Injured falcon on road to recovery

ELKTON -- A bird not usually seen in this area that swoops in on its prey faster than a Daytona 500 competitor is recuperating from life-threatening injuries after being found last week in Ormond Beach.

For the first time since its Friday surgery to repair fractures to its left wing and right leg, the peregrine falcon was able to put weight on its broken leg Saturday. The surgeon, Dr. Mark Gendzier of St. Johns Veterinary Clinic, was optimistic.

"It looked very good on his post-op X-rays," said Gendzier, who does pro bono work for wildlife rehabilitators.

The juvenile bird's caretaker, Melanie Cain-Stage of the Humane Association of Wildlife Care and Education (HAWKE Inc.) in this rural town west of St. Augustine, says she's not sure whether the bird is male or female -- and doubts it will be swooping in on prey in the wild again.

"If they aren't perfect, they are going to die" in the wild, she said, explaining that peregrines migrate up to 11,000 miles, with some of them covering the expanse from summer homes in Alaska to wintering grounds in South America.

The juvenile that an Ormond Beach woman reported "falling out of the sky" into her backyard eight days ago was likely migrating to its winter residence, according to Michael Brothers, manager of education and exhibits at the Marine Science Center in Ponce Inlet.

This species, likely of the subspecies peregrinis flaco anatum, generally appears in this area in mid-November as it makes its way to points south, although Brothers said he's seen a number of them roosting in this area all winter, he said.

But they are hardly ever brought in for rehabilitation. Brothers estimates that since the Mary Keller Seabird Rehabilitation Sanctuary opened in 2004, only one or two of the 5,500 birds that have come through the sanctuary have been peregrine falcons. The bird rehab facility is part of the science center.

"It's exciting to see this bird up close," he said.

The Ormond Beach woman who found the bird at first brought the injured animal to the Ponce Inlet facility, Brothers said. But then Cain-Stage, who has a permit to handle peregrine falcons for education, was called on to find the appropriate care for the bird.

Cain-Stage said she believes the bird was probably hit by a car. As it recuperates, Cain-Stage is feeding it beef and quail. Already the bird is getting the hang of its new life in the hospital portion of Cain-Stage's sanctuary, which also houses eagles, otters, turtles and owls. As Cain-Stage approached the bird's incubator with chunks of meat, it stopped making a slight hissing noise and opened its slightly hooked beak.

"Already she knows I'm not going to hurt her," Cain-Stage said. "And that, when she sees me, I'm going to bring her food.

"She's been a very good patient."

A recent experiment showed the bird is the fastest living creature on the planet, able to reach speeds of 200 mph as it zeroes in on its prey. Cain-Stage said this bird -- in the likely event it can't be released -- will be used to teach children about the effects of the pesticide called DDT, which decimated the peregrine population from the 1950s to the '70s.

When birds ingested the pesticide, they laid eggs that were too fragile for parents to sit on to warm the developing chick. With the discontinuation of its use, though, peregrine falcons made a comeback -- and were taken off the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's endangered species list in 1999.

["People often want to modify this design by building an access door on the back. Don’t dothis – it is very, very dangerous for the chicks. If people try to reach in from the backduring banding, they will drive the chicks to the front. If the chicks are panicked enoughand old enough, they can be bumped into premature flight. This is a very bad thing."]

Looks like metal to me.

I also noticed a back door...I'm not sure if this is right. According to Bob Anderson :

"People often want to modify this design by building an access door on the back. Don’t do
this – it is very, very dangerous for the chicks. If people try to reach in from the back
during banding, they will drive the chicks to the front. If the chicks are panicked enough
and old enough, they can be bumped into premature flight. This is a very bad thing."

Yes, your right Ei...but if Quest decides to use it, will it have to be changed? A hack  box would have a cover on the front, therefore...back door feedings.

I think Lennoxman mentioned it was originally set up as a hack box (Linn was seen at a hack box in Scarborough) and the back door on those is for feeding the eyases before they're released.

