Peregrines Hunting

At 6:45 a.m. the sky over Robert Moses State Park is gray. My sharp-eyed friend Walter, who is driving, stops the car as we are going around the tall needle-like water tower. He’s spotted a peregrine falcon, flying at a steep angle heading for a bird, which is trying to reach safety at the rear of one of the tower’s steps. The peregrine, which routinely dives at 200 mph and takes birds in midair, can bring sudden death. Not having a clear shot at its prey the peregrine flies upward but not away. With its pointed wings slightly bent it comes back at a different angle. The peregrine may be trying to get the prey, bird to fly, which could make taking it a piece of candy. But the hunted bird, hugging the rear of the step, moves with desperate speed. The peregrine again climbs and again the little bird momentarily escapes death. Now a second peregrine comes around the other side of the brick water tower. The peregrines circle down then rise up like a two-horse carousel. The pair may be trying to work in tandem where one will flush the prey bird causing it to fly and the other would take it. However nothing works for them and the hunt’s soon over. The pair is at the top of the tower by the railing. We see one’s black head, dark gray back and speckled breast as it looks around with an unhindered view of the ocean. Oddly in the stillness of early morning, with the action over, the excitement still lingers.

OK, so the title of this thread caught my eye... I could just picture big, brown falcons with horns. (Guess I've been reading too much Native American info lately. And, well - I do love buffalos and falcons).

 

Helen P.

  That was good Helen

All 3 home, safe and sound. Phew!! One on roof...lol

["Where have all the falcons gone"]

"Where have all the falcons gone"
 

I'm asking the same question. The last time I saw a peregrine falcon was on Sunday Nov. 8th.  I thought I sent a phone tweet, but I found it in my saved messages and never relayed my watch.  

After the watcher's get together, we waited for Mariah to show up.  No Luck.  Brian and I headed downtown around 4:00 pm.  We found Beauty on the Communication Tower.  Yea, a facon fix!  She flew from one side of the platform to the other, and then she disappeared.  She was on a girder beneath the platform and it was so hard to see her.  Her head bobbed up and down and she was eating.  This must be a cache location.  She flew off when the sun had set.

Joyce

So we may still have Beauty around but no Mariah or Archer...hmmm, thank you Joyce.

The problem is being looked at.

Thank you!

Three red-tailed hawk chicks that were removed from a tree on Purdue's campus this spring are now old enough to be on their own.

A professional wildlife rehabilitator released the last of the hawks above a field on Lafayette's south side Thursday morning.

The other two hawks were released earlier this week, said Carol Blacketer, executive director of the Wildcat Wildlife Center. One was released in Clinton County, the other in western Tippecanoe County.

The third hawk, a juvenile female estimated to be about 6 months old, was released in an area where another female hawk died about two weeks ago after hitting the window of a south side business.

"We've done everything for the hawks that we can possibly do," Blacketer said. "It's time for them to get out and learn how to be a wild hawk."

Back in May, a team of wildlife experts removed the three hawk chicks from a nest in a tree at Purdue Village after a student was struck by one of its parents that had become aggressive protecting them.

They were placed under Blacketer's care at her facility east of Lafayette.

Blacketer used a surrogate hawk inside a 40-foot flight pen to teach the chicks how to hunt. Inside the pen, they also learned how to fly.

When they became old enough, all three were relocated to areas where another red-tailed hawk of similar age had recently died.

Adult hawks, presumably parents of the ones that were killed, had been seen nearby in each case, Blacketer said.

Hawks are territorial, but adult hawks will allow juvenile hawks to be introduced into their territory, Blacketer said.

On Nov. 1, a juvenile female red-tailed hawk flew into the window of the Burger King on County Road 350 South, Blacketer said.

Cheryl Taylor was the manager on duty at the time. "I was walking around outside checking things out as the sun was coming up," she said.

She noticed the bird lying on its back in the garden area. "There was evidence it had hit the window," Taylor said.

The bird was badly injured, but still alive, Taylor said. She called Purdue experts, who put her in touch with Blacketer.

Blacketer received the bird later that day, but it was injured so badly it didn't survive the night, she said.

"It was an identical hawk to this one," she said. "I immediately said, 'There's the little niche that we need to fill with this female.'"

Taylor was happy Thursday to see the young hawk released. She watched as it flew a graceful circle around the field before settling in the brush on the ground.

"I feel like a new parent," Taylor said. "It's like a child taking its first steps."   

