An injured falcon picked up on the side of State Highway 8 near Lake Tekapo is recuperating in his new long-term home hundreds of kilometres away thanks to a relay team of drivers.<\/p>\n
And the New Zealand falcon (k\u0101rearea) could still have a bright future ahead for him as part of a breeding programme, despite not being able to be released back into the wild due to his badly injured eye.<\/p>\n
The k\u0101rearea was described as being \u201clucky to be alive\u201d when found last week on the side of the busy highway by Tekapo resident Emilie Marinissen, who phoned the Department of Conservation (Doc) hotline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was worried about the k\u0101rearea as it was clearly not well, and his eye was badly damaged,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The concerned Tekapo local did the \u201cright thing\u201d and kept the battered bird calm in a dark box while she waited for Doc staff to come and collect it, Doc principal ranger Dean Nelson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
This is where the \u201cfalcon taxi\u201d started, Mr Nelson said.<\/p>\n
He said Doc staff rang two people they knew were driving down to Twizel from Christchurch for a meeting regarding black stilts (kak\u012b).<\/p>\n
Those two were able to pick the injured bird and bring it to Twizel.<\/p>\n
He then phoned the local vet.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018He\u2019s Australian and has had a lot of experience with raptors.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018He assessed its eye and wings and advised it needed specialist help at the wildlife hospital in Dunedin.\u201d<\/p>\n
Staff at Dunedin Wildlife Hospital discovered the bird had a minor dislocation in its shoulder, an integral part of the bird\u2019s anatomy, essential for supporting its wings.<\/p>\n
But the \u201cworst damage was to its left eye\u201d, Mr Nelson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe vet\u2019s advice was it would be risky for it to be released back into the wild as they only hunt with their eyes and it probably wouldn\u2019t survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
A home was found in Blenheim at the K\u0101rearea Falcon Trust, which had an opening in its breeding programme.<\/p>\n
Doc staff drove the falcon up to Timaru to pass on to the trust\u2019s manager Holly Turner.<\/p>\n
She said the k\u0101rearea had settled in well and would receive ongoing treatment for his damaged eye until a final vet assessment.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce we\u2019re confident his eye is stable, we hope to pair him up with one of our females,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Now this lucky bird hopefully has a bright future,\u201d Mr Nelson said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An injured falcon picked up on the side of State Highway 8 near Lake Tekapo is recuperating in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476582,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-476581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476581\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}