Passing the Torch
OK, in case you hadn’t noticed, I’ve been a bit busy lately. Since my last post we had our International Migratory Bird Day celebration (which went quite well, thank you weather for helping with that), travelled to Laramie & Cheyenne, Wyoming and Ft. Collins, Colorado for school programs, and began working with the new summer interns from the University of Wyoming. Whew!
While the birds are handling all the craziness like it’s nothing, I’ve been struggling to keep up. Fortunately, one of my new interns, Sarah, offered to take over our blog to help out. You’ll be shocked to know that I jumped at the chance! So, for the rest of the summer, Sarah is going to share her adventures with you all. I hope you enjoy the fresh take on our program from someone who’s brand new to the business of raptor education!
Sarah & Isham
Catching Up
I managed to squeeze in a quick vacation before we really get under way with the summer programs. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have time to take a vacation and now I’m trying to catch up.
No fear, however, I’m the Queen of Procrastination! I’m sure I can get a bazillion things done in the next 5 days. No problemo 
At least I am fortunate enough that I can say I truly love my job. When you love what you’re doing work is easy – even if you do totally overwhelm yourself by taking on too many things.
While I was on vacation (visiting my dad in Oklahoma) I honestly missed the birds and even the volunteers. I felt guilty for leaving for a week at such a critical time but I knew they were all in good hands. I knew everything would go well, and I was right.
Now that I’m back it’s time to finish up the preparations for our International Migratory Bird Day (IMBD) celebration and get ready for our first ever road trip with the birds. We’ll be heading to the southeastern corner of Wyoming to do a few programs and participate in Laramie Raptor Refuge’s IMBD event. The birds will be “on the road” for four days and it will be a true test of what they are willing to put up with. Hopefully they go easy on us!
I know it’s not a raptor, but here’s a picture of a Great Blue Heron in Oklahoma. Yep, I was birding while I was fishing
So much to do, so little time
That about sums it up.
Not only are we in the full swing of training for summer, but I decided that “the boys” could use some exercise too. Fortunately I was smart enough to ask a couple volunteers for help on the project and Rose and Anne have each agreed to take on a birds’ exercise routine for me. They are life savers!
Rose started first with Isham. With his eye problems I really didn’t expect much more than for him to hop a foot or so from the glove to the perch. He has blown me away, however! After a mere 12 days of work, he is flying about 9 feet! All we needed to do was figure out how to compensate for his vision. Didn’t take us long to realize that the perch just needs to be placed directly to his left instead of in front of him. I tell you what – this boy has potential!
Teasdale has been working hard with Anne on his exercise routine as well. Owls, in general, are much more difficult to get to fly, but it is possible. The first challenge for Anne was to teach Teasdale that he is supposed to get off the glove and step onto the perch. At first it didn’t seem like he’d ever get it but all of a sudden . . . he began flying! While every once in a while he has an “off day” (as all the birds do) Teasdale has made amazing strides and there’s a real possibility he just might be a flyer some day too!
I’m so proud of my volunteers & the birds! This is a brand new experience for all of them and they are doing better than I ever hoped.
On top of all the daily flying activity around here we’re gearing up for a very special event at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center – International Migratory Bird Day! The second Saturday in May is a day of celebration and awareness for bird enthusiasts everywhere and a chance for avian organizations, like ourselves, to bring to light the issues that birds face as they make the journey to their nesting grounds.
This year I jumped in with both feet. The Draper Museum of Natural History is hosting “Birtopia!” our very own IMBD celebration. We will have informational tables on recycling, backyard birding, avian rehabilitation, avoiding bird collisions, and much, MUCH more. There will be fun activities for kids (& adults too) including make your own bird feeder, a migration obstacle course, create a birding journal, and a biotoxin interactive game. And last but not least, the birds will there to share their stories and be admired by all. Who knows, maybe we’ll even do a short program for all our guests :0)
If you happen to be in Cody on Friday, May 11th stop in to check out the fun from 2pm to 6pm in our Braun Garden. The activites and goodies are free with regular admission and you’re sure to walk away with some shwag & a smile.
Flying for Real
Well, April 1st has come and gone and we are officially in the “training season” for our summer programs. That sounds pretty impressive, right? Maybe not so much. What it means is that we are flying Hayabusa daily for exercise and Suli is in training. With the training comes weight management and strategic planning on what we can honestly expect from her this summer.
Thus far she has been pretty shy flying outside (don’t worry, she’s on a really long leash) and with a few spectators. At the end of last week the wind drove us inside and I discovered quite a few interesting things: she prefers to fly inside (or seems to anyway), she does better with only one person flying her, and she prefers a platform perch rather than our regular a-frame perch.
With the new knowledge in hand, our training has gone great! She’s eagerly flying to both the perch and the glove and even managed 15 flights yesterday! Haya is doing well also, consistently flying about 3 feet in distance and we’re up to around 7 flights per session. Not too shabby for a bird with such bad wing damage.
Flying High!