[How awful for the deer and woman]

How awful for the deer and woman

HOPATCONG — Police are investigating two neighbors' claims that a deer shot twice by an officer allegedly lived at least four hours later, cradled in the lap of a sympathetic resident.

Carol Sanfilippo, 47, said she stayed at the side of a dying whitetail doe near her home after it was shot Friday night near her River Styx Road home.

Hopatcong Officer David Kraus had responded to a report from an anonymous caller that a deer had been struck by a vehicle at the intersection of River Styx Road and Maxim Drive at about 7:45 p.m., said Lt. Bob Brennan, a department spokesman. Kraus found the deer on the side of the road, unable to stand or walk, according to the police report, and shot it twice with his firearm. The report did not specify where on its body the deer was shot.

The shots stirred Sanfilippo, who said she rushed outside and saw two officers leave in their patrol car as the deer — a doe with a slight limp that had frequented neighbors' lawns for the past two years — floundered on the roadside as it tried to get on its feet.

"There was a little blood trickling out her belly, but she was still very much alive," Sanfilippo said.

"She is a friendly deer that residents in the area have hand fed," said Sanfilippo, a former veterinary technician who was has been working temp jobs. "She comes right up to people with her two fawns. I stayed with her — I was nose to nose, eye to eye as I promised to her I would try to save her."

Sanfilippo said she tried to lift the deer up off the ground. When that didn't work, she said she called police to alert them that the deer was alive only to be told the officer had reported it dead. Sanfilippo brought out a blanket to shroud the deer and a pillow to keep it comfortable as she reached out both to the New Jersey ASPCA and the borough's animal control officer, but no one responded, she said.

Kraus stopped by later on — it is unclear when — and reported that the deer was still "twitching" and that a woman had "curled up with the deer in her lap, petting the deer," Brennan said.

According to Sanfilippo, an officer returned at about 11:30 p.m. and shot the deer dead in its head. Brennan said there is no report of a third police visit to the scene.

Neighbor Rita Booker, 53, corroborated Sanfilippo's account and added that she was surprised the deer was shot in the first place.

"I can understand if it's mangled from being hit by a car, but this one wasn't," Booker said. "The deer lived for hours before the officer returned and shot it four hours later."

Brennan said it is not uncommon for officers to shoot animals that have been struck by vehicles. Ten deer and one bear struck by vehicles have been killed by borough officers this year.

"(The department's standard operating procedures) say that if an animal is sick or potentially dangerous, officers should destroy them, using precaution to not harm the public," Brennan said.

There are no statewide procedures that outline how law enforcement should go about destroying an injured or dangerous animal, said State Police Sgt. Stephen Jones.

"Whenever possible, police are advised to call animal control, unless the situation requires immediate action because the animal is causing a traffic disruption," Jones said of procedures in place for state police. "Police receive no training as to where to hit an animal for maximum effectiveness."

Janine Motta, a spokeswoman for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, said the nonprofit animal rights group faults the state Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Fish and Wildlife for not creating more specific guidelines for law enforcement.

"It is not uncommon for this to happen. It's reprehensible, repulsive that an animal is left for dead when it's not," Motta said. "There should be some type of emergency plan in place. An animal control officer or veterinarian should respond, and police should be better trained about how to go about it."

Darlene Yuhas, a DEP spokeswoman, said the DEP does not track wildlife killed by law enforcement, and has no official guidelines, but the "preferred method (to kill a deer) is a shot to the head, if possible. A heart shot also is sufficient."

On Thursday afternoon, Brennan said he had not spoken with Kraus or any other officer who had been on shift the night of the incident, but said the department would investigate Sanfilippo's report.

Sanfilippo, who said she has had trouble sleeping since the incident, said the deer's carcass was carted away the next morning by authorities.

"I love animals and feel that animal could have been saved — and that makes me sick," she said. "People think that just because they are animals, they don't think like us. This deer was alert, was so human that night."

Hi,

both juvies are in the nestbox again.


Greetings
Annette
______________________________________________

Thanks Annette, glad their both doing well. I was worried about #2 that flew. 

My poor birds have to be starving and soaked!  It has been blowing hard since Wed (love those nor'easters)!  Had to bring our flags in.  I hate the wind!

You can thank Ida for that....hitting us today and tomorrow.

[MAIN CAM IS STUCK!!!]

MAIN CAM IS STUCK!!!

I get this news monthly and the pics some people take are just amazing. Here's a few.