["People often want to modify this design by building an access door on the back. Don’t dothis – it is very, very dangerous for the chicks. If people try to reach in from the backduring banding, they will drive the chicks to the front. If the chicks are panicked enoughand old enough, they can be bumped into premature flight. This is a very bad thing."]

Looks like metal to me.

I also noticed a back door...I'm not sure if this is right. According to Bob Anderson :

"People often want to modify this design by building an access door on the back. Don’t do
this – it is very, very dangerous for the chicks. If people try to reach in from the back
during banding, they will drive the chicks to the front. If the chicks are panicked enough
and old enough, they can be bumped into premature flight. This is a very bad thing."

http://www.palemale.com/

Great shots here

Ruby-crowned kinglets are so tiny that five of them in one's hand would collectively weigh just an ounce.

Just watching the energetic chickadees was making me delightfully tired that late autumn afternoon.

The plump black-and-white birds would fly to the feeder, grab a single sunflower seed, and immediately dash back to the leafless willow to crack open the shell and eat the rich kernel inside. A moment later, the bird repeated the circuit.

A constant interplay of chickadees, titmice, goldfinches and sparrows added to the sense of nonstop action.

I was so captivated by the perpetual motion that I nearly missed the tiny birds flitting among the tawny-colored ferns just a couple of yards beyond the feeders.

Chickadees are small birds, but the olive-green birds nervously working the dormant fern bed were even tinier. I grabbed the binoculars for a closer look. The background birds had white wing bars with matching white eye rings. Their bills were as slight as the birds. I could see a blush of yellow on the edge of the short tail and on the constantly-flicking wing feathers. These diminutive visitors were ruby-crowned kinglets (Regulus calendula).

Kinglets are some of the smallest birds in North America. Only the hummingbirds are smaller. We have two kinglet species in the United States: the ruby-crowned and the golden-crowned. These elfin birds are closely related in size, geographic distribution and behavior.

The colorful crests that give these birds their names are rarely seen. Only males have these bright head feathers, and they are typically hidden except during mating season or when the birds are aggressively defending their territory.

Ruby-crowned kinglets, like the pair I was watching out of our kitchen window, are about 4 inches from the end of their delicate beaks to the tips of their stubby tails. You could put five of these birds in your hand and they would collectively weigh just an ounce. Along with their slightly smaller cousins, the golden-crowned kinglets, they are the miniatures of the songbird family.

The ruby-crowns in the side yard would be nearly invisible given their subtle coloration and the dull browns of the fern bed. But these birds were actively feeding. Their constant movements took them from fern to fern, nabbing bugs too small for me to see. In addition to gleaning insects from the fronds, ruby-crowned kinglets will sometimes hover at the edge of a leaf to snatch the bugs that may be clinging underneath. Occasionally, these birds will also eat sap, seeds or berries as they diversify their diets when cold weather makes finding sufficient insect food impossible.

Every summer, ruby-crowned kinglets breed across Canada and Alaska. They nest in trees, typically conifers, often in semi-open patches in the forest. Their nests are cup-shaped and lined with feathers, spider webs and moss.

The pair engage in predictable and stereotypic parenting rituals. The female is in charge of the home and early care of the babies while the male takes on the role of the provider. The female ruby-crowned kinglet takes care of the nest and lays the eggs, which she incubates for two weeks. The male, meanwhile, will be busy gathering bugs from twigs as well as spider eggs and other protein-rich food for himself and the mother. After the chicks hatch, the job of feeding hungry mouths multiples. The female will stay on the nest for a few days, then join the male in bringing meals to the hungry youngsters.

In less than two weeks, the young birds will fledge. The parents will continue to supplement the diets of the baby birds, but the new kinglets will soon be on their own.

Ruby-crowned kinglets produce a single brood each year. Given the extraordinary size of the clutch, one brood is plenty. Females will lay up to a dozen eggs. The eggs are tiny, but that's still a lot of eggs for such a small bird. A dozen eggs will weigh 80 percent as much as the female's normal body weight. It is the largest ratio of eggs to body weight of any North American bird.

