Clever Girl

My favorite juvenile hawk this season is a hawk I dubbed Ninja Bird. Ferruginous hawks are on average more ninja than other buteos (if you ignore their previously noted proclivity towards drooling.) They have a fearsome sidekick-talon combo that they can back up with some pretty intense face-biting.

Ninja Bird was the greatest of the bad-ass baby ferruginous hawks. Ninja bird attacked us before we even tried to pick her up, footing both of us in the legs. (The Destoryer has eight puncture wounds to prove this.) Ninja bird fought back through the whole transmitter attachment, and upon release, she chased after us with extreme ferocity.

Ninja Bird was not just fearsome, she was also as clever as a Jurassic Park velociraptor. On our day-after check, we heard Ninja Bird’s radio signal coming from near a large mound of dirt at the dugout not far from the nest. It was a hot day, but through the haze we spotted a young female hawk perched on the mound. The Destoryer ran to catch her, and he kept running. The bird flew away far better than Ninja should have been able to– and the signal didn’t move. That wasn’t our bird. It was a decoy.

As we get up to the dugout, the signal started making less and less sense. It would be nearly silent but for brief moments it would suddenly become super strong. I walked back and forth for over half an hour somehow going PAST the signal over and over without seeing a bird or a fallen transmitter.

It finally dawned on me. The bird was IN the drain culvert to the dugout. To quote Aliens “They're coming outta the walls. They're coming outta the goddamn walls.” She was hiding her signal, she was creating distractions, and she almost out smarted us.

Needless to say, getting Ninja out of the drain culvert was difficult.