Lynn Eves went looking for a quiet spot Saturday afternoon at Alton Farms Estate Winery so Miller could get used to his surroundings.
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The eight-year-old peregrine falcon was only a few months old when he was hit by a car near Canatara Park in Sarnia after flying away from the nest on the Michigan side of the Blue Water Bridge where he was hatched.
Miller’s mother, Tonga began nesting at the bridge over the St. Clair River in 2005 but died about two years ago after also being hit by a car, Eves said.
“Miller is a beauty,” she said.
Eves, who founded the Bluewater Center for Raptor Rehabilitation Center in rural Plympton-Wyoming more than three decades ago, is busy these days rescuing and rehabilitating injured birds of prey.
“I can take up to 30 birds,” she said. “I’m almost at capacity right now.”
Eves had a display Saturday at Alton Farms during its annual Grape Stomp which typically raises about $1,400 for her center. It doesn’t receive government support and relies on donations.
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“It’s hard to keep up with the injuries that come in, anymore,” Eves said. “Most of what we get are hit by cars.”
Falcons at the Blue Water Bridge are watched over by state officials in Michigan and Miller was named after being bandaged in the nest as a chick, Eves said.
He wasn’t in good shape after his injury and the young falcon’s broken wing couldn’t be repaired. That meant he couldn’t be released into the wild and has lived at the center since then.
Grape stomping Saturday began at 1 pm, with stompers competing six at a time in 60-second heats to see who could produce the most juice from a plastic bin of newly picked Vidal grapes.
It has been a good year for the grape and the harvest began two to three weeks early, said Marc Alton who founded winery with his wife, Anne Kurtz-Alton in 2005.
Alton Farms, the pioneer winery in what has since become the Huron Shores emerging wine region along Lake Huron, has held the stomp for nine years.
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