The kinglets in the ferns were flitting about, snatching insects and regaining some of the weight they have lost during their migration from Canadian forests. During the fall migration, kinglets will join mixed flocks of other songbirds for the long journey south.

Perhaps the kinglets I've been watching will spend their winter in the loblolly pine forests of Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, or maybe they will continue all the way to Honduran rainforests. One thing is certain: This suburban yard is just a way station for these migratory midgets.

The flurry of activity at the feeders continued, but the nearly invisible action in the ferns was the focus of my ongoing attention. Like so many things in life, sometimes it's the little things in the background that are the most interesting.

[But sometimes they come lower -- usually going for playground balls."They'll actually pick them up and play with them," Cox said.]

Officers have begun trying to scare off the birds with noisemakers.

File 2007 Vultures' numbers peak in the area each December, as part of their normal migratory pattern.

The Roanoke Times

File 2007 Vultures' numbers peak in the area each December, as part of their normal migratory pattern.
RADFORD -- Once again, Radford animal control officers are trying to convince a group of vultures that they'd be better off somewhere else.

After getting an increased number of complaints about vultures roosting on top of McHarg Elementary School and Radford Child Care and Preschool, the officers have begun trying to scare off the birds with noisemakers.

"We're basically chasing them all over the place," city spokeswoman Becky Hawke said.

The officers fire "bird bangers" -- devices that shoot blanks -- in the air near the vultures to scare them off, then follow them to their next spot and do it again.

In the winters of 2002 and 2003, animal control officers chased hundreds of black and turkey vultures, which are protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, out of a neighborhood bordered by Wadsworth Street, Sundell Drive and Roosevelt Avenue.

They kept showing up, their numbers peaking each December, as part of their normal migratory pattern.

In 2004, vultures were again chased out of the city as part of an ongoing study of the birds and what happens when they are forced out of their homes, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said at the time.

As part of the study, experts realized that the vultures roosting in the city made up the flock that once lived at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, which had one of the largest roosts east of the Mississippi River. It was not clear why they moved.

"We didn't actually start having problems with them until this year," said Selena Cox, the program director and education coordinator at Radford Child Care.

The birds had roosted at nearby McHarg Elementary for years, but didn't make their way to Radford Child Care until April or May, she said.

Since then, the numbers have grown significantly, she said.

Radford police Chief Don Goodman said more than 100 of the birds have been seen on McHarg's roof at a time. They have damaged the roof by tearing at it, he said.

"We'll go and disrupt them and make them move along," Goodman said. The goal, he said, is to move them to a place where they won't damage property.

At Radford Child Care, Cox said, the birds stay mostly on the roof or in the trees.

But sometimes they come lower -- usually going for playground balls.

"They'll actually pick them up and play with them," Cox said.

The center didn't want children playing with something that had been in the mouth of an animal that primarily eats carrion, so the balls were removed.

Cox said that when the noisemakers are used at Radford Child Care, the birds go to McHarg. When they're used at McHarg, they go back to Radford Child Care.

Hawke said she knows the noisemakers are a temporary fix.

"Radford is notorious for having a large population of vultures," she said. "They really seem to like Radford."

And many people in Radford like the vultures. Vulture Day is held every year for people to learn about and watch the birds.

Still, they aren't welcome everywhere.

"I just wish they'd leave," Cox said. "I wish they'd go somewhere else."

Birdsongs provide population clues

Microphone array improves estimate of ovenbird density.


OvenbirdScientists recorded the ovenbird's repetitive song.M. Efford

As any birder will tell you, most birds in the forest are easier heard than seen. Now two scientists have figured out a way to estimate bird population densities by recording their songs with an array of microphones.

The method offers an alternative to a common way to estimate population densities: the human ear. Humans listeners are often used in bird studies, but people are far from perfect, says Murray Efford of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. In particular, "we aren't good at telling how far away sounds are," he says.

