Yippee! We’re on the road again where we feel most alive and content. “Home” now is a gently used 24’ RV in which we travel and live and work; a virtual palace in comparison with last years tent and bunkhouse living! Through our naturalist's lifestyle we honor it’s previous owner, Jan Arrott, a dear friend whom we met in her capacity as originator of the "Friends of the Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge" which, like our own Bosque del Apache, is a winter sanctuary for crane and waterfowl.
As of July 2, our “home” is parked behind the headquarters of Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch, a 350,000+ acre spread in south central New Mexico. We’ve graciously been given the keys to “Ted’s place” by Tom Waddell, ranch manager whose acquaintance alone has been worth the trip. Tom is an unassuming, salt-of-the-earth man with a steel-trap mind. His managerial and scientific work is seasoned by wry observations of human nature and by depth of knowledge gained through personal study and his lengthy experience here and with Arizona’s Dept.of Fish and Game. The ranch runs about 12,000 head of bison and hosts, among other things, scientific study and/or reintroduction projects for Bolson’s tortoise, prairie dogs, big horn sheep, cougars (mountain lion) and our own Peregrine Fund project with Aplamado falcons. The ranch also includes a huge cave where hundreds of thousands of free- tail Mexican bats emerge nightly – we’re eager to see that - and so much more. It’s difficult to express how excited and fortunate we feel to be here.
Yesterday our first clutch of seven young Aplamado Falcons was flown in from Idaho and placed into the hack-site box atop a 15’ tower (in a remote section of the ranch where the buffalo roam) by Paul, one of our Peregrine Fund supervisors. Erv and I are the attendants for this site and will care for and monitor the young birds in the box for about six days then upon release until they are self sufficient. We man one of several hack sites in southern New Mexico and Texas where the Peregrine Fund is continuing its successful project to reintroduce this falcon into traditional habitat where it became endangered and vanished in the 1930s.
That first night was pretty exciting for the birds and for us as New Mexico’s monsoon season (not an oxymoron) began with an amazing display of lightening and torrential downpours. The next morning was no less exciting. A part of our duties include feeding the chicks portions of quail (thawed and quartered)at first light and at dusk. Our 5:30am drive to the tower was highlighted by near-entrapment in mud (envision the first stage of a fossilized specimen) then challenge by an advancing herd of 35 or so bison (all but the calves were larger than Erv’s Tracker) who must have felt really frisky after the rain. We had no idea those big critters could move so fast!
And so it begins – on the road again. Wonder what's next!