May 23rd, 2009

I volunteered today! It was a very different experience being inside of the birds enclosures rather than looking in from the outside. Lacie our centers handler introduced me to the individual birds diets and cleaning materials. I started out working in Main Flight with the wild bald eagles. How cool is that right! I was told not to make eye contact with them because that is the sign of a predator. We want these eagles to be as relaxed as possible and not add to their stress. All the eagles in the Main Flight (Flight Training Center) are recovering from a traumatic incident. Some will be released back into the wild if their injuries heal well enough. Others will be placed in a zoo or other educational facility because their individual damage is to severe for them to rejoin the wild population.

After finishing cleaning M.F. and placing the eagles food, I moved onto our corvidae mews. Martin and Atra are the two ravens located in this facility. These birds haven’t been successfully introduced to people yet and working in there space made them very uncomfortable. I finished cleaning and placed there meal consisting of quail, rat, bear, jelly on bread and left over chinese food in the enclosure. Raven eat just about anything so some of our left over lunches tend to go to them.

I also had the privilege assisting taking Sitka to the river. Sitka can be a handful so its always good to have a bunch of people on hand if she would undo her jesses and run/fly off. Before we left I was shown the fine art of how to capture a fleeing bald eagle with a blanket. Thank goodness I didn’t have to use my new knowledge. Sitka day out was fairly uneventful. She didn’t move around a whole lot unlike Volta who swims around and baths constantly. I really enjoyed watching this magnificent bird and took a few photos.


-Sitka's handler Lacie admiring her favorite pupil.