Sunday 8 November 2009
A sorry day
Damn, damn and damn, what a shitty day, I got up early, it was over cast, but not raining, I realized that I needed to feed round before going out as it was my day on doing that. So I had fed round by 8.00am and got my stuff together for looking for the nameless Lugger. Drove to where I last had a signal and it was still there, I drove round so that I could triangulate and make sure I did not have to walk miles, parked the car and started walking. I very quickly came up to the forbidding hedge and ditch that had stopped me after dark the day before. So I intrepidly climbed down the ditch, wriggled through the hedge and got under the barbed wire fence by crawling! Did you know that barbed wire is supposed to have been invented by an american woman, bloody stuff, I hate it. The signal was behaving oddly and I eventually got through the hedge four times, getting more and more frustrated and worried. And so I should have been, I finally realized that the signal was coming from the ground near me, and there was not a bird to be seen, however on looking I found a very sad and recognizable few feathers including the poor Lugger’s two deck feathers with the telemetry. A fox had got him.
Of course then you wish you had done things differently. He was not coming in during the morning, but I could have kept following, except that we only had two staff, and a Hawk Experience day. When I went out at 4.00pm, I could have gone on longer, but it was pitch dark and I had no torch. I occasionally worry because I rarely take my phone and I frequently take the dogs out for a walk and no one knows where I am, or would miss me if I fell and injured myself. And the hedge that I should have tackled, was difficult enough in the daylight. However had I done it, I think I would have been almost up to him. We also had an Owl Evening starting at 6.30pm. I should perhaps have gone further again at 10.00pm, but didn’t and I suspect that by that time he had probably been eaten.
It’s a great shame as I had bought him to go with my only female Lugger, and we were flying him because he was too young to breed for at least a year, and he was really coming on too. It was my fault and now the rules will be that if any bird when being followed sits on the ground more than once, we have to find him or her before dark. And then damn it, my female Lanner Dawn Run, sat in a tree, which she has not done for months. So bird wise I did not have a good day, these things really do make a difference and it is easy to lose heart over it.
There were a few bright spots, I finished my lecture for tonight, for which I leave in half an hour, a very nice friend joined as a Founder Life Member yesterday, and another person did the same today, which makes it very special and its good to know that people care that much.
The fire is alight, Adam is coming to sit with the dogs and I will be home late I guess.
Of course then you wish you had done things differently. He was not coming in during the morning, but I could have kept following, except that we only had two staff, and a Hawk Experience day. When I went out at 4.00pm, I could have gone on longer, but it was pitch dark and I had no torch. I occasionally worry because I rarely take my phone and I frequently take the dogs out for a walk and no one knows where I am, or would miss me if I fell and injured myself. And the hedge that I should have tackled, was difficult enough in the daylight. However had I done it, I think I would have been almost up to him. We also had an Owl Evening starting at 6.30pm. I should perhaps have gone further again at 10.00pm, but didn’t and I suspect that by that time he had probably been eaten.
It’s a great shame as I had bought him to go with my only female Lugger, and we were flying him because he was too young to breed for at least a year, and he was really coming on too. It was my fault and now the rules will be that if any bird when being followed sits on the ground more than once, we have to find him or her before dark. And then damn it, my female Lanner Dawn Run, sat in a tree, which she has not done for months. So bird wise I did not have a good day, these things really do make a difference and it is easy to lose heart over it.
There were a few bright spots, I finished my lecture for tonight, for which I leave in half an hour, a very nice friend joined as a Founder Life Member yesterday, and another person did the same today, which makes it very special and its good to know that people care that much.
The fire is alight, Adam is coming to sit with the dogs and I will be home late I guess.
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