WHERE IS EVERONE!!!!!!!!!

[albert]

ANY ONE GIVE ADVISE ON WORKING A SPROCKER WITH FM HARRIS

[Minca]

What's a sprocker?

[vird]

I have made a couple contributions lately and sent a few unanswered PMs and have not recieve any response. I will be flying a kestrel buy waiting-on on dickey birds, and if things go well, might even try a...oh I forgot how you call it in English when you fly two birds together!

[Minca]

Yes, this board used to be much more active and I'm a bit at a loss, I have no idea how to get it to pick back up again.
I'm very interested in how you'll be hunting your kestrel from waiting-on! I know alot of people are afraid to hunt a redtail from a soar, but people do it successfully all the time, so I'm very interested in your progress. I'm considering taking a kestrel eyas next spring.
btw - flying multiple birds is called a cast/caste.
Michelle

[vird]

thank you Minca I had the word on the tip of my toungue but as I was writing quickly I had no time to look it up in my books. In Spanish it´s caled "copla". Why are you considering an eyass instead of a passage?
I plan to try to make it wait-on naturally but I might even try the kite if necessary. I have seen trained kestrels go up without too much trouble although it doesn´t seem all of them will. I want to fly it from a short height, only about 20-30 meters (100 feet?) because with other small falcons I have seen that higher is not always an advantage for hunting dickey birds, with aplos and a bat falcon bids would only bail one time after another until the falcon loses interest although I did manage to "stretch" the quarrys flight to give time for contact. I think a little kestrel will be less intimidating and will coax the dickey bird to fly longer and stand a abetter chance of being caught.

[Minca]

I've flown a few passage kestrels in the the past and had a very difficult time with carrying. Sparrows meant lost hawk. I had to stick with starlings and bigger. For a while I flew an imprinted rehab male before it was hacked out, and had no problem at all with carrying. He was a very fun bird to fly and made me want to imprint my own, but took most of his game night hawking on roosts. He would scream too much during the day and warn all the "dickey" birds of his approach! Flying at 88 grams he took a 110 gram grackle! And he never carried. I've had hag kestrels vocalize, and I feel if I could imprint my own the right way it should minimize vocalizing in the feild.
100 feet is about the height that I've seen most wild kestrels fly but it's always more like real wide circles while slowly moving across a feild. I don't think I've ever seen a kestrel go into a stoop like larger falcons, have you?

[vird]

Hi Minca,
yes, that is the way I want to do it, more of a speculative kind of waiting-on. I have heard of kestrels taking grackles and I would surely want to watch that feat! A guy down here used to ride with his kes on a bike to approach grackles in suburban-urban scenarios and had good results but never actually watched a hunt. I imagine tyou have to get there ASAP, even my coops have sustained some pecking or mobbing when catching boat-tailed grackles, although I think the best match (in size and speed) is a male HH. Your imprint kes surely had guts!
I went yesterday and saw many K-birds but incredibly, they where all in the wrong place (ie. near the highway in a zone where there was no place to park the car after leaving down the bal-chatri, another was scared by a peasant suddenly appearing. Then when I finally had the perfect set-up, the kestrel just came down and stood on the ground near the trap and up he went again two or three times, I guess he had too many grasshopers before.
I have seen one (1) kestrel stoop down exactly like a falcon, unfortunately it was a wild kestrel and it stooped down to an eyass goshawk I used to have a long time ago, but I can tell you that it stooped down from at least 150 feet up and almost vertical, it made two or three loops with lesser stoops and finally perched some distance away and continued harrasing my eyass untill we moved further. That is why I think that a k bird CAN stoop fast. Some time ago aplomados where only flown at quarry from a chase because many thought the aplo´s wing-load was too light to stoop fast enough, now I´ve seen several trained aplos stoop hard at doves and quail, although many stoops actually end up as tail chases (few will hit and turn around to bind like a peregrine). All this has made me assume that a kestrel could make an interesting waiting-on bird.