ExplosionRelease2008

Explosion the Peregrine Falcon

Sometimes it takes a village to save one animal, and this was one of those times.

Explosion was found in December of 2007 near the parking lot of the Grays Harbor Audubon Society’s wildlife refuge by Don Harter. He took her to Ed and Sheila Mitchell of Beacon Pest Control, who also do some wildlife rescue work.

Sheila and Ed drove her to us, where our wonderful vet Dr. Gregg Bennett diagnosed and set her dislocated elbow. Once it became clear she would recover, we contacted Ross Matteson, a longtime friend of Dr. Bennett’s and a very experienced Falconer, to care for her and get her back into shape for release.

After a few months of working with her, Ross realized she was an unusually wild bird. Because of the injury to her shoulder she needed physical therapy to regain use of her wing, and lots of exercise to rebuild muscle. But due to her personality, it wasn’t practical to train her to fly outside to a glove to get the exercise she needed to be able to hunt for herself.

Fortunately, Ross had a solution, and contacted world famous falconer Steve Layman, who pioneered the use of operant conditioning (the same training techniques used to train dolphins), in falconry. Steve came on board and finished Explosion’s rehabilitation, using training and exercise techniques such as Jump Ups, where the bird jumps from a low perch to a high perch over and over, and Restrained Pursuits where the bird flies against tension on a leash, both built chest and wing muscles without the risk of the bird escaping before she was fully recovered. The Modern Apprentice falconry site has video of a red tailed hawk performing some of these exercises.

On Saturday July 12, 2008 she officially became part of the Washington Coastal Raptors Monitoring Program when Dan Varland gave her band A6 and she was released by Don, her original rescuer, back at the same parking lot where she was found.

We Are One Would like to thank the many wonderful people who donated their time, expertise and financial support to saving Explosion:

Dr. Gregg Bennett,

Steve Layman

Ross Matteson

Beacon Pest Control

And the person who was compassionate enough and brave enough to approach and rescue Explosion in the first place:

Don Harter

You can see a slide show and video of Explosion’s release day, on our video page.