But if you visit them, they refuse to behave like a species on the verge of extinction. They’ll pluck the cap from your head, tug at the zippers of your backpack, and meet your eye with a forthright, impish gaze—and it’s this earnest, playful quality, not their rarity or remoteness, that caught and held me when I met them twenty-five years ago. Striated caracaras seem disarmingly conscious, and they prod at the turf with their bills and feet and crane their necks to peer at everything with keen but slightly dubious interest, as if they’ve just emerged from the ark and wonder what else the
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