Subject: Prairie Falcon
Date: Feb 27 18:05:12 2002
From: Ruth Sullivan - godwit at worldnet.att.net


Hello Tweets,

My mother and I in immediate attempt to to aquire assistance in locating a
professional bird vetrenarian for our falcon travelled north starting at
Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo this morning at 7:30am, where we were directed
to the Sarvey Wildlife Center near Arlington in Snohomish Co. We were
looking forward to obtaining help from the Woodland Park Zoo and to deliver
the bird to them, but it seems they felt it would be best if the bird be
directly transported to the Sarvey Wildlife Center, where we were welcomed
by Sue McGowan, who is a well trained clinic manager for the center. She
took the bird back, where it would later be checked out and X-rayed by their
clinic vet and correctly identified as a Prairie Falcon,presumably a
first-year bird and NOT a immature Peregrine Falcon as we incorrectly
indicated onto Tweeters. We were very excited by this information, but feel
or ID call came very quickly after being so overwhelmed by excitement after
rescuing the bird in a large blanket then into a box, after it was hit by a
large moving semi trailer. The facilities at the Sarvey Wildlife Center are
well equiped for handling any injured raptor, and we greatly recommend this
clinic to any people than encounter an injured raptor in the wild. We
received a case number for our bird and will be informed to it's recovery.
We did not really look at the bird in real detail, as we quickly picked it
up off the road before it could have been easily run over, then we kept the
bird in a cardboard box until it was delivered this morning in good health.
This correct identification was great news to us,eventhough we made a bad
mistake on the identity of the species. The bird was a probable first-year
bird as the overall color was darker brown than any Prairie Falcons than we
have personally seen in the wild and the dark streaking on the breast was
more bolder than most Prairie Falcon than we have seen too,although the size
did fit Prairie, but the black or dark axillaries were not noted, as the
bird folded its wings upon hitting the ground and kept them folded during
it's entire ordeal. The dark moustachial and ear coverts seemed much broader
than we have seen in Prairie Falcons, but felt confident in the final call
of the bird's identity before we left the clinic. Hopefully the bird will
recover fast and that NO internal injuries are present after X-rays are made
to this extraordinary rescued falcon.

Sincerely,

Ruth and Patrick Sullivan
GODWIT at worldnet.att.net