In Search of The Wild Peregrine

As you may know, I'm a falconer. That is, I hunt wild game with a trained falcon. I've suppressed this activity for the past several years for several reasons- kids, ranch work, guitar work, whatever, but have recently felt the urge to pick it up again. Here in New Mexico we can now take wild peregrine falcons, and I was fortunate enough to draw one of the 2 available permits. Therefore, we are on the hunt for an active peregrine site. There are quite a few of them here in the state, but that doesn't make finding one an easy job. And once you've found one, there's no guarantee you can get to the nest site. Either the cliff will be huge, or it'll be crumbly rock, or the nest will be under a ledge, or the site will fail before the chicks are ready, or... you get the idea.

But we're going to give it a try and so here I am in Taos NM. It's a 4 hour drive from us to here and instead of getting back home at 8-9 pm, we decided to spend the night here. I got us a room at the El Pueblo and that was a good move. This is a old-fashioned motel with large rooms, real furniture, and- get this- a fireplace! The boys came along for the trip and they were fascinated by the fireplace. We had a lesson in fire building and maintaining and they stayed up until 10 pm watching the fire.

The plan today (it now being Saturday morning) is to head north to another place, then around to a different place and then home. Staying in Taos saved me a long drive out to these places and gives me a full day to look for nests. This part of the NM hasn't been surveyed as much as the parts closer to ABQ, so I'm pretty much exploring here. Looking for peregrines involves a lot of looking at cliffs, waiting for birds to do something. Right now the adults should be displaying and getting ready for nesting, making them fairly visible. Once the female sits on eggs, nothing much will happen in front of the cliff. When the chicks hatch there will be prey deliveries to the nest, but the female will still be sitting on the chicks much of the time. It's not until the chicks hit 20 days and older than they get vocal. However, you then have a very narrow window of time in which to take one, thus this pre-breeding groundwork is crucial to success.

Potential Peregrine Places

And, unfortunately, yesterday we came up blank. Our guide, a guy that's been surveying peregrines informally for 11 years or so said that he's never come up blank in this area before. Even so, I got to get a feel for New Mexico peregrine cliffs. Most of my peregrine work has been in Montana and Wyoming. Hopefully today we'll see something because after today, I need to get to work getting ready for incoming cattle. I'll need to finish cleaning stock tanks and make a run around the fence. I might be able to make trips but time is getting short as the birds will pretty much be nesting by mid-April.