THE CRESTED CARACARA
by
Walter L. Meagher
Photos by Wayne Colony
Most days, when I am birding in the campo facing the Guanajuato Mountains, I see a pair - mates or siblings - far away and high in the sky, as one might see the perfect configuration of a city out of an open window in a Burgundian painting. But what holds my gaze, as a painting might not, is the match between body and aether: chest, belly and wings are fashioned to effortless flight.
The pulse and sweep of the Crested Caracara’s movements make visible the current of air holding the bird aloft and determining the direction of its expedition. On those days, the caracaras were too far away to see the crest on the male’s head and the shape of its beak: one day one of these birds might alight, perch, and let me see what makes it a raptor.
A raptor is a bird of prey. The meaning of these words is not as clear as it may seem. The Crested Caracara, also called the Mexican Eagle (a name of enhanced nobility), violates our presumption of how an eagle makes a living. More like a vulture, the caracara hunts carrion; like a roadrunner, it feeds stalking on the ground, snatching snakes and frogs. The point is that the caracara is not a raptor like the Peregrine Falcon, or any of the accipiters, nor is it like the kestrel. Possibly, and this is only speculation – it is a descendant of a velociraptor with an advanced skill in gliding.
One day, a week ago, I saw a sculpted figure, an ornament to the cornice of a house on Calle Tanque. I pass this way on the days I take a walk in the nearby field where on nearly every walk I see a Vermilion Flycatcher. The sculpture was a Crested Caracara: a bird one normally sees on a current of air in the empyrean had come to town. Untroubled by my passing by, he stood comfortably on one leg, as if his morning toilette could not be disturbed using the other leg to scratch the stationary one. The crest, which I had never seen before, was erect, as if the bird were readied for a public appearance. With some alarm, I saw for the first time the size and curvature of the blue-grey bill and its bright yellow-orange unfeathered face. But, without doubt, the most impressive parts were the talons – large enough to grasp a Jack Rabbit – and the bill – constructed to tear apart the swollen belly of a dead cow.
Once a material proves useful, in evolutionary history, its use – because Nature has a conservative disposition in regard to materials – is elaborated. How different in shape is the hummingbird bill from the Northern Shoveler, but both are fashioned of keratin, as are my fingernails; human hair and sheep’s wool; the down of the baby bird and the feathers of the adult; the porcupine quill and snakes’ and lizards’ scales; the horse’s hooves and the caracara’s beak and talons. Keratin is a material that does not bleed when cut, otherwise what a trouble it would be to have a manicure. Like it or not, I had a link to a Crested Caracara.
A week later, I learned that eight of these impressive birds had been released in El Charco del Ingenio. The federal government had seized them from the captivity of traders and had chosen El Charco as the site for their return to freedom.
My bird, I was now sure, was one of these. It had been in a cage on the edge of, or even in the market of, a metropolis, and had no mind of passersby; but in all the walks along Calle Tanque after that day, I have not seen him. Once again, he now belongs to the sky and the free flow of invisible currents of air.
February 2009