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Orville has had no luck this spring, and the fish are still slow. I decided to take him to a smaller, more “fishy” pond. After easy transfers and a peaceful 1.5-hour trip, he left the glove towards the feeding fish.

Instead of a direct dive, he began circling about 50 feet off the water, staring down, making several false stoops until he finally executed the quintessential straight-down osprey dive!

It was so much fun to see him hunting for a good while–soaring, diving, wheeling about–that I was not really disappointed that the trip yielded no fish catch. He returned well to several tidbits and then finally for his whole fish.

The drive back was smooth. The system of handling and transporting seems to work fine. I hope he continues to hunt on the wing.

After several months of almost daily dunking, the tail mount disappeared. Fortunately, it disappeared before I mounted a transmitter on it. I haven’t been fishing him due to the cold, but I have been flying him a lot. I get very nervous without telemetry these days. He ranges fairly widely and gets pretty high on the windy days. Plus, I have him at high weights to handle the recent cold snap.

I replaced the mount with the second-to-largest, Marshall metal, single-feather mount, advertised as suitable for red-tails. This mount is gold-colored, whereas the one that fell off (or was preened off) was platinum (in color, I mean).

The new one seemed to fit well enough. It crimps on with pliers. I used the needle-nose style, being too cheap to spring for the specially made installation tool. For wire crimping, a special tool is critical. Hopefully, feathers will be more forgiving of a less-than-perfect crimp. I did not use glue on the old one, but I did on this one (cyanoacrylate). It seems to be functioning fine. I hope I don’t lose a transmitter in the pond.

As stated before, the tail mount and transmitter seem to cause no difficulties in diving. The bird has never seemed bothered by it.

Also, Western Sporting is now stocking and selling the Ospreys in Falconry book. He has already sold the first 30 copies I sent. I am excited about this because they are such a pillar of the falconry publication scene.

The bird is flying high and far now. He will bathe once or twice, then fly 30-45 minutes. On windy days, he really swoops and soars. Today he was reluctant to come back down for food. He also perched on treetops and a telephone pole for the first time.

It looks like he is torn between hanging around for easy food and heading out. When high or fast, he is reluctant to descend or really put on the brakes to return to the glove. This is at his highest weights. He doesn’t leave the yard at his lowest weights. There are no fish for him to catch, so I am just letting him exercise and observing his behavior.

He stays within eye contact and flies back overhead in response to whistles. He occasionally whistles back. There are no surface fish to speak of, but he sure has been circling the ponds, a couple of hundred feet up–the perfect set up for a real dive. I hope he continues that behavior when warm weather returns, but he is clearly not under good control at his high weights even when his crop is empty.

Orville has shown a couple of interesting behaviors. Upon approaching him with my long coat, he has responded defensively. The flapping coat may be simulating an attacking bird. When I approach him in the mews or on the ground, he will fly up, hover briefly and extend his open talons towards me, then land. He occasionally will touch my pants or shoes. No actual footing occurs; it seems like a bluff.

More interestingly, he flew up behind me and snatched off my hat without touching my scalp! It couldn’t possibly be a style issue (I am clearly up to date). This is the first time I have worn this hat. The color may have offended him; I can’t imagine the shape would. I normally wear a wide-brimmed camo hat.

Otherwise, he has been flying well, soaring, and returning for tidbits. He will return to whistle commands when I am out of sight.

Orville is flying a lot. He is slow to dive on fish partly because the fish have slowed so much that he has learned to just wait for me. I am still being cautious this time of the year, but so far he has returned without difficulties.

He will frequently dive in for a bath, lift off and fly around the lake in ground effect, then plop in again for another bath. He sometimes does this four or five times. His last takeoff is hard because he’s drenched.

He then flies a long time, with multiple shakes, to dry himself. I get a little nervous when he circles up a couple of hundred feet, and I’ll call him back to a fish when I get too worried.

One difference between ospreys and other common raptors is that they are exceedingly cautious about wind direction. If I call him from a perch, he will often take off in the opposite direction (if that’s the wind direction) and circle to approach me upwind.

He seems to fly more in high wind and tries more stunts–swoops and fast turns. In this brisk wind, he needs to worry about direction, but he considers the wind even when it is very light. He is cautious in winds a redtail would completely ignore. The clumsiness on landing, the long wings, the slowness to change directions seem to be the issue.

This bird is hooding, glove-riding, hawk-box-riding, and coming to tidbits very well. I think he will be a great falconry bird come spring when the fish get active. The tail-mount telemetry (sealed with silicone) and bare anklets are working fine. I may take him to some other ponds soon.

