Rebel was keen at 39.7 today. After the way he flew on Friday, I felt that I should lower his weight a bit. I guess it worked. He acted like he was starving when I got him out of the mews. He did not fly yesterday as I worked, so he was even more excited to get out than usual.
We headed out to Georgetown to see if we could jump a duck again. I was a bit discouraged because everything I was reading seemed to imply that I really needed to give this bird more pen raised birds as baggies to get him going. I was also a little worried because last time we were here I had my brother with me to help with the flush and this time I would be alone.
Once there, I walked Rebel back to the pond and came in at a slightly different direction in hopes of encouraging him to get into a good position for the slip. His first perch was in the right direction so I figured we were good. I slowly crept up towards the lake.
We were in luck! There were definitely birds on the lake and they were slowly moving away from the near bank in response to our incursion. I looked up and saw that Rebel had marked the ducks and figured he would head up for a better and closer perch. To my amazement, Rebel flew across to my left away from the ducks… I was confused. I was pretty sure he had seen the ducks and based on Thanksgiving, I was sure he would find a good perch but he seemed to be going the wrong way.
I waited for him to head back my way. I whistled a few times, but nothing. He took a perch off to my left over the front corner of the other lake where we had had flushes in the past. I figured that he had seen birds on the water here and was waiting on me to flush them. This bummed me out because the closer lake was a much better flush.
Oh well, I decided I would go ahead and flush the birds so he could at least learn from the experience and figure out better positioning. I climbed up the levy and figured I would flush my birds and whatever Rebel was interested in at the same time. My birds got up first, a flight of about ten woodies. They jumped and started speeding up the other lake, right towards Rebel! He left his perch right as they got up and was in the perfect position. He took a sharp dive and nailed a big male wood duck about twenty-five feet in the air!
It was amazing! A spectacular flight and stoop that I was definitely not expecting! The moment of exhilaration, however, was short lived as my bird was plummeting down into the middle of the damned lake, duck in tow. I ran down the hill to see my bird trying to swim. He was about twenty yards offshore using his soggy wings to pull himself through the water. If I wasn’t so worried about him, I would have noticed right off the eerie resemblance of a swimming hawk to my father-in-law’s rather interesting interpretation of the crawl stroke… A lot of uncoordinated movement for very little forward progress. Sorry Bill.
No sign of the duck but a pile of feathers behind my guy as he pulled himself through the water. Okay, so I wasn’t panicky at this point. I mean the bird was slowly making it towards the bank, but when he saw me, he started to vocalize. This wasn’t his typical vocalization when he is hungry. This was clearly a distress call and it freaked me right out.
Now you have to remember, this bird had very little experience with water. I believe his first time in water was the other day when he took the voluntary mud bath. He really seemed to enjoy that one, but it was balmy that day and the water he was in was relatively shallow. That place was small enough that the banks were a hop away. Not so much this lake. Nope, he was out in the middle of it. Up the lake without a paddle. This water was deep and he was still out far. To top it all off, we had had our first frost last night and the water was cold. Bitter cold.
I hesitated only long enough to toss my jacket, keys and cell phone on the ground and started into the water. It was deep. I was hoping for knees, but I got armpits. I am actually shivering as I type this just thinking about it. As I waded out, I saw that Rebel still had his prize held tightly in his right talon. Awesome! On the other hand, his movements were becoming a little more spasmodic and jerky and his distress call was more forceful.
I was six inches away from him when he dropped the duck. He was in survival mode and he was trying to climb up a twig to get out of the water. Not good. I scooped him up and watched the duck with a broken neck, give a kick and disappear under the bracken under the water. I felt bad for the guy losing his prize, but couldn’t spare much thought on that as I was seriously worried about the hawk.
I got him up on the back and pulled a towel out to dry him a bit. Yup. He hated that. He saw the lure so I gave him a couple of chicks off of the lure. Not sure that was a good idea as we didn’t need him to shunt blood away from warming his periphery to digest food, but I couldn’t stop him at that point. He had a hard time eating. He was slow and kept dropping his food. He couldn’t grip the food well to tear. It was awful to watch.
I squelched back to the truck and popped a bedraggled hawk back in the giant hood. I turned on the car and set the heat at 90. Then I did what I had to do. I stripped down and drove home in my skivvies. I am pretty sure we have all said prayers at certain times to keep from getting pulled over. I said more of them. Out loud.
The whole drive home I was playing the “what if” game. What if my bird had drowned? What if he has hypothermia? What if he refuses to chase ducks from now on after this debacle? What if the cop that is about to pull me over is one of my friends from the ED?
Well, I made it home without encountering Johnny law, thank the good Lord above. I went in the front door and took the bird inside with me. After getting cleaned up, I lit a fire and we sat in front of it. He was definitely looking more like his normal self. He was still whining at me, but it was his normal “feed me!” call. He started to preen and after a while, was back to his old self. I actually think he was enjoying the football game. I can’t be sure but I think he is an Atlanta fan…
Well, as luck would have it, I was taking Rebel out to the mews and one of my really nice neighbor kids came up with a bag of two ducks for Rebel. He had shot them the day before and had just cut away the breasts. He asked if I wanted the rest for Rebel. What a blessing! I took some out to Rebel and he chowed down like a fifth grader on corn dog day in the school cafeteria.
All’s well that ends well!
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