Two falcons shot in Oakland, state game wardens looking for suspects

[MAK]

Haya settling? An update:

http://http://stewartfalcon.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/haya-settling/

 

[Donna]

Ahh, poor girl. She'll find a mate! (Fingers crossed)

[Kris G.]

Just got an email update on Haya from stewartfalcon!

Haya’s Progress
by stewartfalcon
Haya had a good day that began early. She arrived at the Union Bank Bldg in Oakland soon after 7 a.m. with a large shorebird clutched firmly in her foot. Barbara confirmed the meal when she collected the prey remains from the sidewalk later--all that remained was a pair of wings connected by a few cleanly-picked bones. Later, she lay down on a wide ledge in the sun (perhaps because she was top-heavy from a very full crop!) to rest.

Never has a wild, non-nesting falcon been more closely watched. There is quite a crew out there every day. They observed an adult tiercel come in while she ate her shorebird. She defended her food, flew with it, but returned without it. Still, she had a large crop when she came to perch. A juvenile peregrine buzzed her a little later while she relaxed on the wide ledge and then selected a couple other perches on the building briefly. The juvie eventually flew off to the bay marsh while Haya continued to digest her large meal.

Haya moved to the building at 333 Hegenberger. She completed one brief hunting flight over the marsh and then settled down to roost for the night at 333. Barbara and others left her on the corner of the building at 5 p.m. commenting that she seemed in command of her domain.

[MAK]

 

[Donna]

What a gal! Thanks!!

[Kris G.]

Another Haya update!

We are getting a nice collection of Haya pics in silhouette with a big crop. These pictures and this story make a nice Christmas present for all who watched this bird breed at the Fruitvale Ave Railroad Bridge; all who followed her young as they fledged; all who anguished over the injuries she and her daughter sustained and then searched for an answer; for Dr. Shannon Rigg, Trish Orlowski, and all those on the Lindsay Wildlife staff who attended to her for half a year; and the falconer, Jim DeRoque, who cared for her every day at his home and presided over her physical therapy for a full year thereafter. Merry Christmas! Haya has another full crop that she earned all by herself.
 
It would have been easy to say that she could not make it when she came in with a broken ulna, or again when she achieved a bone infection at the site of the break. It would have been easy to give up on her when she could not fly well with her imped (repaired) feathers, or after she got beat up upon her return to the nest structure. But a dedicated field crew including Cheryl, Mary, Ann, Barbara, Janet, Sherrill, and of course, Jim, kept a close eye on her every day after release and supplied us with these updates and photos.
 
She is living on the periphery of her old territory, about four miles from her former nest site and she can see the drawbridge towers from most of the perches she uses every day. Jim called with a telling story. It is a story that is indicative of the challenges any raptor faces while living in our world today.
 
Jim saw Haya take a pigeon from the air in the vicinity of the Coliseum. As he maneuvered around the area trying to locate her with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on his radio telemetry receiver, the signal started to boom loudly and he knew he was close to her. We are conditioned to look at the lamp posts, signs and tree branches for a raptor, but as Jim accelerated onto the Coliseum freeway onramp he almost ran over her! He said, “Our eyes met as I passed her on the pavement.� She was standing with her pigeon on the white line of the freeway onramp. “How ironic would it have been if I was the one to hit her on the freeway after all this?� he asked.
 
Jim quickly pulled over so that traffic would go around them and protected Haya on the pavement but she soon left her pigeon to fly off. Jim re-positioned the pigeon and she eventually returned to it and finished her meal. The photo above illustrates the bulging crop that resulted from that meal.
 
We see raptors standing alongside the road and hunting the freeway medians every day. There is no telling how many close calls occur as raptor and prey meet in a focused moment of fate. Fate was on the side of Haya when she was found on the street in an Oakland neighborhood and taken to the Lindsay Wildlife hospital. And fate was on her side when long time Lindsay volunteer, Jim DeRoque stepped up to help. Thanks to a lot of folks, she’s making it.

http://stewartfalcon.wordpress.com/2012/12/22/another-big-crop-for-haya/

[Kris G.]

Haya update:

  Haya Settles In
by stewartfalcon 

It has been a month since Haya was released at Pt. Pinole Regional Park. As readers of this blog know, she became self-sufficient almost immediately. What a wonderful reward for those who worked so hard to get her back in the wild!

Now the signal from telemetry transmitter has faded but not before Haya settled in to a pattern of regular perches and a hunting territory at the periphery of her old nesting territory. She favors an area centered on the building at 333 Hegenberger south of the Fruitvale Bridge. Observers find her habitually using the same perches and have seen her eating on several occasions. Views of her bands confirm her identity.

Thanks to many dedicated observers, we are learning more about a rebounding peregrine falcon population in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the case of Haya, the dynamics of territorial behavior at one site as well. In the new year, I am grateful to those many observers and for the opportunity they have all provided to witness a successful release and a robust peregrine falcon population after its brush with extinction.

[Kris G.]

Finally-a Haya update!

http://stewartfalcon.wordpress.com/2013/03/05/haya-inquiries/

[Annette]

 

[Kris G.]

 Very sad news:

Posted by Glenn Stewart:

IN MEMORIUM

I regret to inform everyone that HAYA was found dead beneath the Hegenberger overpass. A headless pigeon was found nearby. We speculate that she was struck by a car shortly after capturing the pigeon. This is a tough break for all of us--those who provided medical treatment, rehabilitation conditioning, observing following release, and everyone who thought about and cared about the outcome for this bird. These things happen every day but we do not know about it unless it is a banded bird--that someone finds and reports. Thanks to the work of many, she did not meet her end shot and starving or in a medical clinic, but with her face into the wind while carving out a piece of the San Francisco Bay as her own. With regrets, --glenn@scpbrg

Fly free, Haya.

[Donna]

Oh no and she was doing so well! Poor baby, she tired.    Fly Free Haya!

[MAK]

 

[Kris G.]

Reminds me of how Unity died.

[Annette]

Fly free Haya 

[Kris G.]

Another post by Glenn about Haya:



HAYA: Rest in Peace
In Raptor Rehabilitation on March 29, 2013 at 11:45 am
Well, we lost her. It was one of those things that can happen to any raptor at any time. I posted to the nest camera discussion groups that she was hit by a car but upon further inspection that seems not to be the case. A headless pigeon was found near her body under the Hegenberger overpass. Thanks to the bands that she wore, identification was easy. Due to nearby traffic it was easy to assume that she was hit and killed instantly on the roadway while trying to control and eat a recently captured pigeon. But she had burns on both feet and on her head making us now think that she was probably electrocuted. If she touched one wire with a wingtip and the pigeon’s wing touched another wire, the electrical current passing through her would have been tremendous. There was a utility pole above her as well as a vehicle overpass.

These things happen and there is nothing in the world we can do to prevent it short of burying all the utility wires. After seeing the x-rays of her injury, the second fracture at the site of a bone infection, and her poor plumage after months of medical treatment, I never thought I would see the day when she was released successfully. The Lindsay Museum did a heroic job of treating her. Jim DeRoque put in the time to physically condition her and molt her through to a new set of feathers. And Haya pushed all the way through to once again live like a peregrine with her face freely looking in to the wind. What happened to her could have–and does–happen to raptors every single day. She had an accident on the utility wires that had nothing at all to do with her injury, treatment, or rehabilitation.