Efford and Deanna Dawson of the United States Geological Survey in Laurel, Maryland, have come up with a method that uses multiple microphones scattered through the woods. By recording in several places simultaneously, researchers can estimate each bird's acoustic 'footprint' — the area around it where it can be heard.

The size of the footprint depends on parameters such as the loudness of the birds and the acoustic properties of the forest. So Efford and Dawson must try different values for such parameters until they find a good match with the data recorded by the microphones. When all is done, the duo can estimate bird density without knowing the birds' locations or the size of the forest.
Twitter tweet!

They tried out their method on ovenbirds (Seiurus aurocapilla) at the Patuxent Research Refuge near Laurel, Maryland. Only male ovenbirds sing, and the technique estimated their density at around one male bird per every five hectares (click here to hear the ovenbird's song). http://www.nature.com/nature/newsvideo/news.2009.1112.mp3   The findings matched well with estimates gleaned from catching the little songbirds in nets. What's more, the researchers found that the new technique was more precise than estimates based on netting. The work is published online in the Journal of Applied Ecology1.

The researchers say that the method could be used to estimate densities of other hard-to-spot animals, including whales and dolphins. Len Thomas, a statistical ecologist at the University of St Andrews, UK, for instance, is already using a similar method as part of an effort to monitor Minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) by their sounds. Sightings of these whales in the Pacific can be counted on one hand, but males make a distinctive "boy-yoy-yoing" sound, so hydrophones can measure their song footprints, just like the ovenbirds.

It's hard not to notice the big white bird that sits or glides along K-96 near Maize.

It quickly takes flight when cars slow down and people try to take its picture.

Oregon field biologist Steve Seibel first noticed it last January, while home visiting family. He identified it then as a leucistic — or partial albino — red-tailed hawk.

He calls it a "zebra bird." And, indeed, it does look kind of like a small zebra in flight, with its distinctive red-tailed hawk feather band markings.

"With the few dark feathers that it has, those are interspersed against the white so, in flight, it has a striking sunburst affect," Seibel said. "It's far more spectacular than if it were completely white."

The adult bird is considered a partial albino or piebald.

Such creatures are born or hatched with unpigmented patches on their skin. A true albino would be completely white with a pink bill, eyes and feet.

"People are really fascinated by them," said Wichita birder Pete Janzen, co-author of "Guide to Kansas Birds and Birding Hotspots." "These birds are very striking and pretty interesting to look at. But in the scheme of things, they are not unusual."

Just fun to watch and, maybe, photograph.

"I'll have the camera ready and the sunroof open on my car and slow down and if I'm lucky I can get a quick shot before it takes off," said Wichita birder Paul Griffin.

He calls the bird a "white hawk mystery."

Is it male? Female?

A red-tailed or a rough-legged hawk?

He wonders.

His hunch is the big white bird might be female.

He saw it sitting with a regular red-tailed hawk who was calling the standard call. He thought maybe that bird was a male flirting with the white bird.

"You know, 'How about a date, you are mighty pretty with all of those white feathers, gleaming in the sun,' that kind of thing," said Griffin, who writes the blog "wingedthings".

The white hawk is larger than a red-tailed hawk, Griffin said.

Seibel said he believes the bird is a red-tailed hawk because he's heard it call.

The hawks are predatory birds, Janzen said, and show up every fall in Kansas. Some stay year-round.

If the white hawk is a migratory hawk, Janzen said, it might stay as long as February, feeding on cotton rats and meadow voles.

 Pic caption: A partial albino or leucistic or "peibald" red tailed hawk takes flight from it's perch near 47th and Tyler Rd. recently. The unusual hawk, appearing to be nearly white with only a few dark feathers had caught the eye of birders in the Wichita area.

If this little one's flight feathers haven't come in, how did it fly?

What a sweet little face!  So glad he was rescued

Who knows...everyone has their own theory on Falcons and is it true that blue winged falcons are males and brown winged  are females? Is it that easy to tell??? ???

