young raptor

The last time I drove to Boise, in some minuscule town in OR, I happened upon a fledgling Swainson's hawk in the middle of the road, who apparently wasn't sure how to fly from the ground. Its parent was in a nearby tree. But since it was in the road with only 15 feet or shoulder up to the side of a storage unit building that stretched several hundred feet along the roadside, I didn't see it finding a safe flight zone before it got hit by a vehicle. So I grabbed a blanket from the truck and captured the guy. I walked a couple hundred feet down the road to a gas station with nothing but crop fields around it...I told you it was a little town. I put the little one on a fence post and hoped it learned a lesson to grow into a smarter bird for the experience :) Who knows. A biologist/falconer told me that only about 1/3 of raptor chicks survive to adulthood because most are just not smart enough or tough enough to learn what it takes to survive as a raptor. So when you are awed by the regal power of a raptor, you should be, because apparently it is not a given just being born a raptor.

You can see it using it's nictitating membrane, or third eyelid, in this photo compared to the photo below. Kinda gross eh.