Sacajawea Gets Watchers’ Hearts Pounding

Dan, Jeanne, Lisa and myself were at the Bru watching Sacajawea exercise on the scrape roof. Earlier at least two times, Mariah and Kaver had been flying back and forth in front of the scrape and giving the eyases training lessons in what falcons can do.

Anyway, thru a combination of sources, we knew that two eyases were in the playpen (Ananta and Grace), Sacajawea was on the roof of the scrape and Linn had perched and then hopped to the side of the scrape.

With Sacajawea on the roof, we were discussing possible fledge/flight dates (today, tomorrow, Friday etc) in the context that we had not seen the characteristic behavior of vigorous wing flapping while the talons held on to something.

That changed around 7:00 when Sacajawea began flapping vigorously on the roof and then all of sudden grabbed on to the lattice work behind the scrape. We watched her flap and climb the lattice work about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way up. It was not unlike watching a cat climb a fence. If you haven’t seen it, you can’t believe it. But she did. Within a minute, she let go of the lattice work and landed back on the scrape roof. She rested for awhile there.

Then around 7:15 she began flapping again, and while we were watching fledged/flew from the roof to the main camera. We were amazed that it was her because Ananta and Grace had started the “leaving home” process so much earlier. I certainly was betting on one of those two. Sacajawea spent about 10 minutes on main, started flapping again and made her way down to the playpen. That was more than enough excitement for my watch, so it was time to go to work.

That puts three in the playpen and Linn by the scrape.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 20th, 2007 at 6:00 AM and is filed under Fledge Watch Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.