08/12/2007

The birds have been out to the 50-mile station. I dropped a few birds today, but I suspect that some may be back yet later in the next few days. I tossed with two other flyers, so we had ~150 birds in the air. That should be great experience for the birds. As always seems to be the case, the off colored birds go by the wayside earlier.

I have updated the inventory list.

On Tuesday they will be on the training trailer and will have 45 mile tosses 3 times per week. If the weather looks good for the races, the convention birds will be in the race. If not they will just be on the trailer for the season.

08/09/2007

I put the electronic bands on the birds and started clocking them. You can check out your bird’s status. Due to the large amount of birds that arrive in training, if your bird does not show up until after 5 PM or so, do not worry about it. When I loft fly in the afternoon, most of the birds that were missed show up.

I also release baskets a few minutes apart, so don’t look for first place.

If your bird comes in mid-morning every day, you may want to get a bit concerned….

08/04/2007

The Young Bird inventory has been updated on the Web, but I am out 2-3 birds from this weeks wire hits.

I have a few issues with a rogue adult cooper hawk in early July that killed about six birds before he finally left the area. It was a bit heart wrenching to see him come out and kill birds almost at will, always when I was not around. No matter what I tried, it didn’t seem to deter it. It finally left on it’s own after it killed one of my old birds on the ground 35 yards from my garage.

I had a few birds hit wires or ?? somewhere on their way home from a training tosses. I sent 40 birds out from loft A, and three never returned. One of my birds that came back needed a few stitches. The same thing happened the next day with loft B, with one bird still missing. One of the convention birds was gashed open. I gave it about 10 stitches and it should be OK.

All of the birds were vaccinated with Pox vaccine back in June, and have been out a few times. They are all on 16 hours of light each day, and are looking very clean in regards to their molt. I will open the divider so that all of the birds will be together this weekend. They will be that way for a month or so, and will be separated by sex about 3 weeks before the convention race.

The first races begin in two weeks. I am looking forward to it.