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.