He’s clearly possessive of his tiny catfish. He caught this on his first dive today into the small catfish pond. Out of the hundreds of meals he has eaten with me beside him, he still fears I will expect him to share.
He responded to small tidbits before and after he ate this fish. After the third post-meal tidbit, he stopped responding and was distracted by pond fish. He flew to my glove garnished with a large tidbit with only minimal hesitation.
All of this good behavior was after I wrestled his hood on after numerous unsuccessful attempts to attach telemetry (the pecking was too much). I tried to place the transmitter yesterday while wearing some gloves with the fingertips removed. These gloves freaked the bird out making them worse than nothing. Those unsuccessful attempts were why I resorted to the hood wrestling.
I also attached a tail-mount clip to a deck feather. I have resisted this so far due to concerns about water and fragile deck feathers, but a tail transmitter would make the hooding just for telemetry unnnecessary.
I will try it out tomorrow if I can find a good battery. After watching lots of slo-mo video of dives, I am no longer concerned that vigorous tail down-thrusting into the water will be a problem. I am looking forward to the tail-mount making for easier anklet clipping, less confrontation, and better hydrodynamics in a dive.