Rusty in the Molt

Diane noticed that Rusty had dropped a flight feather today. So we brought Rusty inside for a round of talon-trimming and beak-coping as a prelude to getting Rusty into a fat-and-sassy state.

Molting is metabolically demanding, therefore over the next two months we want her to put on some weight and keep it over this time. Good nutrition is a solid basis for getting a good set of feathers for the coming year.

I did manage to get a cut on my hand from Rusty’s talons during the beak-coping. It might have been worse, but we had managed to get the talons trimmed by that point. It is pretty common for falconers to get these little reminders that our charges are quite capable of doing some damage. In fiction, we can all look to the character of Hodgesargh the falconer in various books by Terry Pratchett, like Lords and Ladies (Discworld, Book 14). Hodgesargh is always sporting a number of minor wounds on his arms and face from his extremely keen charges, and this is something that pretty much every falconer can relate to.