It’s been a whirlwind of a week here. Just when it looks like I’ll have a nice relaxing day to spend on little projects or catching up on things in the office it all turns insane on me! In spite of all the craziness, however, there is always something wonderful and rewarding when you work with live animals.
This week we began exercising the birds. Hayabusa was the first to try out our brand new, super amazing, perch that our carpenter, Has, built for us. Haya has severe damage to her right wing and she is in our care because she will never be able to fly well enough to return to the wild. That doesn’t mean, however, that she can’t get a little exercise. On her first day she “flew” three times, about 3′ each flight. You could see that she thoroughly enjoyed it and she was rewarded with 1/3 of her dinner at each flight. It was a good opportunity to show the volunteers what we had in store for our “flying season.”
The next day I invited the volunteers who were still there in the afternoon to help out. They all did a fantastic job with something completely new to them and we managed to get 6 hops from Haya. You can see how out of shape she is by the third jump, but she gave it her all.
For the moment we are just working on getting the birds a little exercise. We hope that with increased muscle from the flights, both Hayabusa and Teasdale, the owl, will be able to hold their damaged wings in closer to their bodies in a more natural position. Suli, the vulture, will also begin flying soon and our goal is to fly her during our summer programs here at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. Who wouldn’t love to see a turkey vulture fly?!
Spring has Sprung!
Another gorgeous day in Cody, Wyoming. It’s always wonderful to be in such a friendly little town, but when every other day has gale force winds, it makes the calm days seem even better.
Today was a typical day with the birds making “appearances” both in the morning and afternoon. We were lucky enough to have enough volunteers come in that all four birds were out during both appearances. Our afternoon slot was truly lovely, though, because the sun had come out, the wind was gone, and we were able to share our birds with the public while in our beautiful Garden.
Of course, as the days get warmer this will happen more often, but for now we’ll just bask in our fortune and soak up the sun gratefully. Well, except for Teasdale – he hates being outside no matter what the weather is, he feels exposed and vulnerable. Poor guy is just going to have to accept it.
Sunshine & Scrub Brushes
For the first time in what seems like forever the wind wasn’tblowing yesterday! That’s often something special to celebrate in Wyoming. When you couple that with a relatively warm temperature you have a recipe for a lovely day for the birds. To their delight, I was able to perch them outside for a few hours while I cleaned the mews.
Suli helping Rose clean her "winter mew."
You might be wondering what cleaning the mews entails. Well, it’s a pretty simple process here as we only have 4 birds to clean up after. The main tasks are to hose and rake the gravel where the feces accumulates (they typically like to stand in the same places so the poop piles up underneath those spots), scrub any “messes” off the walls, clean their bath pans and refill them with fresh water, and, if it’s warm enough, hose off & scrub their perches where they eat.
It typically takes me about 30 minutes to do all 4 enclosures if I’m all by myself and this is usually a perfect time to perch the birds outside if the weather permits. It’s funny how something as simple as standing out in the sunshine can be such a treat to a wild animal, but it is.
Hayabusa enjoying the sunshine. Photo by Lisa Marks
Now, don’t go feeling bad for these birds . . . it’s not like they spend their days in a dark dungeon, desperately waiting for the chance to get a ray of sunshine. They’re actually quite spoiled. Each birds’ enclosure is at least 8′x8′x9′ and they all have windows to look out (which is usually where you’ll find them sitting). They never have to stand out in the snow or rain as their windows (which do not have glass but have PVC bars placed vertically for their safety) are covered with plexiglass in the cold months. Hayabusa even has her own personal heater to ensure that her mew stays a bit warmer since she would normally have migrated south for winter.
Suli is the truly spoiled bird. She has two mews – one like all the others described above and one inside the food prep area that is heated to 70 degrees. This inside enclosure is where she goes whenever the temperature drops below 35 degrees. With her bald head and migratory habits, she simply can’t handle the cold temperatures like the other birds.
Yep, it’s rough being a bird at the Greater Yellowstone Raptor Experience.
Vulture 101
There is always a challenge of some sort when working with animals. Whether you are trying to teach an old dog new tricks, get a tiger to volunteer it’s tail for a blood draw, or discover how a falcon keeps damaging her wrist, the only thing that is consistent is change.
Our turkey vulture, Suli, is a pretty typical imprinted vulture (at least, as fas as my experience goes having worked with 4 imprinted vultures). Imprinted vultures can be very difficult to work with. Vultures are social creatures and when imprinted on humans (meaning they were raised by people and identify with humans rather than other vultures) they try to determine where they lie in the heirarchy of their group – in our case, Suli wants to know if she is alpha compared to each person who works with her.
Typically when someone begins working with her I have them feed her daily for a week or so. This strengthens the bond (because she likes food and is rewarded with food when she “puts up with” a new person). She will test a new volunteer a few times (usually by biting their hands) and as long as they stand their ground and show that they are not afraid of her, she backs off and accepts the person, not only as part of the flock, but as one alpha to her. After that, the volunteer typically only has to endure the occasional meltdown bites (similar to a 4 year old child, I suppose).
