It seems not long ago all I was doing was driving to or through Thermopolis for birds. This year it's Powell. And the worst part is having to drive over four miles of road under construction. They seem to feel the roadbed must be at least four feet higher and then the left over dirt in piles on the side of the road has to be trucked along the road behind my place so they can dump it over the hill. Of course then they have to have a front loader spent every day smoothing out the dumped dirt. Must be costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Too bad someone didn't think of selling the dirt, would have made some money to help cover the $4 million per mile they're now spending. But I digress.....
So far in the past couple weeks I've driven 12 times to Powell to pick up eight baby great horned owls and four kestrels. I still have five of the GHOs and three kestrels. The owls are just waiting until they're ready for release.
The same for the kestrels but in the case of two of them it's because their dad was hit by a car a couple weeks ago and had to be euthanized. Because kestrel litters can be up to six babies, it's very hard for the one remaining parent to keep them in food. I have no idea how many were in this clutch but I believe that all but these two have probably died. These little girls are quite thin but are scarfing down their mice so that will soon correct itself.
This single little female also came from Powell but when she came out of the nest she apparently went right into the ditch. She got herself out but was caked with dirt. That's why she's all wet, had to give her a bath to remove it. Talk about an attitude, she's quite feisty so should do well when ready to fledge.
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