, busy building the new weathering whilst Jade started on with the flying. Then when it came to Fagus, the Kestrel it was my turn to fly him. Weight was only less than quarter of an ounce over the 22nd so off we went to the field. His first three flights were fine if not a little sluggish but as we finished and were about to bring him in he decided to take off and headed across the road. This was nothing new as Fagus has been across in this field before so I simply headed out to find him. At first he was in sight then vanished into Scarletts Wood. At this point I lost him visually all together so Jade bought me the telemetry receiver and we managed to pick up his signal but due to the woodland the signal was bouncing all over the place.

Jade and I traversed the wood and could not pin point his signal. Suddenly it was lost all together and we retreated out of the woodland. On long range Jade picked up his signal but now it was coming from right on the other side of the garden centre! So we got in the car and tracked the signal across the A4 to a woodland about ½ a mile from the garden centre. Fagus was sitting tight in the trees whilst the Red Kites ducked and swooped over head. Finally after 2 hours of sitting in the woods Fagus decided that he preferred the opposite side of the A4 and took back off !!By this point we had been out for nearly 3 hours and I knew that Fagus had to be running out of fuel. However he continued to stay high in the trees until nearly 8.30pm!!

By now I had discarded the lure, Fagus’s usual flying tool and opted for the chick on a string trick. Tie a chick to the creance (the long string used for training birds before they are ready to fly free) and try to tempt Fagus down. It worked, he took to the wing and headed for the food, my aim is to allow him to start eating and to keep tweaking on the creance so that his feet lock on and I should in theory be able to walk in and pick him up. In theory perfect, in reality not so. 6 times we tried and 6 times I failed! Every time I walked in Fagus tried to fly away with the chick and then let go! By now the sun had set and I knew that I possibly only had two more chances to get him other wise it would be too dark for Fagus to see the chick. I allowed him to come down to the chick and then decided as a last chance I would try a technique I had heard of called ‘winding up’ which involves walking around and around the bird with the creance until you have wrapped the legs up and the bird can not escape. I am pleased to announce that it worked! Although Fagus managed to shrug all the string off fortunately it looped on his telemetry and I was able to get in quick enough to hold him! Bird on fist and I was heading home to a hot shower and bed! (Thank you to Jade and Ben for curry in a Tupperware tub in the field!)

One of the most common questions today though was what do I do now? If I let Fagus go will he fly away again? Well the answer is I don’t know I have feed him on the fist today and shall see what his weight is tomorrow. That’s the exciting thing about flying Birds of Prey, they do have their own minds and they are able to fly at will. I knew Fagus is inexperienced at catching food so I had very little doubt that I would be able to get him back, my main worry was the battery life in the telemetry for without that I would have no hope (let that be a lesson to anyone flying!). But all I lost was an afternoon, but I spent it watching my favourite bird having a whale of a time and saw so much wildlife that you rarely see unless you sitting in a field in the quiet sunshine with nothing to do other than watch the dot sitting in the tree!!!!