For the Birds

We went to the Tuesday Gringo Meeting because our friend Alan was giving a lecture and slide presentation about his book, "On the Wing." He has now given this talk in 23 countries and many U.S. universities including Harvard and U.C. at Boulder. Alan and an 80 something pilot tracked peregrine falcons in an ancient Cessna airplane from Texas to the arctic and then back to Texas and on into Central America. His book and the lecture was about that journey. Fascinating.

We learned that only a tiny percentage, less than ten, of Peregrines are born naturally in the wild. DDT and other pesticides have so poisoned their food that their eggs won't hatch. "Clean" birds are bred in captivity and their hatchlings are placed in the nests of wild peregrines. What happens is this: Naturalists climb to the falcon's very high nests during the breeding season, chase off the birds and then steal their eggs. They replace them with lookalike ceramic eggs. The birds then return and continue thier sitting. After the proper interval has passed, the naturalists return to the nests with healthy hatchlings, chase away the parent birds a second time, and exchange baby birds for eggs. Alan referred to the baby birds as "Baby Hueys" because they are much larger than newborns should be. "Like giving birth to a ten year old." The papa bird finds this a bit strange and won't have anything to do with the babies, but the mother adopts them immediately. After a while the pop gets used to the chicks and aids in their feeding. Is that amazing or what?

Alan was able to track the birds on their migratory path because tiny transmitters about the size and weight of an aspirin are placed on the feathers of some of the hatchlings. The trackers rarely had to be closer than five miles from the birds. The principal difficulty for Alan and his pilot was to find a place to land each night, avoid the authorities and obtain gas for the plane so they could be off before dawn to pick up the birds trail. Peregrines, apparently are early risers. There was no official sanctioning of the whole expedition and Alan financed it by himself, mostly with credit cards. Run- ins with Canada's Mounties and Mexico's army (they landed on a restricted base in Mexico and were believed to be spies) made for an interesting tale.

All in all a terrific meeting. Especially after consecutive weeks of first health insurance people and then builders. Now I've got to read the book.