This system has worked relatively well for us so far. I let one person at a time start working with her. Unfortunately, we’ve come to the point where the volunteers who want to work with her can’t come in to feed her on a daily basis. We have noticed that, while most of the people working with her are women, she has a definite preference for men – men with facial hair to be exact. Recently, I started having a volunteer couple start feeding her. Suli would fly to Lisa for food and when she realized who was holding the food she would panic and fly off Lisa’s glove. When Destin would call her, she would eat on the glove. This happened every time they fed her.
Knowing that we need more volunters who can work with her I decided to use Destin as a guinea pig. She had done OK with him “behind the scenes” but I wanted him to be able to hold her in public. On a day that we had some extra help, I had Rose suddenly hand Suli over to Destin in front of a crowd of people. Believing that she would be more scared that aggressive, I said, “as long as she’s not biting him, let’s make her stay with him.” Lucky Destin! Fortunately, I was right and Suli was more nervous about the “stranger” holding her than interested in testing him. She was visibly uncomfortable, but handled it well.
You should have seen her relief, though, when Destin handed her back to Rose!!! She instantly relaxed and started to preen her feathers. What a brat! To help her understand that we are in charge and she needs to accept new people I had Destin hold her again. She did MUCH better! She was still nervous, but not nearly as bas as the first time he held her.
We had made a big stride in her training. Yesterday, to continue with our lesson, I handed Suli over to Lisa (who she has never even sat with for feeding). They did great! Lisa surprised me with her strength (Suli is a full 1 & 1/4 pounds heavier than any of the other birds) and Suli was nervous, but tolerant.
Looks like Vulture 101 is going pretty well. Guess I better start drawing up a lesson plan for Vulture 102 :0)
Update time!
Well, as part of my resolution to be better about blogging, this is my second post in a week. Woohoo! Not a whole lot has happenend over the weekend so I thought I’d take a moment to update my devoted 7 followers on things I told you to “stay tuned” for.
First of all, Hayabusa. If you read my post a while back (OK, OK . . . in December) you know that we have trouble with her right “wrist.” Because of the injuries she sustained, that wing droops and she arrived at our facility with a little scab on the point of the wrist. This was most likely due to being placed in a kennel for the trip from Tucson to Cody – not something one would expect a peregrine falcon to find normal or pleasant. Unfortunately, we are still battling to get that area completely healed and protected with feathers.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to get that area protected but the fact is, until her feathers grow in, the area is exposed and vulnerable. At this point, the skin looks great, we just need those feathers to grow back over the wrist. Unfortunately, it might be scarred so badly that the feathers may never grow in and we may be forever fighting this problem.
While I hate that our gorgeous peregrine falcon often has a visible “injury” and I often tell my volunteers that she is going to give me an ulcer stressing about that wrist, I know that she has the best care I can give her and that I’ve done everything I can for that wing.
The second update is from our professional photo shoot. What a blast we had and I’m happy to report that some amazing photos were taken that we can now use on our website, facebook pages, and in promotional materials like brochures and bookmarks. Below are some of the best pictures from the shoot.
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Seriously? It’s been a month? Wait . . . almost two!
What can I say? Apparently I’m not very good at blogging. I thought it would be so easy to sit down at least once a week and type up a little update about what’s been going on with the birds. Obviously I was wrong. Well, let’s see if I can be a bit better. . . for a little while at least.
Since my last post (forever and a day ago) we have been pretty busy. The birds make two daily appearances in the Draper Museum of Natural History Thursday through Sunday (at the moment those are the only days we’re open). It’s a chance for guests of the Center to see them up close and learn about our birds – why we have them, what they would be doing in the wild, that sort of thing. It’s our slow season so most days we only interact with a dozen or so folks, but it’s the best part of my job – no, really! I love teaching people about the birds, that’s why I’m an educator instead of a rehabber or zoo keeper.
The program is getting more notice and we’ve now had several programs for local schools. Twice the Biology teachers from Cody High School have brought their students over for programs. We joined up with Dr. Preston, Founding Curator of the Draper, and did an entire program on raptors for the kids. Dr. Preston discussed his golden eagle research and then we brought out the birds to give the students a natural history lesson on the major raptors in our area. It was great fun!
We also took the birds on the road. They traveled ALL the way across town to an elementary school ;0) I love that I can say that all the kids in that school were able to see the birds. We broke the kids into three groups by their ages and did programs specifically geared toward their levels all about our amazing birds. It was a fantastic day for us and the teachers and students seemed to really appreciate that they saw something special.
Above are a few photos from our trip to Sunset Elementary School. I don’t know the name of the photographer, we’re still trying to find out who he is, but he took amazing shots!
Our upcoming events include a public FREE program at Powell Valley Community Education on March 5th and a presentation for our local Audubon group ono April 12th. Stay tuned for more! I promise to do better at blogging ;0)
