|
www.chucksfalconry.com (redirects to
http://virtualvideo.cc/falconry)
A Web Site about Hawking in Houston, TX
Caution: This web
site is devoted to hunting with birds of prey.
Some images may not be suitable for everyone
There are many pictures - DSL or Cable
Internet Highly Recommended
Click On
These Other Links Within This Website:
|
Cisco in the press
My hawk has been on the cover of Texas
Parks and Wildlife magazine and featured in articles in World
of Falconry, Galveston Daily News, The Falconry and
Raptor Conservation Magazine, and in articles that I have written
for Texas Hawking Association's On The Wing. Despite his
celebrity status, he remains quite humble.
Some examples:
Text of Joey Richard's Article in Galveston Daily News Cisco
Killer King
PDF's of Same Article Killer King PDF's
Houston Chronicle Article on Jim Ince and his peregrine, with a brief
reference to Cisco Chronicle
Picture of Cisco, 2nd Honorable Mention in Western Sporting / L.L.
Electronics' Photo Contest Photo Contest
Same picture employed in Western Sporting ad: Sporting
Cover of Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, Nov, 2008. Cover
In an article within that edition, there were a number of
pictures of him taken by Kendall Larsen, but without attribution
|
"Alex", my first bird after three decades, a
passage female American kestrel, two days before she was attacked and
driven off by a female sharp-shin hawk.
Photo: Russell Bryant on 12/29/2004 |
"Apollo", Haggard Tiercel American Kestrel -
He was lost April 25, 2005, after taking his first sparrow, staying out
overnight, catching a lizard, and finally escaping my trap
Photo:
Stephanie Redding on 2/11/2005
|
|
|
"Bravo",
passage tiercel redtail hawk, in his mew, taken early November 2005, a
few weeks before he flew off.
Photo: Chuck Redding
|
"Cisco",
passage tiercel redtail hawk with the first rabbit of the day, March
11, 2006, Ft Worth, TX at the "Texas Outlaw Dirt-Hawkers First Annual
Game Cookout and Mini-Meet"
Photo: Krys Langevin
|
|
|
Dart, a captive bred Harris' hawk. A
refugee of Hurricane Ike, he was given to me by Chris Comeaux after
Chris sustained heavy damage to his house on Bolivar Peninsula. He
became an excellent game hawk, taking small birds and rabbits.
After flying him for more than a season, I gave him to Lynne Holder.
|
Cisco, March 8, 2008.
The capture of this squirrel demonstrates Cisco's capacity and
versatility. The squirrel was hidden from the hawk on that little
tree behind me. The hawk flew between the gap at
about shoulder level, snatching the squirrel from the back side of
the tree as he went through.
Photo by Mike Wiegel
|
For
me this says it pretty well:
"The reward that comes from practicing
falconry is, and has to be, a feeling of your own personal
satisfaction; that, and that alone. Chances are no one else will be
around when your hawk is at her best. Falconry is a tedious, time
consuming effort with long periods of stress and anxiety punctuated by
heartbeats of gut-wrenching visceral satisfaction so intense that is
impossible to put into words."
Lifted from The California Hawking Club Apprenticeship Manual
|
And
this:
"There are a hundred things that can happen in falconry, and only two
of them are good."
Overheard of Lisa Cherry at NAFA meet in Amarillo, TX - November 2008 |
|
|
On
the last day of 2004, my passage kestrel (Alex) got driven off by a
sharp-shinned hawk, so I decided to build this web site.
A little background. After being away from falconry for over 35 years I
decided to return to it. As a kid I had trained a couple of
red-tail hawks, and fooled around some with American kestrels. Through an old friend
and falconer, Mark Reindel, who lives up on the east
coast, I
met Jim Ince, a master falconer living in Bellaire, Texas, who agreed
to be my sponsor. Required because of state and federal regulations, a
sponsor can
be invaluable as a mentor, especially for a novice
. I accompanied Jim a few times while he hunted with his tiercel
peregrine. At some point he mentioned that folks were having real
success hunting birds with American kestrels, and that a friend of his
had written a treatise on the subject*. That was probably the catalyst.
At that point I started back into it. I learned about the regulations,
passed the written test, and acquired the necessary equipment. I had
the hawk house ("mews") built, and then had it inspected by game
wardens from Texas Parks and Wildlife, another requirement. After
paying the fees, I obtained the state and federal government falconry
permits. With some input from my sponsor, I built a bal-chatri hawk
trap, basically a small cage with a bait animal inside and fishing line
slip nooses on the top. This activity took a fair amount of time and
energy starting in the spring of 2004.
