Planes and Prairie Falcons

The weather is slowly improving. Hopefully spring will get here before my woodpile is totally gone. The wind has even dropped some of the time.

While attending Tami's son, Reuben's birthday dinner, his dad Dave, was telling me about a falcon that he had seen on a nest ledge out in the desert. I was very interested, since it is so early in the year. I was very interested to say the least. Most generally Prairie Falcons do not lay even their first egg until the 6th of April. Dave had told me that he had seen 5 eggs in the nest. Of course all that preyed on my mind until I decided to go check it out. We had brought the sight up on Bing maps, so I had a good idea of where to look. Dave had some Cows that were hiding out in Crooked Creek canyon, so I decided to check them first and then go on to where I thought the Falcon should be.

https://vimeo.com/62824738 this is a 9 minute video of the flight. Password is owyheeflyer.

I held out for a couple of days, and then when the weather seemed to be getting better, I couldn't hold out any longer. I loaded the quad onto the trailer and punched the way point in the Garmin. I parked off the Hwy where the two track started, and began my journey across the Desert. One of the interesting features of this area are the rock cairns that are scattered around this portion of the Desert. The story is told locally that they were made by the early Basque Sheepherders that spent months out in the Desert at a time. Apparently they either built them out of boredom or to have something that made them feel as thought they were not alone. After bumping over 13 miles of two track road, I arrived at the end of the road where the rest would have to be covered on foot.

The nest was in a short cliff face where a Creek had gouged out the earth over the years since the lava had flowed down to the Owyhee River. It narrowed to a point and the depth of the cliff is only about 30 feet. The nest is located in an old Eagle nest, and is in plain sight.

http://vimeo.com/62968057   same password. owyheeflyer

I only spent about 5 minutes at the nest so that Mom could get back on the eggs. I was surprised to find some old Elk crap in the Sage as I walked across country. There was a lot of "Indian Bullets" lying around on the ground by the cliff face. Apparently times were better in the past, as I did not see any Rabbits to shoot at. I did see two groups of Antelope, but nothing else except some ground dwelling birds.