found last week on the side of the busy highway by Tekapo resident Emilie Marinissen<\/a>, 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":"The injured falcon picked up on the side of State Highway 8 near Lake Tekapo is recuperating in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":479260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":["post-479259","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\/479259","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=479259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}