birds

[Steve Davy]

The little rascal was probably thinking "I'm going to hang out over here and be real quiet like just to mess with his head and see what he does."

[Tad Eareckson]

No, something happened to her. I started noticing that she's holding her right wing a little low and it looks like her flying is a little rough. And her behavior has been VERY subdued ever since I got her back. These guys are strongly wired to conceal problems and fake being OK when they're not 'cause not being OK is a death sentence with predators around and the flock won't tolerate them around 'cause they're gonna attract predators.

(Many years ago here I noticed that one of the resident Crow clan holding a wing a little low but that he was getting around, flying, functioning fine. A short time later the clan was mobbing and killing him. I knew what was going on and why and resisted interfering but quickly reached the point at which I couldn't stand it and broke things up. So then they either finished the job later or drove him off into another clan's territory where they would've killed him.)

That would explain her going so abruptly into silence mode - which made no sense to me at the time. Can't imagine what it was that attacked though. With a gun to my head I'd go with Blue Jay - even though they're smaller. And they were around at the time so maybe a team effort. And they may recognize this bird as a potential threat - maybe to nests, eggs. I'm guessing they could be.

Bummed out now and hoping things soon get back to normal... when I'm screaming and swearing at, shaking, threatening to kill her - frequently while bleeding.

[Tad Eareckson]

Day 3

Yesterday was fairly miserable. Birdie was in shutdown mode virtually all day and wings asymmetry wasn't looking any better. Played with toys for several periods lasting just several seconds each.

Today she's behaving a lot more normally - moderately noisy, obnoxious, aggressive. MAY be doing a bit better on the symmetry issue. Boy I hope we can quickly get to a day where this is just a bad memory.

[Steve Davy]

Perhaps she got a life lesson out of the ordeal. How is she doing today?

[Tad Eareckson]

Day 5

Can't complain. The wing's looking pretty good - I think it's safe to say. Yesterday it was still down enough that I was pretty worried. Think we're gonna get out of this one with just some unpleasant memories.

Sure hope she learned something useful 'cause I've got close to nuthin'. I'd like to get her some more free flight time, experience, training but that won't be happening real soon.

P.S. You just blew your 1111 post total with that one.
P.P.S. That was Post 9999 in General and this is 10000. And there's another 99 in "Welcome". Pretty cool.

[Tad Eareckson]

Day 8 (barely - short of a week ago by the clock)

Saturday The Bird was an unbearable pain in the ass. Had to spend about a third of it yelling at, threatening to kill her. My throat is still fried. So made that goal.

By that time she was looking pretty symmetrical. You'd have been hard pressed to notice anything if you weren't looking for anything. Started seeing occasions at which she was perfectly even but never found her with her right primaries crossed over her left.

Today about 11:30 she took her first voluntary bath in months.

Previous Bird... Shortly after I acquired her (young) she did what they do - attempt to bathe in the cage water dish. So when I see her starting to splash I jump up and snatch it away, grab the rusty old roller paint tray, set it on the kitchen table, fill it...

She IMMEDIATELY figured out that dipping her throat in the water dish and shaking to spray the few drops off was the signal to get the big monkey to pour her a proper bath. Even with the water dish bone dry she'd do the drill to get things moving. About once a week, week and a half.

She was INCREDIBLE at figuring stuff like that out quickly. I swear she wasn't imprinted on humans (like they're supposed to be) - wasn't affectionate (preened me about once), didn't like to be touched but was really wired into human thoughts and emotions.

This bird... Tried to train her to train me with the bath signal. Terrified of the paint tray. Had to clip it to the top of the cage, bait it with pistachios to get her acclimated, And even after she goes for the water dish and I respond she may take an hour or several to do the bath. And sometimes not at all.

But she got a nice soaking after one of her shorter delays this time. One of these years she might get the drill down.

'Bout an hour and a quarter ago found her at her sleep roost/position with the right tip crossed over the left for the first time. Hoping for more of that in the near future. And if all keeps going well I'll probably pick up the outdoors stuff where we left off.

[Tad Eareckson]

Day 8B

Cool, clear, light SW wind this morning. Decided to give Quinn another shot at The Great Outdoors.

Hoped for a short out and return. Threw her out into the clear sector SW of the upper deck, goddam bird went out, turned back, ignored my finger, climbed steeply, parked in a Tulip 25 feet over the deck. Crap.

Wanted to come down but stayed on the branch calling. I wheeled the cage out and geared for a wait. Birdie started pacing back and forth facing down towards me.

Blue Jay, my prime suspect, moved in and started facing off from within a couple three feet. Oh shit.

Birdie shortly afterwards made the steep near vertical descent back to my finger right about 09:00 local.

So that was a big training success and now we're pretty sure about the cause of the injury. And Birdie may now be better at recognizing and responding to that threat. The setup a week plus about a half hour ago was the same - high up and wanting to come down but nervous about the execution.