One trick I’ve learned when he loses attention with fishing and wants to beg from me is to throw a small tidbit in shallow water. He sometimes dives for it, but he always focuses his attention on the water and notices nearby fish.

I flew Orville on a couple of days. His weight is up about 20% above his hunting weight. I have been hooding and carrying him around for the past few weeks, and just had to see him flying again. His fist behavior and mews response has been so good, plus I have telemetry…

The first day he hunted lazily, but responded well. He took a very long bath, then swam back to the bank without even trying to fly off the water.

The second day (yesterday) he also hunted lazily, diving once after many minutes of head bobbing. He then took a long bath, lasting maybe five minutes. He flew off the water and headed out.

Silently, he began circling upwards, beating hard to gain some altitude, never glancing in my direction. He has never flown like this. My last bird exhibited this circling up behavior a year ago–right before he left.

Unlike last year, Orville finally returned to my offered fish but landed on his perch before flying one more leg over to me. All of this is odd. Something is going on in his brain regarding migration.

Weights have been of minor importance with my handling of ospreys since they would always come to a whole fish (not necessarily to a tidbit) if their crop was empty, regardless of weight.

You may have guessed that I will not fly him at high weights any more this fall. I may fly him back down below 1300g, but I probably shouldn’t do that until winter.

I wonder if the long baths are to hydrate before a long trip? I will do some Googling.

Individuals in Japan, the UK and the US have all gotten copies of the book. I look forward to any questions or discussion. IngramSpark is also publishing the book. It is possible than some non-USA readers can purchase it more easily through them. The clickable side link takes you to the Aerio store for IngramSpark.

Send a comment, if for some reason neither of these methods works. We should be able to arrange other options.

I’m going to stop free-flying Orville for a few weeks because now is the height of migration season. Even with this “vacation,” he will be kept in the mews less than most falconry birds. The fish have also slowed some. I will work with him on glove carrying, hawk boxing, and hooding.

I’ve been experimenting a lot. At weights around 1400-1440 grams, he is slow to return to small tidbits but immediately comes to large ones. He seems less eager in hunting. At 1300-1350 grams, he is reliable to the glove for about five small tidbits and also eager to hunt. He flies vigorously at all these weights.

He dives on every outing but has still only caught three fish at his home ponds. He has a much better success rate at another more heavily stocked pond.

I am very pleased with the ease of use and performance of the tail mount transmitter.

Fall is in the air and the fish are harder to find. The bream are not on their beds in shallow water, and they are more slow in coming to food.

I’m planning a long trip to a better-stocked pond, but it’s time to be concerned about migration. My last bird’s leaving surprised me, and I don’t want that to happen again. I am considering not flying this one for the fall.

This bird is the best I’ve had regarding response to tidbits. He sometimes will hold out for the larger ones, as he did today after a long tethered carry with several bates. I am trying hard to get this to work. I can move him to several ponds by tidbits and long walks with him untethered on my glove, but the bating is trouble.

He has never once been able to regain the glove. I either have to lift him back on (this one doesn’t peck me, at least). Or get him to fly back to me with a tidbit.

The tail mount telemetry is working great. It has withstood around twenty dives, and he doesn’t seem to notice it. I don’t leave it on him in the mews.

Orville, at 1350 grams, traveled in his hawk box for one and a half hours, flew well, made several dives, and caught his fourth fish.

The tail mount telemetry is working great as is the hawk box. Hooding was done twice, but it didn’t look pretty either time. He does behave once it is on.

The only flaw was carrying. It would have been avoidable if I had been less clumsy. He caught his fish and circled to his perch. He made a long flight and seemed to be considering other options. It was a new place, plus there was a running ATV with an unfamiliar person nearby. Despite all that, he returned to his perch and began eating.

He allowed me to approach and took the large tidbit I offered in his mouth. The plan was for him to use his foot to help eat this tidbit that was too big to swallow, thus he would partly release the fish so I could secure him.

In a surprise to me, he took off with a big chunk of fish in his mouth and both talons on the fish he just caught. He flew around a while and landed in the pasture a hundred yards away. He ate all the fish in about 15 minutes, looked around the ground for any he dropped, then flew straight to my glove garnished with a large tidbit.

He ate up on a perch in the strange-to-him yard. Transport and behavior on the way home was fine.

The book is now available at Amazon. The current price is in an attempt to help several people around the world have access.

I tried the tail mount. He dove seven to eight times hard and it held up. The silicon has lasted for around a month on the leg mount transmitter, so I have high hopes for this one. He completely ignored it.