![]() ![]() She’s looking for any sign of a Swallow-tailed Kite, a sleek, black-and-white raptor with a deeply forked tail known for both the effortless grace with which it soars and the precision with which it maneuvers when snatching prey or confronting threats on the fly. With that in mind, Kent takes her seat on a small camp stool and settles in the only way she seems to know how-back straight, ears alert, eyes constantly scanning through the sliver-thin window. Or all hell could break loose in an instant. Between the two of them, Meyer and Kent have been doing this kind of work for more than 50 years, so they know they might have a long wait ahead of them with little more to do than swat deer flies. Having situated Einstein on his perch at the base of the net, they return to the blind and join two other team members, volunteer Grace Campbell and Kent’s longtime mentor and boss, Ken Meyer. Walking back to the net with Einstein and his handler, Nan Soistman, Kent uses her body to shield the raptor from view she doesn’t want any onlookers to associate the owl with the team’s activities this morning. With the set-up nearly complete, Kent returns to the vehicles parked just out of sight to retrieve the lure: a rehabilitated but non-releasable Great Horned Owl nicknamed Einstein. They’re careful to whisper and avoid eye contact with the occupants of a nest near the top of a nearby slash pine. Kent and the others work quickly, assembling a camouflaged blind and aluminum poles, then stretching a billboard-size, gossamer net across a road overgrown with sawgrass. And with the sun now skimming the tops of the pines here in northern Florida’s Lower Suwannee National Wildlife Refuge, the team is burning daylight. It’s late May, and she knows there won’t be many more chances to catch and tag a bird this breeding season. Still, having been skunked four times in a row, her optimism is tempered with a bit more caution than usual. It’s a trap day, and biologist Gina Kent greets this one like she does any other, with an energy and brightness that’s hard to match at this early hour.
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