[Don't miss Carol's report of our 2nd quest for Quest...]

Don't miss Carol's report of our 2nd quest for Quest...

FalconWatch:  http://rfalconcam.com/falconwatching/?p=353

Forum: http://rfalconcam.com/forum/index.php?topic=821.0

Really nice pics and OMG....those crows...I'm still in 

[Pig fart mistaken for gas leak]

Pig fart mistaken for gas leak

SYDNEY, Nov 26 (AFP) - A flatulent pig sparked a gas emergency in southern Australia Thursday when a farmer mistook its odours for a leaking pipe, officials said.

Fifteen firefighters and two trucks were called to a property at Axedale in central Victoria state after reports of a gas leak, the Country Fire Service said.

"When we got there, as we drove up the driveway, there was this huge sow, about a 120-odd kilo (265-pound) sow, and it was very obvious where the gas was coming from," said fire captain Peter Harkins.

"We could not only smell it, but we heard it and it was quite funny."

Harkins said the pig's owner was "a little bit embarrassed to say the least," and it took fire crews a little while to compose themselves.

"It was fairly obvious what it was. I think we dealt with it fairly professionally and had a bit of a giggle when we got back to the station," he told public broadcaster ABC.

Gardener bites snake to death


NEW DELHI, Nov 9 (Bernama) -- It is not news when a snake bites a man but it is so when a man bites a snake.

Gardener Ramesh Jamda made news last Saturday when he did just that - bite a snake.

The 25-year-old from the eastern coastal state of Orissa's capital Bhubaneswar, angered by a snake which bit one of his thumbs, chewed part of the reptile in retaliation.

Ramesh was on his morning routine mowing grass at a park in the city on Saturday morning when a foot-long rat snake started to nibble one of his thumbs, the Telegraph newspaper reported today.

An omen from above?
      

MELAKA: Early in the morning last Friday, there were thousands of eagles flying in the sky of Tangga Batu.

The eagles were flying separately and then came together, and this was repeated for several hours.

The local residents talked about this weird situation, wondering whether it was a natural or unnatural phenomenon.

Those eagles began to appear around Kampung Gelam at Tangga Batu between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m. last Friday. They kept hovering around, almost covering up the entire sky. Many residents walked out of their homes to stare at the sky for the unusual "performance" by the eagles.

During the past two weeks, earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons came in succession in countries around the South Pacific. Some Asian countries were affected too; even Melaka could feel the aftershock of the quakes in Indonesia.

Two days ago, a group of crabs appeared at a reservoir at Tengkera Pantai. And now, a flock of eagles took to the sky. Local residents are concerned whether this is a response of animals to imminent natural disasters.

Wang Keping, 52, who first discovered this unusual phenomenon, said the eagles moved like a meandering river in the sky, and that was the first time he saw such a phenomenon having lived there for almost ten years.

"We usually see only one or two eagles in the sky, but now we suddenly have a large flock of eagles appearing and flying very low.

"We can be certain that they are eagles."

Those eagles initially hovered around the dragon fruit orchard, and then headed towards Taman Seri Tanjung while flying at higher altitudes, he said.

"Many birds stayed on the electrical poles motionless, afraid of being attacked by the eagles."

He also said some of the woods around Kampung Gelam could have become the habitat of those eagles.
Ramesh felt a sharp pain in his thumb, only to discover that the snake was attacking it.

Writhing in pain, the gardener tried to shake off the snake but it continued to dig its fangs deeper into his flesh.

According to the newspaper, he used a pair of scissors to remove the snake, and the reptile slipped off.

Fuming in anger, he grabbed the snake and bit it from its tail upwards.

"The young man had torn and chewed two-thirds of the snake in his fury. A few minutes after the act, queasiness set in and, after vomiting a few times, Ramesh fainted," reported the newspaper.

"I was angry when the snake bit me on my finger. I bit it back because that was my way of taking revenge," Ramesh told doctors after regaining consciousness.

His condition is stable. The snake is dead.

