I was able to take Balaa out for another adventure, this time at the Community Garden in Rochester. It is usually known to have bunnies. We did flush several, but my girl is showing the tendency to take a distance perch, and is somewhat solo hunting. I may be flying her a bit too high, but sometimes have many days between windows to hunt, so have been siding with keeping her well fed instead of hunt sharp.
As we worked the frozen marsh to kick up rabbits, she went after a squirrel in a tree just the other side of the creek. She caught it! However, that then required me to get to the other side to get her. Thankfully, prior to our frozen season getting going, we were relatively dry, so our creeks froze at a low level. I could not get up over the other bank, but Seneca was on her squirrel close enough that I could reach up and grab her, and drag both her second squirrel catch with me and her off the edge, and tip toe over the ice back to the side I was on.
When I loaded this clip up on YouTube, I guess now if you select it to be "public" they automatically put it into rotation on their shorts. It got a whole lot of views, which was not my intention. Some "helpful" yahoo out there commented that "that is not how you hold a hawk, you are going to hurt her." Well, I was not holding the hawk, I'm holding the squirrel. She's holding the squirrel, and could let go at any time if she wanted. I'll make sure to tag those short videos as private, to keep unsolicited comments to a minimum.
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