{"id":10478,"date":"2012-12-17T08:41:43","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T15:41:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=10478"},"modified":"2012-12-17T15:54:07","modified_gmt":"2012-12-17T22:54:07","slug":"good-news-regarding-the-escaped-peregrine-falcon-and-american-kestrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2012\/12\/17\/good-news-regarding-the-escaped-peregrine-falcon-and-american-kestrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Good News Regarding The Escaped Peregrine Falcon and American Kestrel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently I’ve photographed and posted about two escaped falconry birds – a female American Kestrel<\/a> and a Peregrine Falcon<\/a>.\u00a0 Both were flying free with attached jesses and\/or anklets in the vicinity of Antelope Island.\u00a0\u00a0Both\u00a0were reported to wildlife authorities and to the falconry community but each bird has been a challenge to recapture for a variety of reasons – among them the difficulty of getting proper permission for the licensed trapper to attempt the recapture of the kestrel\u00a0in a state park.\u00a0 There were lots of hoops to jump through.<\/p>\n

It is very likely,\u00a0for a variety of reasons,\u00a0that both of these birds were\u00a0originally\u00a0captured illegally by “wannabe” falconers and not by anyone in\u00a0the organized and licensed falconry community.<\/p>\n

Two days after we found the kestrel we met the licensed trapper out on the island to point out the area\u00a0where the bird was hanging out and to try to find her, which we never did.<\/p>\n

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\"american<\/p>\n

But yesterday morning we spotted the female Kestrel once again, in the very same area where we found her before.\u00a0 She was far off but when she scratched her face one of the jesses became obvious, as you can see in this photo.\u00a0\u00a0I immediately called the trapper to report that the bird was in the area\u00a0again and she was enthusiastic about making the attempt but as far as she knew, permissions from the state still hadn’t been obtained.<\/p>\n

A little background before I get to the good news.\u00a0 When Mark Runnels (master falconer from Oklahoma) saw my first post on the female kestrel, he put me in touch with Christopher Wall, new president of the Utah Falconers Association (UFA), which started a fortunate ball rolling.\u00a0 Christopher began to work on setting up an improved process for reporting lost falconry birds (currently, that process is cumbersome, inefficient and\u00a0frustrating) and he is also working with the\u00a0North American Falconers Association (NAFA) to see if those changes can be implemented on a national basis.\u00a0 Christopher has also been doing the legwork required to get state permission to recapture the kestrel.<\/p>\n

Late last night I received an email from Christopher reporting the following developments:<\/p>\n