Raptors and waffles

Sunday morning Shane and I decided that it would be a wonderful idea to go raptor catching, so we loaded up the ringing gear, and our hardy mice and began the stalk. The weather was not on our side, an on-off drizzle that was most frustrating! There were very few birds to be seen, and the few drops we did yielded no result. Forest Buzzards, it seems, are for the majority very cautious birds; they make a fly-by and that’s it, or land next to the trap and our mice scare them off. But then we got lucky! Another Forest Buzzard spotted and we dropped the bait.. We could see the trap but not her, as she was sitting in dense tree cover, but she then appeared, a beautifully neat little dive… only to land next to the mice! Grr! And so we waited while she did her cautious thing and observed the rodents in their unnatural habitat. Thankfully she was hungry, or the trap didn’t look too threatening as soon she was on it! Footing and grabbing at the safely enclosed mice. And we caught her, a noose solidly around her ankle! Shane did the ringing and I held her; I still need some experience handling the raptors, I am not as comfortable with them as I am with the passerines or even with the gulls. After that the weather deteriorated again and 2 more birds disdained our apparently crude trapping mechanism, or maybe it was the mice (the unnatural white stripe is one hypothesis). In any case, we made it back to Plett in time to stop and get a pair of amazing Belgium waffles! Happiness!

You just have to stand in awe!

My first Forest Buzzard.