I trapped the juvenile kestrel, "Alex," late in the day on October 10,
2004. I had
previously caught and released two adult female kestrels, but was
trying to catch a juvenile bird. She was trapped
southwest of Rosenberg, TX, where she was flying around with three or
four other kestrels, possibly family members. They put on quite an
aerial display for about an hour before this juvenile female hit the
trap, just before I was about to leave and regroup for the following
weekend. Jim Ince was a little surprised when I showed up at his house
with an unhooded bird in the box. "What? You didn't hood her?" If I had
four hands I could have hooded her, but as it was, I barely got her off
the trap. First, my car was on the wrong side of the road. Because of
the way I held her, she had a great
opportunity to bite my thumb off. I was holding the trap
in one hand, bird in the other and I couldn't locate my cutters to snip
the unrelaxed nooses holding her leg. Then some guy drove by and yelled
at me, telling me I was breaking the law. So I just stuffed the bird
into the shoe box, figuring that Jim would figure out a way of getting
her out of there, which he did. He got her out of the box using a dark
room and a flash light. He hooded her, put jesses on her and then
unhooded her. She turned out to be an agreeable bird, eating on Jim's
fist within minutes.
Named after a tiercel eyas kestrel that I had as a kid, within a day
she was flying to my fist, and was a hit with everybody. She was flying
free in a few weeks, but encountered accipiters (sharp-shinned and
Cooper's hawks) regularly. On two occasions she was attacked by
Cooper's hawks in the air but did not seem overly upset. In fact she
chased the first one after I drove it off. On another occasion, at a
nearby park, a small sharp-shinned hawk attacked her and she turned on
it. The two birds met in mid-air, I yelled, and the sharpie headed off.
During her short falconry career she killed a couple of house sparrows,
and was on the verge of really hunting. On the morning of 12/31, just
two days after the picture above was taken, she was sitting in a tree
on our street in north Houston. She started her shrill alarm call
"kek-kek-kek," then she flew from the branch. I knew there must be a
hawk nearby. A female sharp-shinned hawk appeared from across the
street, high in the air, speeding like a bullet toward her. Alex headed
north with the sharpie right on her tail, and that was it. For a few
days, I spent a lot of time looking, but saw no sign of her. I didn't
completely give up looking for a couple of weeks. If she survived the
attack, she was apparently driven a long way off.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Notes added 7/26/2008
Here are a few more comments about Alex. I was thinking about her
today, nearly four years later. On the day that I lost her, I was
flying her in Oak Forest, a wooded, very large neighborhood just north
of downtown Houston. She pursued some sparrows up to a martin
house, and tried aggressively footing inside the entrance holes.
The sparrows stayed well back, as she failed to catch any. On
another outing, about a week earlier she flew from a tree, crossing the
street and flying into a bush where a sparrow was hiding. She
looked like a tiny redtail, gliding down with a fixed wing triangular
shape, and disappeared into the bush. A great flight. It
was momentarily quiet, she wasn't screaming, and I was excited thinking
that she had scored. But a few seconds later, she began to
scream, and I knew she had missed. Her best flight, a week
or two earlier than that, was on a bagged sparrow that she pursued from
a tall light pole in the park. The sparrow took off in a flash,
heading for trees, and it looked as if the kestrel had no chance.
But she rolled over as it flew under her; she then flew it down and
pounded it into the ground. As she settled in, a dog scared her,
and she carried it. I lost her for a very long hour or so, but
she came back, and I took her home. She had only gained fives
grams in weight, so apparently she lost the sparrow. Probably she was
robbed by a crow, or just dropped it, which I have seen kestrels do on
ocassion. When I got home, I called Jim Ince and talked excitedly
about the chase.
I need to mention that
Alex was the worst screaming bird that I have ever encountered.
Matt Mullenix attributed it to isolation, and I now concur. She
and Apollo, her successor, were both tethered in the mew in the back
yard, and though I spent a good part of each evening with the birds,
they were left completely alone during the day; both screamed.
Alex was worse. Her screaming was nearly constant, except when she was
hunting. On the fist, or if anyone was around, it was
constant. The minute I left her alone she would be quiet, but
when she would hear someone approaching, it would start in again.
////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
*American Kestrels
in Modern Falconry, by Matthew Mullenix
Chuck Redding
Houston, TX
Please write me if you find typos or errors, whether grammatical, or
factual, or even just to let me know that you enjoy the site.
Email: cisco@virtualvideo.cc
After
training another kestrel, who caught his first game, and took off the
same evening, I decided to fly redtails. I lost the first redtail,
called Bravo, in a bizarre incident right after he was trained.
As of this writing (6/21/2010), I am flying a tiercel RT, called Cisco,
starting his sixth season in the fall. Trapped in Ft. Worth late in
2005, he's a good rabbit and squirrel hawk, well mannered, and
entertaining to fly. The red-tail may be viewed live, sitting on
perch (typically 0600 to 1830 CST) at the two links below. Typically in
good Houston weather, check Camera1; in bad weather, the other should
be up. Beginning in July of 2010, there may be two hawks, so both
cameras should be active every day.
Camera1
Camera2
Visitors to this Site. Thank you.
|
