| Bye Bye Swainies |
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Help The Raptors That Are In "Mouse School" One chose to walk out of the box and turned around as if it was preparing to be caught like so many other times over the last year. The bird finally burst into flight when one of its cage mates exited a neighboring travel box quickly and they nearly collided. It was a beautiful evening and we hope our feathered friends meet many more companions for their trip to the Southern hemisphere.We are sure that we will still see some new admissions of Swainson’s Hawks until migration is over; but that was a very good day. We would like thank Gail, Kimmi, Jack, Kari, Anne, Bonnie, Joelle and Lisa M. for catching, banding and boxing of the birds. Many thanks to the Saturday AM treatment crew for catching and keeping tabs on the Swainson’s Hawk (Class of '08) especially through the hard winter months. An extra special thanks to Christine Thomas and her husband Mike for their devoted and relentless pursuit in search of kettles out on the plains. Without their many hours and miles, we would not be able to make these releases happen ever year. Kudos also to Eric DeFonso for assisting in the search. Thanks to Lisa Mason for the great photos. And a huge thanks to all of our supporters for believing in our work and for making Second Chances possible! Here are photos from the Swainson's Hawks release.
RMRP volunteer Emily Steele holds the medical records of the released hawks.
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Late in the day on Wednesday, September 2, 2009, 16 Swainson’s Hawks received their Second Chance at Freedom on the eastern plains of Colorado near Wiggins. Most of these birds were not ready for migration in 2008, so they have spent at least one year with us, and in some cases, 18 months. They all passed 'mouse school' with flying colors. We try to release them into a ‘kettle;’ A kettle is a concentration of hawks swirling, spiraling, and criss-crossing in an air thermal (hot, rising air). There wasn't the large kettle we were hoping for, but enough ‘Swainies’ were close by that we felt confident that this was their time to go.
