Great Spirit Bluff: Some sad news early this morning as a Great Horned Owl entered the peregrine falcon nest box and killed one of the eyasses before Mom Michelle could respond with her own swift attack to the intruder to defend her young. The GHO abandoned the box with Michelle fiercely chasing it away. Sadly, the little eyas, identified as female Kira, perished. The male eyas, Carson, was not hurt and has been seen eating, wingersizing, vocalizing and is being cared for by its parents. This video shows the entire incident, although watchers may find it disturbing: https://youtu.be/OfjUMNwHLJk
Decorah Eaglet D32 is now a patient at SOAR. After the immediate acute care under the loving assist from RRP Director and Veterinarian Dr. Laura Johnson, D32 was transported by SOAR personnel late last evening for admittance, evaluation, examination, and treatment. We will know more about his/her condition as SOAR updates us. We have pictures and information about D32’s pick up and examination on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RaptorResourceProject/ . You do not need a Facebook account to read the post.
The past week has been very stressful and fraught with worry for all of us. We’ll eventually have a very long post naming everyone who has gone above and beyond the call of duty in their care and compassion during these disastrous events, but suffice it to say that “it really does take a village!” We add to that list all of you faithful followers of our nests who have shown your own caring and compassionate hearts with thoughtful notes and donations to RRP and to SOAR. You may have noticed that our Facebook Mods were frantically trying to keep up with all the comments that have been coming in, but you might be surprised that just one post yesterday on D32 being found generated over 2,400 comments, 1,600+ shares, and reached 316,782+ fans of the page. We mention this because it proves how deep the love is for wildlife in peril and also because as much as we were inundated keeping up, Facebook saw all of our likes to your posts as ‘spam’ and blocked us in a time out. Please be aware that despite our recognition at the time, each and every comment was read, and questions answered to the best of our ability, and you have kept us buoyed during our own despair. We have hope now and, while there might still be some questions we can’t answer, we will do our best to try. Thank you ALL so very much from ALL of us at RRP.
The Raptor Resource Project