Sunday, September 21, 2008

More males!!

"If you want a female, why waste your time trapping males?!" you may wonder...Well, there's a couple good reasons:
"Mesu ga hoshii nara naze osu bakkari tsukamatte iru kana?" to omowareru kamoshirenai kedo ikutsuka no riyu ga arimasu:


a) Now that I want to keep one to train a memo has been sent out and the females have gone in to hiding. I'm just not seeing females!

Yappari majime ni trapping shite mesu wo te ni ireyo to omottara osu bakkari wo mite imasu. Mesu wa naka naka mitsukaranai!

b) I wanted to see if my new sparrow harness design worked (problems with sparrows getting out of the harness last time) so I threw it out for the first bird of the day which, surprise surprise, happen to be a male:
Tsukutta suzume no jaketto wa amecho wo tsukamaru kadouka tameshite mitakatta. Hajimete mita amecho wa osu deshita. Sugu ni tsukamatta! Yokatta!


It works!

c) Since I had some friends with me who were experiencing trapping for the first time I still wanted to throw the trap for any kestrel we saw...and we saw a LOT of males!
Hajimete trapping shi ni itta tomodachi wo tsurette ikimashita node nan no amecho demo ii to omotte mita amecho no subete ni wana wo dashimashita. Hotondo osu bakkari deshita.

I discovered that the sparrow isn't likely to survive an attack in the harness though and since my sparrow supply is limited at the moment I decided to use the BC for the rest of the day. I suppose if I had seen exactly what I wanted I would've sacrificed another sparrow but meh, there's still lots of time to trap.
Jaketto wo tsukau to suzume ga shinde shimau node mesu jyanakattara futsu no wana wo tsukaimashita.

I'm a happy trapper but I'm out for keeps now, hopefully sometime this week...

Tanoshikatta kedo kore kara mesu wo neraimasu. Konshu tsukamaru kana...

Monday, September 15, 2008

Kestrels

Another falconer hooked me up with some sparrows over the weekend so I spent a couple hours trapping Sunday afternoon. I wanted to test out the sparrow harnesses that I made but discovered that I need to adjust the design a bit after loosing two of my sparrows when they were able to slip out of the harness! Luckily I had a BC as backup and we had some success:

Suzume wo te ni irete futatabi amecho wo neratte trapping shi ni itte kimashita. 2jikan gurai de osu wo 2 wa torimashita. Mesu ga hoshii node ryouhou tomo hanashimashita. Tanoshikatta desu!!

Four pictures may be a bit misleading as we only caught two males but they're so darn pretty I took lots of pictures. Since I'm after a female, these were released right after posing for the pics. I did find out though that the male kestrel hood I made fits!

Jibun de tsukutta hood wa pittari aimasu!

And while trapping the kestrels was a blast, one thing that made the short trip even better was my wife's willingness to come along and even drive!. She's not a bird person and I know there were probably other things she would have rather done but she was a trooper and drove great (as evidenced by our success!). It's a blessing to be able to share the activities you love with the ones that you love and by the end I even think she was having fun...Thanks Toe!

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Trapping season has arrived!

Had a great day trapping today, only caught the one RT pictured below but saw TONS of birds! Not just kestrels and RT's either, golden eagles, feruginous (sp?) hawks, swainson's hawks, turkey vultures, a coopers hawk and praire falcons were in the mix as well. At one point we were stopped on a dirt road with a praire falcon two telephone poles behind us, a ferug 5 poles in front of us, a RT 100 yards down the fence line to the west, and a golden eagle soaring on the horizon. Awesome stuff. Can't wait to get out and do it again!!

Atarashii pasacon wo katta kara ima no tokoro nihongo wa kakenai. Moshi wakenai kedo shibaraku no aida romanji ni narimasu. Kyou trapping no jiki ga hajimarimashita. Ichinichi jyu ganbarimashita. Yama hodo no taka ya hayabusa ya washi wo mimashita ga kekkyoku shita no ichinenme no red-tail dake wo te ni iremashita. Kotoshi wa amechou ni suru node kono red-tail wo shashin wo totte kara sugu ni hanashimashita. Sugoku tanoshikatta! Kongetsu no manaka gurai made asobi no trapping wo shite, soshite amecho wo jibun no mono ni shite kunren wo hajimarimasu. Tsukamaeru taka no shahsin wo nosemasu ne. Tanoshimi!

I won't keep a bird until around the middle of the month (unless I get exactly what I want...) so until then check back often for pics of all the birds I catch!