I went bird trapping with Dave today. We actually just went for a ride, a nice Sunday drive down to Cortez to look for a trap Dave lost yesterday while trapping, which is a whole story in and of itself, funny Dave! Anyway we saw this Redtail sitting on a post and Dave couldn't resist throwing out his trap to see if he could catch it. For anyone who doesn't know, Dave is apprenticing to be a falconer - someone who is licensed by the State to keep and hunt with raptors. While he's an apprentice he can only keep and train a kestrel or a young (not adult) Redtailed Hawk. This one, it turned out, was an adult, (see the red tail feathers?) so we had to let him go. (Dave was pretty sure it was a male because apparently in the world of birds, men are smaller.)
Now, I have to admit, I don't understand the sport. I understand the rehab part of what he does because those are birds that would die without human help, but these birds hunt just fine on their own, I don't believe they LIKE being held captive, and I just don't get the whole fascination with birds thing, but when I voice that to Dave he just looks at me and say, "Because you get to be part of a raptor's LIFE!" And, to him, that's explanation enough. 
This one was a little ticked off at being caught. There was another Redtail close by and I think maybe this pretty bird lost face because he let Dave have it. See the blood running down his hand? Yup, sunk his big old claws right into it. Now THAT has got to be the down side to being part of a raptor's life.
2 comments:
That's funny because we were just talking about Jake, and how sad it is that he is gone. I was telling Aiden that Poppa would catch another Jake, and then logged on to your blog and there was Poppa catching another bird!
What a beautiful bird!
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