Whirlwind Trip, Part 2

After a very encouraging evening with the falcon, I was excited to go get the red-tailed hawk. He is coming from an education organization and is already trained, so he should be the easiest bird to deal with at first. I wasn’t meeting to pick him up until 2 p.m., so I had some time to spend with the peregrine falcon.

Throughout the night I had heard little snapping sounds from the kennel she was in and I was pretty confident it was her picking at the new straps of leather around her “ankles.” When I opened the kennel to peek in at her, sure enough, her jesses were lying on the floor of the kennel. “Crap! Victoria, we’re going to have to catch her up again.” I knew she wouldn’t stand still and let me put the jesses back through her anklets so we’d have to “re-dress” her the hard way.

After getting things organized, I put on my gloves and opened the door. “One of her anklets is off!!! How the heck did she do that?” My first thought was that she had torn through the leather, but the grommet permanently holding the leather together around her ankle had not clamped down and essentially her anklet fell off without the jess there to hold it in place. Sigh. New plan…put new anklets on using the larger, but better quality, grommets. Good thing I brought them with me!

Once again, she was grabbed and “dressed” and then asked to stand on the glove of a perfect stranger. She did it, though. What a great bird! After all the extra work of the morning, I was only able to hold her for a short time before I needed to head out and get the hawk. Victoria would listen for any sounds of trouble while I was gone.

When I returned that evening, I was greeted by a very excited Victoria telling me that the falcon was already stepping up onto the glove. Victoria had to untangle her several times while I was gone. The flacon  had been trying to pull her jesses out again all day, but we had attached a swivel and leash which prevented her from doing that. With such frequent visits from Victoria, the falcon had already realized stepping onto a glove wasn’t a terribly scary adventure!