["Of a thousand eggs laid, we estimate that only one will survive to become an adult turtle," said Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society.]

      A Luth Turtle making its way back to the surf after laying eggs on Pointe Denis Beach at the Pongara National Park. Photo courtesy: AFP.

POINTE DENIS, Nov 28 (AFP) -- After two hours of scouring the beaches of Pongara National Park in the dark night, Joan Ikoun-Ngossa and his patrol finally find a leatherback turtle.

It has just laid its eggs and is struggling awkwardly back to the sea.

For its young, however, there is just a one in a thousand chance of making it to adulthood, thanks to a deadly combination of humans, natural predators, pollution and sometimes sheer bad luck.

With the help of a light -- coloured red, so as not to dazzle or upset the turtle -- Ikoun-Ngossa of Aventures Sans Frontieres (ASF -- Adventures Without Borders) climbs onto the animal to take measurements.

It comes in at 1.6 metres (5.2 feet) long and 1.11 metres wide.

The leatherback is the world's largest species of turtle -- they can live for up to 80 years and reach 2.4 metres in length. However, it is critically endangered.

After measuring the turtle, Ikoun-Ngossa attaches a ring on its back leg to track its progress after it leaves the Gabonese coast.

Clumsy and awkward on land, the turtle disappears in a few strokes once it reaches the water, leaving behind great crawl marks in the sand like the tyre tracks of a four-wheel-drive.

During the two-month egg-laying season, beginning in October, the turtles scramble onto the beach at night, dig a hole, lay their eggs inside and cover them with sand before departing again.

The whole process takes a little less than two hours.

The females lay between 50 and 120 eggs, and one in three is a "dud", with no embryo inside, says Ikoun-Ngossa, a former boatman who now works to protect his country's wildlife.

"The dud eggs are part of the nest. They contribute to regulate the airflow and temperature, and no doubt nature probably intended them as a kind of decoy for predators," he says.

There is no shortage of predators: monitor lizards, crabs and birds, which are all part of the natural order, but also humans, who sometimes find and eat the eggs, and dogs which dig them up.

"Of a thousand eggs laid, we estimate that only one will survive to become an adult turtle," said Angela Formia of the Wildlife Conservation Society.  SAD!

Ikoun-Ngossa stays on the Pongara beaches from October to April to try to improve the eggs' chances of survival.

"If the turtle lays below the waterline, the eggs have no chance so we take those ones and put them in a special enclosure" further up the beach, he said. This makeshift "maternity ward" is currently host to more than 300 eggs.

After two or three months, the eggs hatch and the baby turtles, just a few centimetres long, crawl toward the sea, where many are eaten by birds, sharks and other predators.

"Currently there are around 40,000 females which come to Gabon, and this is the largest leatherback turtle population in the world," Formia said.

Females lay their eggs every two or three years, Ikoun-Ngossa explains, and study of the tracking devices has shown one turtle can lay up to three batches of eggs in ten days before swimming off again.

Knowledge of the turtles' lives outside these laying periods is limited.

"The data shows they move to the cold waters in the middle of the Atlantic and to the south," Formia said. "A number have been recorded off the coast of Brazil and Argentina."

Leatherback turtles play a big role in traditional Gabonese stories. Legend has it they overcame leopards, snakes and crocodiles through their cunning.

Today, many observers believe the leatherback turtle is facing extinction unless more is done to safeguard their welfare.

They say the biggest threat to their survival comes not from predators but from man-made pollution, in particular plastic bags which turtles mistake for jellyfish -- their main diet. (By PATRICK FORT/AFP)

[In males, "wing feathers are slate blue," she said, while females have brown wing feathers.]

Rare bird recuperating from life-saving surgery
Peregrine falcons rare in Florida

A rescued immature peregrine falcon rests in an incubator. Photo Courtesy of HAWKE
A young peregrine falcon, which are only rarely seen in Florida, is recuperating after major life-saving surgery.

Staff at St. Johns Veterinary Clinic operated Friday on the bird, which was found injured earlier this week in Volusia County.