Wing... Still noticeable and bothering me. Time will tell.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2272
US Hawks - Sea to Shining Sea

Rick Masters - 2016/01/17 08:44:05 UTC

Years later, I mentioned this to Larry Tudor (or perhaps it was Jim Lee) and he told me about a hang glider pilot somewhere who had been attacked by an eagle.

The big bird had flown right up to his control bar and latched onto his arm with its huge talons and began tearing at him.

The pilot, terrified and in considerable agony, couldn't get the bird to let go.

In fear for his life, he resorted to beating the powerful yet fragile creature to death against his uprights while his glider dove out of control.

Tad Eareckson - 2016/01/17 17:03:26 UTC

In my experience birds tend to be really surprisingly NOT fragile.

http://www.kitestrings.org/post8904.html#p8904

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgdc7OlMUBI
BROTHERS OF THE WIND | Exclusive sneak-peek: Golden eagle hunts chamois
Brothers of the Wind - 2015/11/26
dead

Bullshit, Rick. Fuck you and your bullshit forum too.

[Tad Eareckson]

Day 9 - 2017/05/17

At about noon tossed her back up over the driveway from its street end in an effort to expand her repertoire and hoping she'd turn the corner and go for the back deck. Nope, high into the trees north of the front yard.

She WANTED to come back to me, kept talking, answering, but couldn't quite bring herself to complete the required dive. Moved around the front/east area over the course of the next two and a half hours while I called, baked in the heat, camped out on my folding stool, talked to neighbors, mowed the lawn. Finally got at the back deck - to which she's fairly comfortable coming in. Not the ending I'd hoped for but I'm sure she benefitted from some more flying, landing, navigating experience.

Wing as of now... Real close but little to no progress. She's left footed and raising that one will shift things to the droop side so that may be contributing a little to what I'm seeing.

More on Day 8B...

After her flight I noticed the across the street neighbor in his front yard near the street assembling a bunch of improvised gear for something. Went down and asked. He pointed to a big backlit basketball sized clump with stuff swarming around it about fifteen feet up out on a branch from the oak and said something about bees.

I said, "Those aren't bees. That's a White-Faced Hornets' nest." He said, "No, those are bees. MY bees. They've swarmed."

Got a better look at it and found that what I was looking at was a ball of what he estimated were four thousand Honeybees with a queen somewhere in the middle that had broken off from his hive in search of a new home of their own. "Wow! I've never seen that before!" Although I have twice been engulfed by swarms - both on glider missions, once at Woodstock launch and the other at Ridgely.

Extension pole, five gallon bucket, stepladder, moon suit, sheets, hive frames set... Knocked most of them off into the bucket on the first effort but apparently didn't get the queen 'cause a contingent was reforming on the branch - apparently in response to her pheromones. Got gloves for the second effort 'cause he got stung about half a dozen times on the first and everybody started settling down in their new accommodations. Pretty cool.

Yesterday I heard a piece on WAMU about Brood X Cicadas developing faster and emerging four years early in response to global Chinese hoax effects. And guess what I heard when I went out the front door this morning. (Also found one that had made a fatal mistake landing on the road.)

The last Cicada Brood X emergence was in 2004. Goddam Previous bird took off on me around its peak. I went out on my bike "looking" for her. And of course, since they're practically invisible even when you know exactly where they are, "looking" means calling and listening for a response. Good freakin' luck. One low tree on my search route was so loud as to be painful and I would give it as wide a berth as possible. All wasted effort - she showed up on her own by late afternoon. (Sure wish she could emerge again.)

[Tad Eareckson]

Three Tuesdays ago since the Quinn Crisis and this morning I'm pretty confident that we're moving towards a one hundred percent full recovery. Looking symmetrical a lot of the time and getting a fair number of right-over-left tip crossings at rest. (I always flip the left-over-rights when present when I'm handling her or she's within reach to at least make me feel better and maybe help things along a little.)

Have no freakin' clue as to the nature of her injury. Never saw any blood or feather damage, felt any asymmetry. When I'd gently press to explore for asymmetry, irregularities she never gave any indication she was experiencing pain. Maybe bruising or a sprain.

Been doing a lot of out and returns off the back deck. I check for normal bird activity (no hawks) and give her hard tosses - to the right for a counterclockwise circle and to the left for a clockwise - and she comes back like a boomerang.

Yesterday I did several flights from out front. Went clockwise around the house to the deck railing on all but one. In that odd one she parked high in a tree (about where she'd been Blue-Jayed) and I parked on the deck with the laptop to be able to keep talking to her but she came back after several minutes.

Those exercises seem to:
- settle her down a bit when she's being obnoxious
- help a bit with the injury recovery maybe

Yesterday morning she molted out one of the 2016 feathers with which I had acquired her (2016/05/01) - a starboard outboard secondary with the tip clipped off. Looking forward to the replacement of its similarly clipped neighbor and the prospect of a perfect little flying machine by summer's end.