Bird Strike Force

Wednesday, January 15, 2014   Cooler, with decreasing humidity, light cloud cover.  Rains occurred for about an hour at dawn, shortening my morning wake up swim.  I set all of the hawks and falcons out to relax.  Then I put two Harris hawks up for flights.   They enjoyed the cooler weather and were flying all over the place.   The winds were light so it was ideal weather, especially with the cloud cover.  Beach and pool attendance was light, which surprises me, since it was such a wonderful day to be outside.  I expected more residents to be walking their dogs or just being outside.   I then put the falcons away after a few hours and put up all of the Harris' hawks.  Unknown to me, the osprey had caught a fish and was eating in the trimmed tree at the circle entrance to the park.  The hawks paid little attention to the osprey and I approached it taking both video and photos.  It called in the high pitched gentle call of the osprey and moved off.  One of the Harris hawks followed it but stayed in the area.  I flew all four of them again for quite a while, called them from point to point.   Evening patrols were again started, this time with falcons on the fist.  Again at dusk the grackles were definitely across the water, but I saw no scouting grackles on the island looking for a place to roost.   We spoke with quite a few residents and answered questions.  All in all a good day.