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.

nests, nests, nests

Another installment from my photo files.

This woodduck box is only 20 ft from my back deck. This female woodduck checked it out for a few days, but I imagine the house/dog activity changed her mind. This is the inside of a different woodduck box down by the lake. Prime realty here and looks like it produced a brood.

Here is a mallard nest tunnel that we put up on the WMA. They don't really get used much, I like to think because there is lots of natural habitat :)

This is a natural mallard nest that was predated. The eggs were eaten and are sitting outside the nest. Don't know if the nest is obvious, but it is under the dead braken fern. The duck bent over the tops to create a tee-pee over the nest.

This is a blue-wing or cinnamon teal nest, too difficult to identify the female as she took off.

And this is a red-necked grebe nest. Grebes make floating nests within emergent vegetation of rush and cattials.