North Shore Ridge Trapping

[Steve L.]

Any updates? Did you get a female gos Greg?

[GregMik]

No I did not...I am out of money to go up also. Work around here has been really slow.

Greg

[sevristh]

No I did not...I am out of money to go up also. Work around here has been really slow.

Greg

That sucks... Life's rough when you have to settle for a passage gyrkin!

[Gnikol1012]

Great pictures. What kind of camera and lense are you using?

[Tasha55403]

Thank you The trapping pics I posted were taken with a Canon 1DMkII and a Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L IS lens.

[sharptail]

Congrats Greg!! He may not be what you were looking for but at least he is a cold weather bird! We should all be so lucky as to start longwinging with a passage Jerkin!

[sevristh]

Thank you The trapping pics I posted were taken with a Canon 1DMkII and a Canon 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L IS lens.

And we should all be so lucky as to be able to take pics with that setup!!

[Tasha55403]

And we should all be so lucky as to be able to take pics with that setup!!

Lol, it IS pretty nice The camera's almost obsolete now, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic

[PeteJ]

Lol, it IS pretty nice The camera's almost obsolete now, but that doesn't make it any less fantastic

Tech Queen!! ;-)

[Tasha55403]

Tech Queen!! ;-)

Pmsl...not I!

[Roper]

Greg I want you to stay as far away from me as possible calling God A cheeky bastard . wait till he runs a lightning bolt on your ass. you just make me shake my head ..
go to work so you have some gas money to drive and fly that bird .
hows that song go again.. You cant always get what you want .......

[GregMik]

It has taken me a while to get over this. I am going to write this up so others will learn from my mistakes.

We got 2ft of snow a few weeks back and I plow in the winter. We were short a guy on the plowing crew so I took up the slack and worked 90hrs in 6 days.

The Gyr was living on the tall perch in the living room. I would come home and just feed her and go to bed.

When I was done plowing I called her from the tall perch to the fist in the livingroom. She could not make it the 15 ft to my fist. I put her on the scale and the bird was really low. I tried for two days to recover. The bird was eating and putting things over (clean quail with pedialyte). But it would just not put on weight. On Tuesday evening it regurgitated the food I had given it. I called Lori Aernt from the Raptor Center, but she would not go in so I had to wait until the next morning to bring the bird in.

They worked on the bird for two hrs that morning giving fluids and testing. She gained a little that day with crop tubing fluids. Wednesday she put on some weight also and for the last meal of the night they gave it some clean quail instead of crop tubing. The bird regurgitated the food and lost a bunch of weight. Down 60g's from the weight that I brought it in at.

They recovered and it put on weight all weekend and Sunday they told me I could probably pick her up on Tuesday. Monday she had a setback and died Tuesday morning. This was the Tuesday after Christmas.

They did a necropsy and found that the Gyrkin was a Falcon and that she had Airsack worms. I had no idea what Airsack worms were. One of the symptoms is regurgitation of food. The only thing I can figure on the massive weight loss is that she had been regurgitating food all week and the dogs had been cleaning it up.

If I would have put the bird on the scale I would have caught the weight loss and the bird would most likely be alive right now. Don't make the mistake I made and assume the bird is eating what you give. Always check.

Greg

[goshawks00]

Bummer Greg, sorry to hear this, I was so looking forward to hearing about him...her
Dang it....

[GregMik]

Bummer Greg, sorry to hear this, I was so looking forward to hearing about him...her
Dang it....

Was my own stupid idiotic fault...I am really pissed off at myself.

Greg

[goshawks00]

Was my own stupid idiotic fault...I am really pissed off at myself.

Greg

Yea I see that , you ought to slap your self silly

[AirAssault]

Greg really sorry about your bird.

[sevristh]

Sorry that happened Greg. Thank you for sharing the circumstances. There was some mention of ASW on one of the prairie falcon threads on here. I'd not really paid much attention to them before seeing that thread and now reading this. Thanks for the information.

[everetkhorton]

Greg, sorry to hear about your bird, thanks for posting so we all can learn from it. I know it was hard to do.

[Montucky]

Thanks for the post! Is there even a test for airsac worms? Is it in the tape worm family or other? Anyone know.

[sevristh]

Thanks for the post! Is there even a test for airsac worms? Is it in the tape worm family or other? Anyone know.

There's some discussion of them in this thread http://www.nafex.net/showthread.php?...ighlight=worms starting around post #100.

[allredone]

Greg thanks for posting this info. I'm sorry to hear how that all happened. You get a good shot at work and you have to take it but then you loose a bird... That's a real bummer. Thank you for sharing this though. It might spare someone a similar loss.

[tony123abc]

Sorry to hear about the loss. It is a brave man who will step into the spotlight in bad circs. for others to see. Good on you for the courage.

[Saluqi]

Really sorry to hear this Greg, it was a real thrill to hold him on my fist for a while at the NAFA meet, beautiful bird.

[jfseaman]

Really sorry to hear it Greg.