Dr. Mark Gendzier, a veterinarian, said pins were placed in the radius in its left wing, and the tibiotarsus in the bird's right leg.

"This bird was in quite good shape for having two fractures," he said. However, the healing rate for fractures in birds is lower than in humans and other animals because avian bones are hollow.

There also isn't much blood supply to bones, which is essential for healing.

Peregrine falcons were endangered for years after wide-spread use of DDT lowered its reproduction rate, and they had few nests east of the Mississippi, according to the Audubon Society. Now, peregrine falcons migrate through Florida on their way to habitat in South America.

The bird, resting on its breast Friday afternoon in an incubator set to 90 degrees, is expected to pull through.

Melanie Cain-Stage of H.A.W.K.E., a wildlife rehabilitator, said the bird probably would not recover enough to be released into the wild.

"Eventually, he'll get the wrappings off and some rehab like physical therapy" and would become an education bird, she said.

Stage said the bird was too young to be reliably identified as male or female because its flight feathers had not yet come in.

In males, "wing feathers are slate blue," she said, while females have brown wing feathers.

If it's a male, she'll name it Ken after longtime friends Ken Pacetti and Ken Moffitt, she said in an e-mail. Pacetti passed away Monday, she said.

In the meantime, she said she'd make up a sling to protect the bird's foot, and would keep it "clean, calm and fed."

That entails administering painkillers and antibiotics, Gendzier said.

And Stage said she'd use calipers to feed the sharp-beaked bird small pieces of quail three times a day.

"They're upscale birds," she said with a laugh. "They won't look at a mouse."

"You have to know how to handle them," she said.

Gendzier didn't know how the bird, found somewhere in Volusia County, was injured, but Stage said it might have been hit by a car.

Or, it might have collided with something during a high-speed dive.

It definitely wasn't hit by a predator, she said.

"Nothing messes with a peregrine," she said.

"They're hyper birds, but they're real smart," she said.

Cool Facts

* The name "peregrine" means wanderer, and the Peregrine Falcon has one of the longest migrations of any North American bird. Tundra-nesting falcons winter in South America, and may move 15,500 miles in a year.

* People have trained falcons for hunting for over a thousand years, and the Peregrine Falcon was always one of the most prized birds. Efforts to breed the Peregrine in captivity and re-establish populations depleted during the DDT years were greatly assisted by the existence of methods of handling captive falcons developed by falconers.

* The Peregrine Falcon is a very fast flier, averaging 25-34 mph in traveling flight, and reaching speeds up to 69 mph in direct pursuit of prey. During its spectacular hunting stoop from heights of over 0.62 mi, the peregrine may reach speeds of 200 mph as it drops toward its prey.

* The Peregrine Falcon is one of the most widespread birds in the world. It is found on all continents except Antarctica, and on many oceanic islands.

* Populations crashed in 1950-1970 because of DDT poisoning; eastern population destroyed completely. It was declared an Endangered Species, and extensive efforts were made to re-establish birds in East, beginning with the work of Tom Cade in 1970 at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which eventually developed into the Peregrine Fund. The species recovered enough to be removed from the Endangered Species List in 1999.

Source: Cornell Lab of Ornithology

About H.A.W.K.E.

The Humane Association of Wildlife Care and Education (H.A.W.K.E.) is a not-for-profit organization licensed by the State of Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The organization does not receive state or federal support and depends mainly on donations from members, fund-raisers and support of the community. Curator Melanie Cain-Stage has been helping wildlife in northeast Florida since 1979. Go to www.hawkewildlife.org to join online with a credit card or to donate. For information, call 692-1777.

Really neat pictures, Carol!!!  I think the Lennox PP looks strikingly like the stacks and buildings at high falls.  Hope she takes advantage of that nestbox!!

me too jeanne....looks like a perfect spot for her and her neighbors....the Ospreys. 

poor TV


hope that "hussy" isn't one of our girls

I felt the same BC.