Catch and Release

There hasn't been much worth posting about for the past few weeks. Slips have been hard to come by. I don't know if it's the warmer weather, the time of day, or lack of time, probably a combination of all the above but I've had only two or three slips the last two weeks.

Saturday again, the starlings were scarce but a sparrow presented a nice slip. Hayduke chased it under a car and caught it just before it got out the other side. As he typically does, he dragged it further underneath the car and began plucking. This was a fairly low riding car, its bumper just clearing the curb where it was parked so I could barely see him through the small triangle of space where the tire didn't connect with the curb. Reaching him would've been difficult so I sat myself on the curb and figured I'd just wait for awhile.

Well after 5 minutes of plucking the sparrow suddenly decided it didn't want to die (strange that it wasn't dead already since he usually kills sparrows pretty much on impact). It went into super freak out mode and wrested himself from Hayduke's grasp shooting out that tiny window of space. Not even my cat-like reflexes could prevent the escape. Hayduke came shooting out right behind but not nearly fast enough to catch up and decided that the quail wing on my fist was just as good as the sparrow.

He had it for a good 5 minutes though and there was quite a pile of feathers under the car so despite the escape I'm counting it! Catch and release...