For the next two days, Rebel showed similar odd behavior. He would start off by chasing squirrels fairly well but then break off and fly to a tall pine to catch the end of the sun. Tuesday was almost an exact replica of Monday with the exception that he did not actually catch the squirrel. I did find the body of the squirrel he had killed on Monday. Well, more accurately Jordan found it by almost stepping on it. Fortunately Rebel never saw it.
I was forced to call Rebel down to the lure again on Tuesday after flying over to the other vacant lot. This was just bizarre behavior. I agonized over whether he was too high in weight then too low… I just couldn’t figure out the reason behind this behavior.
It became clear on Wednesday.
We were in the same exact section where he had chased squirrels the prior two days (and actually killed one of them) when once again, Rebel spontaneously abandoned the hunt. I called Al at work to discuss it with him and ask his opinion. He seemed to think that maybe the bird was just too high in weight, but he had killed both his second and third squirrels at higher weight so this didn’t completely compute. We both thought that maybe he had been scared off of this prey due to his injury and we contemplated a baggie or something else to renew his interest in squirrels.
We were in the middle of this conversation, with Rebel once again perched high in a pine, enjoying the last direct sunlight of the day. Just like the previous two days, he took off to the other vacant lot and I slowly gave chase. When I rounded the corner my eyes beheld a nightmare.
On my very first outing with Al and his passage male Rowdy, Rowdy had actually gotten hung up high in a scrub oak by his jesses. He actually hung upside down and couldn’t get free. He was stuck like this for what seemed like forever but was probably only fifteen minutes or so. We were contemplating whether to call the fire truck or a tree service technician with climbing gear when Rowdy was finally able to break free and come on down. It was a scary event and one that stuck with me.
When I came out from under the live oaks and looked up to where Rebel had perched I was shocked to find him completely upside down and hanging by his feet sixty feet in the air. I was on the phone still with Al. I used a few expletives and had to hang up because I wasn’t sure how I was going to get Rebel down.
Now you have to take this in the context of a bird that was injured due to my negligence just a few days prior, so if you are thinking that I was a bit paranoid and even panicky, you are indeed correct. A polar bear didn’t have any colder sweat than I was bathing in at that moment.
So I decided I would pull out the lure to try to make Rebel fight a little harder to get free. I started whirling the lure and blowing the whistle and the wings flapped and he was free!!! Only it wasn’t one pair of wings flapping… It was two. Rebel had found a haggard female that had been watching him hunt from this lot and had attacked her. This was a big bird and they locked up talon to talon! When they broke apart, Rebel chased her away and then veered straight back towards the lure. He gave me an aggressive call as he struck the lure that I had not heard before.
He mantled and vocalized for a minute, but the other RT did not come back. He had succeeded in defending his territory and was awfully proud of himself. After he finished the lure, he continued to vocalize for a few minutes. I was looking in the direction that the other bird flew off when he did something he had never done before. He flew to my shoulder.
It didn’t hurt but it made me a bit nervous to have one-inch long talons just a few millimeters away from some pretty damn important vascular and nervous structures. I realized that he didn’t just consider his yard to be his territory; he was sending a clear signal to that bird that he considered ME his territory. So there I was in the sunset with a bird on my shoulder, my heart beating fast from worry, and I came to the sudden realization that this hawk had just made me his bitch. Great. Keep the pimpin’ talon strong there Rebel…
I think this encounter explained a lot of the bizarre behavior over that last two days. I believe that Rebel was watching that same hag each night over in the lot. He finally got fed up and attacked. I think I am amazingly lucky and it does not appear that Rebel received any injury in the encounter. Still, too close for me…
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