Eagle Journal

Day 44	Black Widow: 9lbs 9oz / Jackhammer: 8lbs 3oz
	Temp: 75’ & 59’ / Wind: 9-13 mph & 0-5 mph

 

Hello everyone,

 

Widow:

 

Widow is in great shape. She can fly a half mile into the wind, go up a large hill and not be winded, and can do that several times. She can also soar up to a fly speck in the sky and she can find me despite my ability to glide across the field from one hiding place to another like a shadow…..yes, a shadow! But she is reluctant to go up with any regularity. She jumps on a warm air thermal, rides it for a few turns, starts to go up, and then jumps off. She flies back and forth along the hillside but will not take a thermal up, except the one time. If I didn’t know better I’d think she was afraid of heights. Her weight is up so that shouldn’t be an issue. If her weight was lower she’d be way less likely to want to go far away because she would want to be fed. It is fun to watch her gliding along the hillside and she does go out over the valley and up some so it’s not all bad, just not like she needs to. I have noticed that she is extremely interested in other raptors and what they are doing. For instance, a coopers hawk, a passage bird on its way to places unknown, came by and had a look at Widow and she gave the coopers a passing glance. The coopers went out over the valley, did a wingover, and stooped on a meadow lark that got away, but the coopers remained in the dry grass looking for its meal. Widow’s head shot up and she was off after the coopers hawk in a flash. She’s not going to out maneuver a coopers hawk, but I would have to think her intent was to get what the coopers hawk had caught and, as a bonus, take the hawk as well. Golden eagles are, as any falconer will tell you, very watchful for any unsuspecting raptor that may be preoccupied with something they just caught. They make for an easy meal and a long drive home for the falconer. Maybe Widow came from a family of eagles that looked for the easy meal more than most, hard to say, but one thing is for sure, this is definitely going to be a part of her hunting strategy once on her own.

 

JH:

 

Boy, jack rabbits are getting harder and harder to find in the good spots which has forced me to hunt some less than desirable areas. This can be risky as I found out today….

 

After walking the FFH (field from hell) and seeing but one jack I went to the postage stamp field. We got one great slip which JH overpowered and missed…. not sure why? So I went over in back of the water treatment ponds which are to the east of the small hay field. There is an old road that runs along the back side of this entire area following the train tracks that I have hunted off a ton of times this season. On the right is the bank that serves as the ground that the tracks are on, and on the left is another much taller bank that makes up one side of the large water treatment pond. There is a cyclone fence, complete with razor wire (see photo), that runs around the entire pond system. On both sides of the old gravel road are prime jack rabbit spots. I parked my truck and could see jacks running all over the place. I jumped out and unhooded JH. A jack ran across the road in front of us and JH launched and closed on the jack which went under the cyclone fence and up the bank with JH right on it’s butt. The jack reached the top of the bank which is a paved road used to inspect the ponds. The jack was hauling down the road — I could hear its toe nails scratching on the pavement. It was a very weird angle to watch the flight from because the bank is 20 feet tall so I’m looking up at the action. JH was closing on the jack, now within one foot, when a maintenance worker came driving around the corner in some sort of golf cart. Oh, and this pond area is covered with nesting birds, black neck stilts, avocets, ducks, killdeer, and others. I’m sure you can only imagine how they reacted to the sudden appearance of JH flying down a jack rabbit……mass confusion.  The thing that surprised me was that JH didn’t pull off the jack. He is such a pansy about stuff like that but, for reasons known only to him, JH kept closing the gap on the jack. The driver stopped, probably not believing his eyes. The jack stayed on the road, went right past the driver who whipped his head around following the jack rabbit and then sort of leaned back as the dark shadow of JH passed and what, in all likelihood, was the largest bird he’d ever seen flew over him and down off the hill to me which I’m sure made the whole scene that much more unbelievable. I would think that JH and I were the topic of discussion at his dinner table that night, just a guess. The bad thing about this flight was that if JH had caught the jack, I would definitely not have climbed the fence……remember the razor wire. So that would have meant that I’d have a long way to go before I could get around all the things in the way and get back to JH. And knowing JH he’d be gulping down as much jack rabbit as he could before I got back to him.

 

I decided that this area was not the best place to fly and went off to the tumble- weed field. It was just about unflyable however; the tumbleweeds have almost taken over the entire field. I figured I’d give it a shot anyway and started to work the field in a way that would drive the jacks out towards the more open areas.  Actually, this was good practice for JH because hunting in the tumbleweeds is just like hunting in sage brush, and most of the winter JH is going to get a large dose of sage brush hunting. I had walked the field two times and only saw one jack which JH chased up and over the road, pulling up just in front of the fence. I was beginning to think that maybe today was going to be one of the few days we’d catch nothing. I was going to make one last pass through the field but closer to the fence, work towards the truck and call it a day. With very thick tumbleweeds growing on my left and a cyclone fence on my right there wasn’t much room in the middle, just a narrow strip of sand and dry grass.  A jack rabbit burst out of the dirt right in front of us. JH was gone, off the fist in a blur. I swear he knows when it’s his last chance because he closed on this jack so fast and had it in his feet before I could really comprehend the flight.

 

Hope all is well,

Joe                        

Pic  1   First flight where JH almost ran into the worker

Pic 2:   JH on jack with tumbleweeds and the cyclone fence

Pic 3:   RAZOR WIRE!!