How's Beatrix doing?
Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation Center I'm waiting on paperwork from Canada to fly her home. She's doing well just can't make the trip on her own.
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TPC, I asked them for an update on their Facebook feed and this was the answer. I have a question: If She is "flown" back to Winnipeg, will She be released near the West Winnipeg Site? and will She be well/strong enough for migration? Will flying her back to Winnipeg mess with her orientation?
Don't know the answer to any of those questions really, she isn't coming up here to be released, she is coming up here to finish her rehabilitation in anticipation of her being re-released. And arrival isn't imminent, we have 4 levels of government paperwork to hopefully work our way though yet.
As for her orientation, remember that the first time she migrated as a chick she had no idea where she was going or why but she still ended up where most of our peregrines seem to end up for the winter. We don't understand what all the cues and clues most birds use to migrate though there is lots of speculation. The fact that a 4 month old bird can fly from Winnipeg to Mexico all by itself just the way thousands of its ancestors have done for millions of years (yes, literally - it is believed they diverged from other falcons in the late Miocene to early Pliocene - 5-8 million years ago) is enough to convince me that there has been a lot more going on in those little brains and bodies for a very long time and that we are probably never going to come close to fully understanding how they do it, which works for me. So no, Beatrix won't have any problem figuring out what she wants to do when she finally gets the chance to do it.
