It was September 16th, not really sure what time of the day it was, but she was the last bird we trapped. Chris' car slowed down next to a dumpster, and we were assuming that he was throwing something in the trash (b/c we didn't see a bird anywhere. By the time we realize that a trap was dropped, we were already almost on top of it. Ryan slammed the truck in reverse, and we backed away a bit, and then started watching her. She was very interested in the trap, but for some reason, every car in the world decided they wanted to drive past us. She did a couple little flights for it, but didn't really commit. Finally, we caught a break in the traffic, and she flew down next to the trap. She eyed it for a minute from a few feet away, but was pretty darn suspicious.
After what seemed like eternity, she finally jumps onto the trap, and everyone holds there breath, waiting for her to start bouncin. Suddenly, she starts freakin out, and Ryan throws the car in drive, and we haul balls down the road toward her. She is struggling and fightin, and right when we are gettin up to her, she flies off! WTF! I jump out and grab the trap, and then we head down the road and pull up next to Chris. He was like "What the heck where you guys doing, that RT was hovering 20 ft above your head, when you jumped out to pick up that trap!" After inspecting the trap, it was decided that she had broken on of the nooses, or else the knot from that noose came undone. At that time, we see the RT flying back over the field, and lands on the same pole that she was previously at, so we quickly flip a u-turn, and I toss Ryan's trap on the opposite side of the road that the bird is on. LUCKLY, I tossed the trap right side up (unlike a lot of my previous tosses!), and we head down the road to watch. She only waits a few moments, and then flies down pretty near the trap. She eyes it for a moment, and then jumps on top of it. We hold our breaths, and then suddenly she tries to take off, and her foot is caught in a noose!!!! Both trucks start driving up quickly, and the bird manages to take off with the trap a little bit. Ryan jumps out of the truck, and starts running toward her, and she manages to fly up onto one of the fence posts. She tries to take off from there, but on of the other nooses gets snagged on the fence, and she is held down. Ryan runs up and grabs her, and then Chris cuts the other noose off the fence. She is untangled from the trap, and weighs in at 46 OZ!. She had a meadow lark feather in her mouth, which was a good sign to me...hopefully, she will be a little more birdie than most females. We shall see. We gear her up in the braums parking lot, and then we jump in the car, and head on home, happy with our successful trip!
We got back to Ryan's house around ten or so, and dropped some images onto his computer. A little quick advice was given for the upcoming few days, and she weighed in at 1243 grams. Yesterday, 9-17-09 at 8:00 PM, she weighed 1178 grams, and was starting to calm down pretty well. During our brief session last night, she only bated once, and that was because Maggie got a little too close to her, and made her nervous. I offered her a starling, but she was still a little too nervous to eat. She crunched around on the head a little bit, and got most of the brains, but other than that little taste, refused the rest of the starling. I hooded her back up after about an hour, and she still weighed 1178 grams when I put her back on her block, around 9:00.
This morning (9-18-09), she weighed in at 1165 grams, and was def. more alert to her surrounds. When i picked her up, she did that really quick footing thing, where she bounces back and forth for about 10 second periods. She sure does have a hell of a grip on her...I may need to switch to the pineo glove, so she doesn't poke through the cheaper one I got from Northwoods. She did it again when i was leaning down to put her on the scale, and was more "aware" when i was moving around her toes, so that she wasn't standing on the jesses. Gonna have to start paying more attention to her feet now that she is "waking back up".
I feel confident that she would have eaten if i tried to feed her this morning, but i'm going to wait until either lunch or evening, depending on how much weight she loses. Either way, I will be able to get an idea on her rate of loss (ROL) by lunch time.
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