It was as close to a "normal" week as we've had around here. From the calendar, the schedule looked nearly normal: volunteer meeting on Wednesday morning, hydrology measurements on Thursday and working with the quail on Friday.
That didn't include the 19° and 13° mornings, seeing Long-eared and Great Horned Owls during our hydrology walk, having quail escape as I was working on their cages and the highlight of the week, having "our" Golden Eagle released.
Wednesday was a pretty quiet work day. We had the weekly volunteer meeting where the upcoming schedule was discussed. There seem to be quite a few extra things coming up and we've "volunteered" for a few outside of our normal workdays. I don't think that we will have another three-day work week before we leave ... and that's only 23 days away.
In addition to our normal stuff, we are scheduled to do two more Brown Canyon hikes, run a UTV for the Sierra Club when they come out to do barbed-wire fence removal, fill-in at the visitor center (tomorrow) and do a full day of general care at the quail facility by ourselves (without Paula) for the first time. Also our friends, Bob and Nancy, are coming to Tucson for a couple of days (we've managed to get them off). It should be an interesting last month at Buenos Aires.
We did another round of our recently expanded hydrology measurements at Arivaca this past Thursday. Rob and Reta did not join us this week as they were off birding in Mexico. Next week we'll be doing it a day earlier with a couple of student interns who come in on Wednesdays and Fridays. It has been suggested that they might pick it up after we leave, but I doubt that will happen since they are only volunteering for a couple of months. I still have to write a guide to the project and set up the recording method to be a bit easier than it is now.
Friday was quail day. As usual we went to the quail breeding facility to help Paula care for the birds. Now that Emily has left, Paula has less help than ever, so our time there is very useful. We did the general care for each of the groups of quail (chicks, adults and "cooties"), except for inspecting the quail for injuries. Unless one was really suffering, I doubt that we'd notice anything wrong. We make sure that each of the brooder shelves have enough food, clean out and refill the dust baths, clean the water lines to each brooder and change the cardboard floors and toys.
Since the floors of the brooder shelves are wire mesh, Paula puts pieces of corrugated cardboard down to make it easier for the birds. They also like to peck at it. Each time we work in the visitor center, Ellen cuts up cardboard boxes into useful sizes for the floors. We also collect used cardboard packaging like cracker boxes for use as "toys" (they like to peck at them and move them around). Ellen calls it the "Quail Enrichment Program".
When we got to the final room, the one where we have to don coveralls and booties to care for the quail recovering from a virus, one of the last tasks we were doing was pulling out soiled cardboard floors and putting in new ones. As I was pulling out a rather large piece, two of the quail made a break for freedom. One flew up to the top of a brooder cabinet, the other landed in an empty food bag. Luckily Ellen noticed the latter land, otherwise we might not have been able to find her. I picked the female quail out of the bag and as I put her back into her shelf, another made a break for it. He flew up to join the other loose male. We managed to net them both and get them back into the brooder cage. By now we were pretty shaken ... these are after all the few remaining Masked Bobwhite Quails on the planet.
We relaxed a bit but it wasn't over yet. As I was putting in a floor on the bottom shelf, there was another escape attempt. I managed to prevent a bird from flying out, but I thought it might have been two but neither Ellen nor I actually saw it. Ellen was looking the other way as she worked changing floors in her brooders and I was intent on getting the floors in place. We didn't know how many birds were supposed to be on the shelf. We looked everywhere on the floor, behind the brooders, on the other side of the room, but found nothing.
We finished up the floor changing task and all that was left to do was flush out water lines. I asked Ellen to find Paula, who was in the other building, and ask her how many birds were supposed to be in the bottom shelf because we were still worried that one had gotten out. This meant getting out of her haz-mat suit and booties, a production for sure. As she was about to go out the door, the quail appeared under an empty brooder cage. The bird had evidently flow up onto a perch under the brooder, which was still under construction, and we couldn't see her until she dropped back down to the floor. Crisis averted. We finished up for the day and gratefully went back to the outpost to relax.
The highlight of the week was on Saturday. Just about two months ago, we found an injured Golden Eagle. It had been hit by a car and a Border Patrolman had brought it into the refuge, but it escaped before help could be arranged. Ellen and I found it several days later. It was sent to Liberty Wildlife, a rehabilitation facility in Phoenix.
It has now fully recovered and, according to the staff at Liberty, ready to go. They called Dan on Thursday to say they wanted to release it on the weekend. On Saturday morning it was driven down to the refuge by one of the Liberty volunteers (in a Prius, no less). At about 11 AM, we all gathered across from the visitor center as he took it out of a crate. The bird had hooded covering the eyes, a common practice with raptors as they become docile when hooded and therefore less stressed during the drive. With a bit of a struggle to get the hood off, the eagle saw the light and the volunteer opened his arms for her to fly.
Initially, she landed on a nearby mesquite tree where she sat for about ten minutes, being harassed by a pair of ravens that live in the trees around the visitor center. She ignored them. Normally we think of ravens as pretty large birds, but they looked like sparrows next to the eagle.
I think the eagle was probably adjusting to the light after being hooded for at least three hours as well as getting her bearings. She appeared to be in no hurry. When she finally took off, she circled upward a few times and then headed south gaining altitude as she flew. Not far over the grassland of the refuge, a hawk took offense and tried to harass her, but she shrugged it off and kept on going. By the time we lost sight of her, it seemed like she was at about 10,000 feet and already over Mexico. I suspect that once she got up in the air, she recognized her home range and was heading to the southern Baboquivari mountains. There is some talk that she may be half of a pair of Golden Eagles that live in Brown Canyon. We'll never know but everyone was overjoyed to see this beautiful creature fly free again.
Eagle Photos
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