{"id":17828,"date":"2013-08-26T04:00:06","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=17828"},"modified":"2013-08-26T16:13:25","modified_gmt":"2013-08-26T22:13:25","slug":"injured-prairie-falcon-report-from-the-centennial-valley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/26\/injured-prairie-falcon-report-from-the-centennial-valley\/","title":{"rendered":"Injured Prairie Falcon Report From The Centennial Valley"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I called Bill West, Project Leader at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the Centennial Valley of sw Montana, to ask him about the effects of the recent forest fires and resulting smoke in the area. It was Bill who had contacted Ryan Moehring\u00a0of the US Fish and Wildlife Service about my recent banded Prairie Falcon post<\/a>.\u00a0 Ryan was interested enough in the story of how I, with significant help from\u00a0some of my readers\u00a0(thanks again, especially to\u00a0Mike Shaw), was able to track down the original bander\u00a0of that falcon that he included a post about it on the USFWS Facebook page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

During the conversation Bill told me about an incident that immediately got my attention.\u00a0 On a recent early morning\u00a0a refuge staff member\u00a0was driving on one of the refuge roads when he noticed\u00a0someone taking pictures of\u00a0something\u00a0next to the road.\u00a0 The staff member stopped to investigate and it turned out to be an injured Prairie Falcon.\u00a0 There was blood under the wing and the\u00a0falcon couldn’t fly but the wing wasn’t broken.<\/p>\n

Bill believes\u00a0the bird is a\u00a0juvenile Prairie Falcon, just like\u00a0“my” banded\u00a0bird that I became so fond of.\u00a0\u00a0 The injured falcon\u00a0was found within a very short distance of where I photographed the banded bird a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can imagine I immediately asked Bill if the injured\u00a0bird was banded.\u00a0 Thankfully his answer was no so it wasn’t the bird (“my” bird)\u00a0in this image (it has remnants of its last meal on its bill).<\/p>\n

I hate to play favorites but I became\u00a0quite attached to this young falcon when it let me get so close for so long while I was photographing it\u00a0and then learned some of its history, from banding\u00a0to its flight to Montana from California as such a young bird, that I’ll admit that if a\u00a0falcon had to be injured I’m glad it wasn’t this one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"prairie<\/a><\/p>\n

But this may have been the falcon with the injury.\u00a0 I photographed this Prairie Falcon in the same general area the day after I photographed the banded bird.\u00a0 It was frantically hunting grasshoppers in the aftermath of a storm that had quickly moved through (thus the poor light and image quality).\u00a0 You can see one of the “hoppers” scurrying out of the way under the right wing of the falcon.<\/p>\n

The cause of the injury is\u00a0unknown.\u00a0 It’s doubtful it was hit by a vehicle – the road is rough, traffic is rare and\u00a0slow and falcons are lightening fast.\u00a0 There are many fences in the area, especially along the road, so one possibility might be that the young and inexperienced bird was injured as it tried to snag one of the many passerines that perch on the\u00a0fences.\u00a0 We’ll likely never know what happened.<\/p>\n

Now to the real point of this post.<\/p>\n

Bill matter of factly\u00a0stated that they retrieved this bird and then made arrangements to deliver it to a rehab center in Bozeman, Montana.\u00a0\u00a0Given what he said about the injury\u00a0I suspect it has a very good chance of eventually being released back into the wild.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"red<\/a><\/p>\n

You have to be familiar with this area to know that getting this bird to rehab wouldn’t be easy.\u00a0\u00a0It’s a 132 mile drive from the\u00a0refuge to Bozeman\u00a0and a significant amount of\u00a0the road can be rough and treacherous, even in good weather.\u00a0 I don’t have any photos of the rougher parts but this shot\u00a0includes the sign that warns of what lies ahead (or behind, depending on\u00a0which way you’re going).<\/p>\n

Bill and his\u00a0staff have a huge refuge to run and I suspect that the logistics of such a daunting task could easily\u00a0make priorities difficult to juggle.\u00a0 These folks made a significant effort for an individual bird and I think that says a lot.<\/p>\n

I say kudos to them all!<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago I called Bill West, Project Leader at Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the Centennial Valley to ask him about the effects of the recent forest fires and resulting smoke in the area. During the conversation Bill told me about an incident that immediately got my attention.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17829,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[334,1493,371,360],"tags":[1624,555,538,254,263,1625,1564,1623],"class_list":["post-17828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birds","category-montana-favorite-locations","category-prairie-falcons","category-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge-favorite-locations","tag-banded","tag-centennial-valley","tag-falco-mexicanus","tag-prairie-falcon","tag-red-rock-lakes-national-wildlife-refuge","tag-rehab-center","tag-us-fish-and-wildlife-service","tag-usfws"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/prairie-falcon-4543b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-4Dy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}