Log Day 16

Here is a picture from the first night, right when I walked through the front door (photo taken by my beautiful wife on her i-phone....wish I had a picture of her face from that moment....she was expecting a kestrel!) Got a late start getting up and about this morning. I forgot to tell the wife that I was flying in the mornings now, so the alarm wasn't changed last night (I sure am forgetful sometimes!). Shot a quick text to work, letting them know that I would be coming in an hour or so later than usual, and then got all my gear together. At 8:30 AM, she was at 1080 grams, which is a loss of 60 grams in 19 hours @ a ROL of 3.16 GPH. Took her down to a park that's about a mile from my office that we had never been to before, and I must admit, that her responsivness was a little bit lacking. Granted, she was a lot higher than yesterday, and hadn't cast from the previous day either, but that could simply be b/c I didn't hardly give her any casting materiel during our session yesterday, so she may have just not needed to. Anyways, got her out of her GH, and today was def the "windiest" that I have flown her in so far(though we are only have 15 mph gusts, so it didn't really have any effect on her I don't think...). Set her down, and she started lookin around everywhere....not really focusing on me at all. I finally got her attention, and called her to the fist, and she came pretty quickly. About that time, I hear a red-shouldered start screaming, and a pretty big hag female comes flying out of the vacant wood lot that's next to the park. She flew up in the tree above us, and told the world how mad she was that we were there, which in turn pulled her mate in as well. So the male starts flying circles around our heads above the canopy screamin, and the female starts hoppin tree to tree screaming in unison. To say that this shot my birds focus for a while would be a pretty big understatement. She tried to fly up to a tree that was near by, but there where a lot of low branchs, and i wasn't about to let her get her creance all tangled up, so I gently brought her down, when she hit the end of the line. This park is sorta nice, in that they have cut down quite a few trees (there where TONS initially....still quite a few left....all pecan trees with quite a few squirrel nests), but left all the stumps in the ground, ranging from a foot tall, all the way up to four or five feet tall....we started making our way from right next to the parking lot, toward the soccer field that is in the back, flying from stump to stump along the way. After a few more flights, she started to focus a LITTLE bit better, but she was still lookin around everywhere, and keeping an eye on the RS's (that were still following us through the park). Got to the soccer field, and I tossed her up on the goal post...after looking around for a good bit, she finally noticed that I was standing out in the middle of the field looking at her, and she gave a quick head bob. Raised the fist and called her, and she was on her way. Got another three or four flights off of the goal posts, and then I jumped her down to the lure, which held a whole sparrow. All the flights where shorter today...most of them being only about 30 feet or so. Over all, her focus was WAY off, her response time was slower, her lure response was about as good as it was the second day that I showed it to her, and this session def didn't move us "forward" if you will. Granted, she was 40 grams heavier than she was yesterday, it was a new place, and the RS's where insisting they have her attention most of the time, but I feel confident that (had I been flying her free today), I would have AT LEAST gotten her back...but you never know. Over all, she got 68 grams of sparrow, which should go through her quicker than the quail did, and I'm hoping to have her around a grand 70 tom morning for our session. Going off of Ryan's advice, I am aiming to have her weight around 1050 grams for her first free flight on Saturday. Her actions tom will dictate whether or not this is a good goal.