The pic with the starlings has an outline of a bird...(well that's what I see) 

The probe is severely stricken by bad luck
   

By Tudor Vieru, Science Editor

11th of November 2009, 06:43 GMT


An experimental ion thruster, while still in ground testing
The Hayabusa space mission, which literally translates into peregrine falcon, is a flight of the Japanese space agency (JAXA), which aimed at landing and retrieving soil samples from the near-Earth asteroid (NEO) 25143 Itokawa. The goal of the mission was to study the potentially dangerous object thoroughly, and then land on it and retrieve samples. Hayabusa failed to do so in 2005, but its sample chambers were sealed nonetheless, as hopes were high that dust swirled inside them. Now on its way home, the probe is again stricken by bad luck, with one of its ion thrusters failing, Space reports.

Mission controllers at JAXA have announced that another of its ion motors failed last week, leaving the spacecraft to navigate the harsh cosmic environment only with a single, already-damaged engine. The space probe had no less than four experimental microwave discharge ion engines, which relied on xenon gas for their operation. The gas was consumed, and the resulting ionized propellant was then discharged at high speeds to generate thrust. But two of the motors had already failed before the last glitch, last Wednesday.

The anomaly that claimed the life of thruster D is of the same kind that claimed that of another of its motors, back in 2007. A voltage spike in a neutralization vessel is believed to have been the main culprit in both instances. The only working device on Hayabusa remains Thruster C, which had already been shut down by engineers, due to fear that it could also succumb to voltage spikes. But mission planners are now reviewing its diagnostics, in an attempt to determine whether or not the instrument can support long-duration firings of the type that is required to bring the probe back to Earth.

In November 2005, Hayabusa became the first spacecraft ever to take off from an asteroid, after it landed on 25143 Itokawa unintentionally. It spent some 30 minutes on its surface, breaking new records for space exploration. During its studies of the space rocks, it collected more than 1,600 pictures of the structure and also about 120,000 pieces of near-infrared spectral data. A further 15,000 X-ray spectrometer data points were also collected, JAXA reports.

   

Oscar is only a little bit younger than the new friends he made Wednesday at Central Public School, but he's a whole lot faster.

In fact, eight-year-old Oscar is one of the fastest animals in the world, capable of flying at speeds upward of 250 kilometres per hour.

Oscar is a peregrine falcon, and he's used to being around humans more than birds. So this school educational session about how the bird of prey made it back from the brink of extinction, didn't exactly ruffle his feathers.

Oscar's caretaker is Kyle Holloway, an outreach programs educator for the non-profit Canadian Peregrine Foundation.

Holloway explained to the grades five and six students that peregrines are considered raptors.

"The dinosaur raptors are long extinct," he told the children. "But what I have for you right in this case - and it's not big enough for a Toronto Raptor basketball player either - is a bird of prey."

Holloway taught the Central students that peregrines vanished from Ontario as the result of insecticides like dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more commonly known as DDT. He said the chemical caused reproductive failure in the birds.

"The birds are eating the birds that are eating those crops and insects," answered 10-year-old student Lilly Charbonneau about the food chain link to the carcinogen.

The students learned that with the help of government, breeding programs, the peregrine population began to recover in the mid-nineties.

Notably, said Holloway, Toronto was the place where the birds flourished. It has a climate suitable to avoid migration, few predators, and an endless supply of pigeons to feast on.

We spend our summer vacation on Sandy Island in Lake Winnipesaukee, a small, wedge-shaped piece of land in a large lake in New Hampshire.   This year, we were often awakened by the calls of Common Loons (Gavia immer).  This is a goose-sized diving bird and is very characteristic of the Northern US and Canada.  Calls include a laugh, a wail, and softer, more intimate sounds like those in this movie. 

Here it is in a streaming QuickTime format:
http://blip.tv/file/get/Phamilton-LoonsAndAStorm680.mov

And here it is in Windows Media:
http://phamilton.onlinestoragesolution.com/2009%20Nature/stormloon-1.wmv

If this version does not play well for you, you can right-click it to download and save.

Paul

It's even better the 3rd time around Paul..Thanks.

This time I didn't made my own suet but I bought a piece and put it outside.
What do you thing that I saw the next day?
Well absolutely nothing!!!!!!!! All the suet was gone.
  I'm pretty sure that the Ring-necked parakeets came with lots and lots and eat the whole suet in a very short time!!!!
  greetings Aafke

Looks like they are enjoying your sunflower seeds also Aafke..Great pic of the Parrots. Suet doesn't last long...my brick is gone in 3 days, sometimes less. Hungry birds. Thanks