Sunday, June 08, 2008

Sunday Pix


On Sunday this time of the year we do a lot of stuff around the house, garden, with birds etc.



Patrick Porter of the Pigeon list (also a bird hunter, botanist, horticulturist, and damned good writer), sent Libby a bunch of huge Dahlia tubers. (Wish I had thought to show scale-- some of these are finger long.) We shall provide updates.

The Gos, who was molting loose in the mews, very suddenly developed a serious case of Demonic Mews Possession Syndrome. Sounds funny, but I don't care for a large well- armed bird hanging from my throat. Brought him into the house for retraining and he turned back into a pussycat-- here he is turning his head in the universal hawk greeting signal.



But having a hawk, as opposed to a falcon, in the house is always tough-- they excrete horizontally for one thing, and our poop catcher is not 100% reliable. And even the best hawk (as opposed again to falcon) is a nervous fidgety thing. So we built a screen perch for the mews and are feeding him out on the hawk lawn. Not sure if he cares for this but it is the best we can do.

Matt who flies Harrises as sweet as my falcon, is saying things like "Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Accipiters" and "They'll turn on you, you know!"

Meanwhile the baby falcon is a delight. Here he is with his favorite monster.


7 comments:

Matt Mullenix said...

Steve is that some sort of timed feeding contraption in there with the falcon? If so, I wish I'd thought of that!

(If not, I'm off to the patent office!)

Steve Bodio said...

It is an automatic cat feeder-- we have raised about six eyasses with them. Makes for perfect manners.

Pluvialis said...

Oh god. Baby falcons. Peppery little chittery things. I want one! I want one!

Matt Mullenix said...

Cool! But where do I get an automatic cat?

Seriously, a great idea for eyas hawks...

Anonymous said...

Hodgesaargh, is that you?

Steve Bodio said...

It would appear that the gos is indeed one of THOSE.

Mike said...

Found a nice story today about city falcons in the City section of the NY Times. That led me to doing a Google search on falcon cams; turns out they are all over the country now. A lot of them don't work, or don't show anything. The best show this morning is from the live cam on the roof of Midwest Generation's power plant in Waukegan, Illinois. Don't know if I can post an html link, but the site is easily googled.