jada-martinez's Favorites

There's a story about how a young caracara ended up in the back of my pickup. I was driving home on a county road and I saw up ahead, and at the top of a rise in the road, a cloud of vultures wheeling around above the road. So I slowed down, not wanting to hit any buzzards and curious to see what was going on. On the road was a DOR raccoon and laying next to it, flat on its back with wings outstretched was this caracara. I pieced together that the caracara had joined the vultures for a raccoon lunch and a vehicle came down the road, the experienced vultures flew up, but the young caracara stayed on the coon too long and probably got bounced off the windshield of the vehicle. The young raptor had some life in him, but I didn't think he was going to recover. I put him in the truck bed and headed home, intending to call the game warden. But when I got home, maybe 5 minutes later, the bird was standing up in the bed, and looking to be in fine feather. He flew over to the side of the driveway under control, and when I checked back on him a few minutes later, he was gone. A happy ending to the tale! And hopefully he learned to be a bit more wary around vehicles.