Tuesday, September 25, 2007

killing pigeons for science (jt)

In my final 2 weeks in Portugal I have been able to fit in a few more adventures. I did my first cave dive in Sagres with Cristina and got to spend some time with her daughter Ines and lounge about on the very dramatic Sagres cliff-side beaches.

I witnessed JT's efforts to lure eagles to a certain location so he can tag them. The lure involves tying a pigeon down at the same spot every other day so they get used to feeding there and then after a few months they will spring a trap to catch them, tag them and let them go. First, assisted by Neiva, he braids a harness for the lucky bird:

Then, in what could have been straight out of some Conan movie, he tied the poor soul down amidst the carnage of past feeding events (note mess of feathers). Then we drove off, leaving the bird to face its fate. The next day JT will check the spot to see who ate who.

Afterwards we enjoyed the views from the countryside. This is a pile of cork just harvested from the local cork oaks dotting the landscape. The literally shave off the bark every 9 years to harvest. Cork is a very important export for Portugal and since these native trees are abundant and preserved for long term harvest, the landscape faces some risk given the growing popularity of synthetic corks. The oak hills will surely be replaced by housing developments if the cork market crashes. However, some Portuguese still hold hope that cork could survive once space shuttles become more popular to build....seems cork is used as a sort of insulation...or was in the 70s at least.

1 comment:

JT said...

Hey, I'm just doin' my thing so don't feel picked on, but you know.... I only feed the eagle like a month before the captures and not everyday. So in fact it has to keep hunting throughout the feeding period. THe difference is that it gets used to eat at a predetermined site regularly,and then... snatch! We put a net over it!
After that the bird is quieted down, by priving from its senses (we basiclly cover its eyes and make the least noise posible)and finally tagged.

PS: My first tagged eagle did die after all. I found the corpse last sunday and I will try to have a authopsy done to it next monday or so. It was posibly shot or maybe died from old age...