South America – Raptor Continent

For over twenty years I have studied birds of prey, or raptors, from many different approaches, and finally I get to study them from a veterinary point of view. I am on my final, clinical year of a degree in veterinary medicine and we get a lot of Roadside Hawks here at the veterinary hospital where I study.

When I was 17 I took my Muddy Fox mountain bicycle from its place in my father’s toolshed, a shed that was also home to my colony of pet mice and Border Collie, Jess. A few days previously I had seen a nest in a mature larch tree and wondered if it belonged to one of the many resident pairs of Common Buzzards that occupied the valley, as opposed to being a corvid nest. I rode five miles down the valley-side on to the Mold-to-Denbigh road and from the village of Afonwen up the other side of the same valley. 25 years later I can still remember how easy it was to climb that tree. I think I was probably dressed in camouflage gear and Brasher boots. It would have been a weekend or school holiday.  I am amazed that I did not get stopped on suspicion of being an oologist, an egg collector - illegal in my time, but not when my brother was a youth.  He had a moderate egg collection, the result of a brief fad that he soon forgot.  

It was late adolescence when my nature interests changed from spiders to birds in general and then quickly to birds of prey, or raptors. This is probably because they were so visible where I grew up.  Common Buzzards, Eurasian Kestrels, Peregrine Falcons and Little Owls I saw on a regular basis. Then I started to travel overseas and my raptor list grew to include such rarities as the Mauritius kestrel. At this time I was immersed in raptor study.  I knew where there were courses in Raptor Biology, I owned important books on raptors, I knew where the best courses were for falconry and went on to do a couple of courses.  I knew who the major raptor biologists were and followed their work keenly.

Then I settled in South America, a continent perhaps better known as the Raptor Continent. Roadside hawks are ubiquitous in South America. They are a wonderful little hawk. From an ecological point of view they are generalists in terms of dietary preference, not specialists. This means they will prey upon anything they can capture. Their diet therefore includes insects and small lizards. If you take them in hand, to use falconers’ vocabulary, you will see that they have small talons. Did you know that a raptor’s rear talon is called the hallux?

In Cuiaba in Brazil they are the commonest raptor brought into the veterinary hospital. The vast majority of patients are trauma victims, and most of them have broken wings. The surgeons here use external fibreglass wing fixators to treat such injuries. Ideally recovering birds should be put into large cages or aviaries. I always have a hankering to do high jumps using washed meat with these birds. In order to help them rebuild muscle mass prior to release. This is not always possible due to time constraints.