Small Critters:

Although our vistas are large scale, we spend most of our work time on a small piece of real estate about 20 yards square and have become increasingly aware of the small critters co-inhabiting that space.
Being E.O. Wilson fans, we’ve especially enjoyed watching the 5-6 varieties of ants come and go on their daily business. Observing one carrying a dead comrade from the front of the shelter to its ant hill(about 50 feet in 10 minutes) Erv calculated the human equivalent to be a 5'5” adult carrying an 80# weight 1.5 miles in 10 minutes. And we’re not alone in this ant fascination. One of our fellow site attendants,a Tenn. State student,tossed out pop tart half then counted how many ants it took to pick it up and move it. Our equivalent is ants teaming up to carry away quail parts that fell off the tower as the falcons ate. Fascinating stuff!
While Erv watches ants, I’ve developed a fascination for lizards and beetles (remember the horned lizard photo early on?) and neither of us can help but notice the few, but large tarantulas. We’ve seen lizards eat aunts and the roadrunner eat beetles, but never a face-off with a tarantula.

Pleistocene Pause...

Break out the cigars! There’s a new baby born down here on the ranch. It’s a bit premature, but it appears healthy and active. It’s a Bolson tortoise. The thing is we don’t know if it’s a baby boy or baby girl. And we won’t really know for sure until it’s about 15 years old. The sex of the hatchlings is determined by the temperature of the incubator. Males are produced at one temperature range, females at another(Hot mamas, cool daddies. The problem here being there was a prolonged power failure one evening that may have critically affected this newborns gender. But whatever we have,it’s cute as a button and full of life. Hopefully there will be more hatching soon and the nursery will be hopping,well,slowly crawling anyway.
The Bolson tortoise was “discovered”in 1959. Until that time it had been thought extinct for 10,000 years. The story is that a group of biologists working in the Bolsón de Mapimí region of Mexico were at a ranch and saw chickens eating out of a large tortoise shell. They inquired about the origin of the shell and the locals responded that it was, “la tortuga grande del desierto,” the big turtle of the desert.
Bolson populations had declined mostly due to over collecting for food and the pet trade. Incursion of roads, railroads and agricultural development continued to accelerate the decline of the species in the last 40 years. In the central portion of its range locals are keenly aware of the tortoise’s protected status and aid in its conservation. However it is believed that tortoises are still collected and eaten and their habitat compromised.
In the fall of 2006, 26 Bolson Tortoises were translocated from the Audubon Appleton-Whittell Research Ranch in Elgin, Arizona to Ted Turner’s Armendaris Ranch in south-central New Mexico, a Chihuahuan desert environment within the prehistoric range of this species. Here this group of tortoises is known as the Appleton tortoises in commemoration of Ariel Appleton, a champion of Bolson tortoise conservation.
We were privileged to see one of these remnants of the Pleistocene hatch at the “nursery” here on the ranch.. They can take days to work out of their shell and don’t reach maturity until around 15 years. Their life span is similar to that of a human.
The Ted Turner Endangered Species Fund is in charge of the project on the Armendaris and TESF biologist Lisa Haynes is acting mid-wife. She is on call 24/7 and helps the hatchlings by delicately removing shell fragments,keeping moist paper towels under their yolk sac and providing food and water along with other things to welcome the baby into the world. All the incubators are on a system to control temperatures and humidity. Even so it's a venture into the unknown and things happen. At this time only one has made its way into the world, but there are high hopes that as many as 12 others will be pecking their way through shortly.
Lisa will be leaving the ranch for an appointment in Arizona this weekend, and Sandra and I will be watching over the eggs. A new tiny foot poked its way out of another egg this morning and we are following the progress closely. I hope it all happens before she leaves. Because as Butterfly McQueen’s famous line in Gone With the Wind goes, “I don’t know nuthin’ bout birthin’ no babies!”
(This blog entry is taken from Erv's weekly column,"The Outside Story",in our local newspaper.)

The Sky:

Fulfilling the promise to balance "yuck factor" with something more sublime, I post these photos which surpass words in describing the beauty and drama of New Mexico skies - sunrise, sunset, thunderheads, monsoon and rainbow reflections!

The “Yuck” Factor:

The yuck factor - to be balanced out by fabulous images of NM skies in our next post– includes quail thawing in our tiny RV kitchen; said quail cut up and attached to a feeding board for the chicks; the always riveting spectacle of older falcon consuming whole quail - including their preference for brains, slurping and tugs of war with viscera, and downing an entire leg and foot whole like carnival sword swallowers.
To commemorate this, Erv composed the “Ode To A Hack Site Attendant,” sung to the tune of The Battle Hymn of the Republic: “Mine eyes have seen the gory of dismembering a quail; they are pecking out the gizzards and the stringy red entrails. As they rip apart the heads and feet we watch the feathers fly; the mess could make you cry!”
You get the gist, and you can imagine cleaning up after these orgies, even with a little help from a box turtle under the tower! Last yuck factor photo… what we refer to as “taking the shovel for a walk…”

The Job:

There are two basic aspects to our job as hack site attendants. First is the physical care of the falcons:food and water,and protection from scavengers and predators. The second is observation and record keeping about details of the falcon’s activities, feeding patterns, flights, hunting skills and behaviors, including contacts among themselves and with other species. They are observed through tiny peep-holes for 5-7 days while inside the hack box then from a distance for 6 weeks after release. And, about once a week, we host visiting biologists, professors, and other officials who visit the site to observe the project and the falcons. The job features periods of intense awareness and activity contrasting with waiting- for-something-to-happen-time bordering on stupor. Rain or shine!
The falcon’s physical care requires a lot of thinking about and handling frozen “feed quail” at a rate of .75 quail/falcon/day; not something I’ve really done much of... One must calculate the ever-changing food requirement - hard for the math challenged, thaw the quail and, for the first 2-3 weeks of each group’s arrival, inject them with an electrolyte solution then cut them in half for the young or pierce them whole; another new job skill. The quail are then carried up a 15’ ladder and attached to the tower with zip ties. This has a definite “yuck” factor but isn’t so difficult once you adjust to the schedules. (More on the Yuck factor later… bet you can’t wait!)
After the three intense 14-hour days following each group’s release when we were on-site dawn till dusk (some days reaching 110 in the shade) you can imagine our relief to change to the current split-day schedule… and it’s not a winner in its own right. We rise at 5:15AM, drive to the site, prep quail and get the tower set-up by 6:30-7. Returning to the shelter area, we set up scopes and observe the falcons taking notes until 10 or so when we return to the tower to remove leftover quail, clean, refill water pans, etc. Then we’re off site about 5 hours and, at 4:30, repeat the process all over again, packing it in at dusk when we, like the falcons, go to roost. Any personal business, photo work, writing, driving the 35 miles to town for groceries, etc. is done in that little window between feedings. For us oldies, it’s also nap time to preserve sanity and some degree of civility.
Sunrise and sunset are ever-changing kaleidoscopes as well as the coolest parts of the day when falcon and other wildlife are most active; our “happy times.” That still leaves about 4-5 hours “work.” This less-dynamic period of observation and record keeping has generally been my task. I find the nuances of falcon activities and interactions more interesting than Erv; probably related to my detail-oriented nursing background. He generally keeps us from getting sunstroke or stuck in the mud, damaging expensive optical equipment, falling off ladders, etc and, as you have seen, he concentrates on photography and has captured some great images. We are tiring of the routine but continue to learn volumes about ourselves as well as the falcons and the myriad life stories around them.

NEWS FLASH!! We interrupt this series about work with the Peregrine Fund to reintroduce Aplomado falcons to southern New Mexico to report on local conflict… a battle of bison.
Working on site this morning we were enjoying the diversion of a herd of 100+ bison slowly grazing our way like ships on a sea of grass. There were many cows and calves as well as older males and females and one enormous bull watching over them all. This herd, one of two on Ted turner’s ranch, is purposefully not managed for hunting or commercial production and has been allowed to develop and roam as they would have in a bygone era. The bison made low growly noises, grazed, lay down to rest, rolled in the dust, thrashed and scratched themselves on the bushes and generally rearranged details of the landscape as they made their way westward less than a football field’s length south of our shelter. Their presence and activities gave clarification to the wallows and hair-covered shrubbery we had noted these past few weeks. It was a bucolic scene.
Then we noticed a lone bull making slow, deliberate progress our way from the north. As he neared the herd, its large bull came forward to meet him. These huge animals squared off not more than 30 yards from us and began a pushing, ground shaking, hair-flying battle lasting 10-15 minutes. The herd bull reasserted his dominance and made sure the contender retreated the way he had come before returning to his domain. WOW!!

compare dehydrated falcon to those in previous post

Life and Death Struggles:

We began with seven 33 day-old Aplomado chicks, or eyass, as in-nest young are called before they are able to fledge (fly). Release day, their big debut at 40 days of age, is perhaps the most sensitive time in the entire hacking process. They are deprived of food the preceding day and feeder quail are attached to numerous staples on the tower platform to encourage the chicks to feed immediately after release. This helps bond them to the tower as a source of food and gives them time to get their bearings. They are also hand sprayed with water just before the hack box door is secured open which gives additional time for exploring the tower and their surroundings as they dry and preen in preparation for first flight.
In our case, about 3 hours after the first chick had emerged from the box and 10 minutes after the last, an unidentified raptor ( likely Coopers Hawk or sub-adult Aplomado) flew in front of the tower flushing 3 of the 7 into thick brush about 60 meters away. Two returned the next morning but one has never been seen again, possibly taken by a ground predator. Now there were six in our charge for feeding and observation.
We became increasingly concerned as three days passed and two fledglings had not returned to the tower for food and water. They flew over and around the tower but seemed averse to landing on it. On the morning of day 3, the male flew and was not seen again by us. Two days later a rancher about 3.5 miles north found him under the lawn sprinkler. The falcon was obviously weak and, fearing his house cats would hurt it, the rancher placed him in a birdcage overnight where he was found dead next morning. Lab analysis determined death from dehydration and starvation. Then there were 5.
We assisted one of our supervisors, Angel Montoya, in the capture of the second bird, a female who hadn’t returned to the tower but stayed in the area. It was a long process of following her from shrub to shrub over ½ mile of desert until she could be sprayed with enough water to hinder flight and then picked up by hand. I cannot tell you how impressed we were by the skill, patience, gentleness and endurance Angel modeled through it all. Although showing definite signs of dehydration, the fledgling was in fairly good shape. Angel injected her with ringers’ lactate subcutaneously; gave her rest in the travel box back at ranch headquarters; hand fed her a mush of fortified quail; injected ringers a second time and placed her back into the hack box for rehab. Erv and I fed/observed her there for another 3 days when she was re-released. Upon release she ate and hung out on the tower for several hours before flying to a nearby mesquite tree. Next morning she flew back to the tower and ate with the others as though she had been doing so all along! Since then she has been a chow hound and often first to the tower for the twice-daily feedings.
At another hack site about 90 miles northeast, a third group of young had recently been released when a great horned owl killed 4 newly released and two slightly older falcons in one night. We aren’t supposed to get “attached” to the falcons in our care, but such a loss is hard on personnel and a blow to the overall program of reintroducing this species to its once traditional habitat.