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Snatched back from the jaws of death, the tiniest wildfire evacuee will soon be making her way home.
With mended wings, an American kestrel singed in last year’s B.C. wildfires is just waiting on paperwork after a healing stay at the Alberta Institute of Wildlife Conservation (AIWC), about 239 km south of Edmonton.
Unable to fly with wing and tail feathers charred to the pins, the endangered bird of prey — the smallest of the fierce falcon species — was gingerly bundled up by a kindly Samaritan who was also fleeing wildfire in the Shuswap country.
The flames that singed her feathers charred the pins and made her own flight impossible, but miraculously stopped before searing her flesh, said Scottie Potter, communications coordinator for the AIWC.
“She was extraordinarily lucky,” Potter said.
“Those early images of her that we have, she almost looks, it looks a little weird. It’s almost like a skeletal look,” she said.
“Animals that sustain an injury to their skin or their flesh from a fire are not going to survive.”
The AIWC in the foothills community of Madden was on the kindly stranger’s evacuation route.
The bird’s weight dipped below the scant quarter-pound of a young F. sparverius in her prime.
“Immediately, we knew she was going to be in it for the long haul with us,” Potter said.
She needed to undergo a time-consuming full molt. She was grounded for almost a year, but when the feathers grew in, instinct took over.
“Now she’s flying around her enclosure, and we are seeing all the behaviors we need to see to have her confirmed for release,” Potter said.
“Transporting any wildlife across provincial boundaries is a big deal, especially because kestrels are considered a species at risk in British Columbia, and we want to make sure we’re just ticking off all the boxes and making sure that we’re doing everything, by the book, to make sure she can make it home in as safe a way as possible.”
Numbers in peril
American kestrels are stable in Alberta, but in other parts of Canada, their numbers are in peril.
Open country favoured by kestrels is fairly limited to B.C.’s Interior, and human development has been intensive there.
“That really impacts the amount of habitat for open country species like kestrels and badgers and rattlesnakes and all sorts of species we don’t usually think of when we think of B.C., we think of them more as a prairie species, but B.C. has that kind of habitat too, just in a more limited way,” Potter said.
The Rocky mountains provide a range barrier, with genetically distinct populations of animals that don’t scale the peaks.
“We want to make sure whenever we have an animal coming from a particular location, we want to release them back in the area in which they are from. That is because these animals are often from genetically distinct lineages, and we want to maintain that,” Potter said.
“She is an important part of that particular population, and we do not want to change that.”
Some rescued wildlife need to pass a live prey test to make sure they can hunt for themselves prior to release, but a bird of prey without known health problems is expected to have that instinct intact, and trying to replicate the conditions of wild prey in a rescue enclosure can be hard on them.
Compared to other falcon species, kestrels have quite a unique style of hunting, hovering, almost hummingbirdesque, then diving down to attack, but not from a height in the way a peregrine falcon might.
“They’re an open-country bird that needs lots and lots of space and quite a bit of height,” Potter said.
The avian evacuee’s dignified golden gaze pierces those who encroach in her enclosure as she bides her time.
Potter is optimistic that after her victory ride home and release into the wild, this littlest of falcons will once again soar to the heights — and catch her own mice, lizards, and grasshoppers, instead of the charcuterie board she’s been given for the year since her rescue.
“Based off of her physical health, we believe she’s in the prime of her life. Once she’s back out there, she will likely join other kestrels to migrate down south,” Potter said.
Then, home will be a crevice in a cliff or a tree trunk or an obliging building, and family will be a male to mate with and to share incubation of a clutch of three to seven eggs.
“The following spring of 2025 there is certainly the possibility she’ll be able to find a mate, build a nest and then reproduce,” she said.
