I’ve been trying to understand why Clovis took off a week ago. This morning I found a dropped primary under her perch:

Things just got clearer! I don’t fly during the moult for a couple of reasons. First, managing the bird’s weight is tricky. If you go too low while the falcon is making new feathers, you risk fretmarks – lines of weakness on the feather that mark moments of stress, especially nutritional stress. Second, and germane to the question at hand, moulting is part of a bunch of hormonal changes kicked off by longer days. One of the other effects is readiness for bonding/mating/nesting. My current best guess is that Clovis took off because it’s time to fly around, establish a territory and find a mate. It hasn’t been any kind of season anyway, so packing up the telemetry and the vest is NBD but still, dang, I was hoping for some more flights!