Crested Caracara — Seeing Double

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I’ve posted on three previous occasions about my encounters with a juvenile Crested Caracara that had been fitted with leg bands and a “backpack” radio transmitter in order to track its movements as part of a study of these birds in southern Arizona. Each of those encounters had been at the same location, a stretch of dirt road in the farmlands of southern Arizona. Today, I’m posting about a fourth encounter — and a big surprise.

A couple of weekends ago I was driving down that stretch of road stretch of road, accompanied by my friend Ned Harris, when we saw what we immediately assumed was an old friend, “our” banded Caracara. The bird was perched on the branches of a dead mesquite, a perch that we’d identified as being one of its favorites.

The leg bands, and the backpack transmitter that is plainly visible in the next image, seemed to positively identify this as the same bird that we’d seen on three previous occasions.

However, a few days later, Ned remarked to me that there was something a bit different about this bird. Its two leg bands were silver. Didn’t the Caracara that we’d photographed previously have a blue leg band along with a silver band on its other leg?

I reviewed my earlier photos and here’s what I found. In two of the four encounters with Caracaras, “our” bird displayed silver leg bands, one on each leg.. In the other two encounters, “our” bird was wearing one silver and one blue leg band. Ned and I had observed different birds.

I recalled that the individuals conducting the Caracara study had advised me that they’d put leg bands on four young Caracaras. Seeing two of these birds means that more than one of them favors the particular location alongside the rural dirt road. It means also that as nomadic as these birds are — and, in fact, they cover vast amounts of territory in their wanderings — they also return again and again to the same site. And, finally, it means the these birds often wander independently, inasmuch as we’ve not seen two banded Caracaras in one encounter.

I’m just a casual observer of these birds and not involved in the study of them. But I’ve learned a lot about them just from my encounters. I find it fascinating that these young nomads can range independently over such vast territory and yet return again and again to the same location.

Images made with a Canon R5, Canon EF 400 mm f4 DO II lens+Canon EF 1.4x telextender, M setting (auto ISO), ISO 1250, f5.6 @ 1/4000, +1 1/3 stops exposure compensation.