So this afternoon Rebel and I headed back to the river to see if we could scare up a duck over the rice fields. There is a nice levee that heads out towards the waterway with expansive rice fields on either side where there are frequently fish ducks hanging out. The problem is that there is a deep ditch between the levee and the rice fields, so if Rebel takes game over in the rice paddy, I can’t get to him. I haven’t ventured out here for just his reason in the past.
Well, you can only stare at the fire for so long before you have to stick your hand in for the first time, so on this particular beautiful afternoon we decided to go for it. Rebel was back at weight after his gorging on squirrel two days ago. He was too fat to fly yesterday so I only gave him a mouse to keep him happy during the long cold night. He was itching to fly, and the weather was perfect. Diamond blue skies, a slight breeze and golden sunshine… You can’t ask for much more.
I ran into one of my neighbors who borders the rice fields and explained to them what I was doing. I suppose it was with a tad bit of foresight that he told me to keep an eye out for the resident pair of bonded Red Tails that have set up shop near this levee.
Almost as soon as we got out, Addie bounded off after something. That something turned out to be one of the largest Fox Squirrels I have ever seen. He climbed casually to the top of a pine in no particular hurry. Rebel saw him and winged off after the squirrel. Rebel put in at the top of a neighboring pine and stared at the huge squirrel. The hawk decided to make a couple of close stoops but did not connect. In retrospect, this was clearly on purpose. I think that Rebel was put off by the fact that the squirrel did not try to dodge away but stood his ground.
Slowly the squirrel began to make his way across the trees with Rebel following him usually a tree or so away. I was doing my insane Santa impersonation and beating on the trees, to no avail. The squirrel neither moved any faster nor did he give any sense of urgency to his nonchalant retreat. Baffled, Rebel finally watched him go. This marked the first time that my bird has given up on game that he / she has been presented. Given Rebel’s aggression in the past, this was a surprise.
We let the lumbering Fox Squirrel go his merry way and decided to explore the levee. Well, Addie and I decided to explore. Rebel had other ideas. A teenage-like sulkfest was apparently in order as Rebel made his way up into the top of a pine and decided not to follow. I left him there sure that he would eventually follow and made my way down the levee. Halfway out, I saw the drawbacks to this particular setup. There was virtually no way for my bird to get game down anywhere but in the river or in the rice field. Bah! I turned to head back and find Rebel when I heard a very mature hag RT screeching at me. She flew up into a snag on the edge of the marsh and stared at me. Uh oh.
Now I was getting a bit nervous. I sped up a bit and headed back to where I knew I had left Rebel, a few hundred yards away. As I looked through the trees, I heard my bird. Rebel was trying to imitate the hag but he could not give an adult cry like that. Instead it wounded like a mixture between a distress call and his damned demanding feeding call. I have not laid eyes on my bird yet and he is not moving so I started fearing that he was locked up with another hag and that that really was his distress call.
I couldn’t hear any bells, so I sped towards the call. I heard it again as I drew closer and looked up. No bird. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the hag female who had followed me take off and circle around ahead of me, giving another mature, frightful cry. Crap. I started looking on the ground, sure that my bird was crabbing with the male, getting put in to just the right position for the female to rake Rebel’s head off.
Nervous about the fact that I could hear no bells, I did what I had to do and whipped out my telemetry. Beep, Beep. Rebel was sitting right above me. He tried his pitiful challenge cry again, shrugged and flew down to me. I think that even he knew how crappy his challenge call was… I was embarrassed for him. Pretty sure the other hawks were laughing at this point and Rebel’s face was turning red. I bet even the gargantuan Fox Squirrel had a smirk on his grill.
Addie had the good grace to ignore the entire uncomfortable situation. She sniffed a few things, drooled a little, and ran around in circles. I have to give her props for the sisterly way she tried to take the attention off of Rebel, but that weak cry was like an elephant in the room.
I called Rebel down to the lure and cropped him / her up. And no, I was not patronizing the bird by cutting her squirrel up for her… she likes it that way. Sheesh. I tried to pretend that it had never happened, but the whole way home I kept thinking things like, “Great, I’m the falconer with the “special” bird,” and “Super, scared of a big squirrel and talks like Mike Tyson… nice combo.” I wondered if I could hold him back from the molt and repeat the passage year again next year. I was afraid that he was going to be bullied by all the other hawks in the forest because of his almost childlike cry. I was literally planning a party where I would hand out frozen rats to all of the local raptors in exchange for their leaving Rebel alone, when Rebel looked at me. He hawked up a big cast and just smiled at me like he had just played the best joke ever.
Friggin’ birds...
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