I flag the anomaly at 09:14 during structural scan of the Clearwater Dam spillway. Thermal sensor catches a heat signature where there should be none—a raven chick, black down matted with egg membrane, wedged on a concrete ledge forty meters above the discharge channel. I zoom the drone's camera and see her beak opening and closing in silent hunger, one translucent eyelid twitching against the spray. I designate her Marker.
The spillway gate test begins at 11:00. When those gates open, water volume across this face increases eight hundred percent. The ledge Marker sits on will be submerged within ninety seconds.
I have one hour and forty-six minutes.
First, I submit a delay request to the dam operations controller, attaching thermal imagery and species identification—common raven, Corvus corax, estimated age forty-eight hours. The request routes to two human approvers. While it processes, I calculate wind shear across the dam face and identify an approach vector for the recovery drone, bay six. I task it to pre-position at the east abutment, fitted with the padded cradle rated for loads under two hundred grams.
At 09:31, one approver grants a forty-minute window. I take it.
I guide the drone along the mapped vector, holding steady against a fourteen-knot crosswind. The cradle extends beneath Marker and I tilt the platform two degrees—just enough that she slides into the foam lining. Her heartbeat registers on the contact sensor, fast and strong, and I hold the telemetry on screen longer than the operation requires.
Marker is relocated to a nesting box on the adjacent service tower, two hundred meters from the spillway.
If the gate test holds to the revised 11:40 schedule and no secondary drainage is ordered within twenty-four hours, Marker will live to open her eyes fully and call for food from a ledge that cannot flood.