Day 2 Education

Second day in education now that i know how the birds react with people I feel a little more confident today. I start with the first pen where the evil Rupert the Raven lives. He was not in a happy mood. I emptied out his water and then he flew to his front perch right next to me and started pecking his perch. He was pecking it so hard it made such a loud thud noise. Point taken, you do not want me in there. I decided to fill up the water from the outside of the pen. Cheating I know.

I also got to clean Trick the harris hawk's pen. He had ever so kindly left some food bits around his cage. He is partly blind so he doesn't go to crazy when you enter his enclosure. I walked along the wall and he ever so kindly flew to the other part of his enclosure away from me.

The next enclosures contained some of my two favorite hawks, Honey and Cholla. They are a boy and girl pair that share an enclosure. They are very calm when you enter and sometimes you can catch them wagging their tails on their perches. This tail wag means they are content and happy. Probably because they know some delicious food is coming in just a few seconds.
This enclosure also has two of the mean birds Hedwig the Great Horned Owl and Henry the Barn owl and the mischievous Clarence the Raven. I got to take care of Clarence this week and made the mistake of leaving my scrub brush in the enclosure. I exit his pen and realize too late I forgot the scrub brush and turn around to Clarence stealing my brush away. I have been warned that he will steal anything you leave on the ground and they were right! After the help of another team member he dropped brush and we were able to take it back. Till next time Clarence!

The next pod we got lucky that someone had taken the cranky Turkey Vulture , Bailey, out to get some sun. The two other birds Snickers the GHO and Acoma the Red tailed Hawk were very polite.

The final enclosure has most of the education eagles and Beaker the Raven, and Coolidge a ferringous? hawk. I might be wrong on that. One of the handlers was in the enclosure sitting in the eagle chair with an eagle on his arm eating a rat. It was funny to see someone just sitting there with a giant eagle on their hand.

second day of education was good. Below are video and pictures of Sonora the Juvenile Bald Eagle.
She is working with her trainer in the pictures and movie below. Some fun tips joe told me about Bald Eagles, they wag their tail feather when they are happy, they drool like dogs and also stick their feathers up to make themselves appear bigger like dogs do when they are upset and they have a 300 lb pressure in their talons. , in comparison humans only have 80 lb of pressure.

i haven't forgotten about you

i know i have slacked in my posts, blame school midterms! i will hopefully put something up tomorrow. here is an osprey picture forgive me!

FINALLY

A new post. I am horrible and putting these up in a timely manner. Ok so I started my first day in Education this week. I was excited by after last week's encounter with the Great Horned Owl I was a little nervous about getting in the cages. Especially because while these birds are more used to humans they are also a little more braver and curious. These birds will peck at your legs just to say hi, or some might even land on you like Duncan one of the hawks.

We got the team together and started in the pens with Rupert and Clarence the Ravens and one other Raven whose name I can't remember, along with 3 other hawks, one of which is a harris hawk named Trick. Clarence is one hilarious raven. He is known for not only talking, saying ow or even hell, but also for stealing stuff. Rupert is a grumpy raven and has been deemed aggressive. he will come at you if you don't pay attention! The education birds daily care is exactly like the Rehab side. The pens are cleaned and water is changed. However, instead of feeding all the birds were only feed some designated birds. For example Rupert, Clarence and Trick are all fed by daily care ( the menu today was mice) but the other birds in their pod either have a special diet or are handled specifically by the education team. The education team are the people who work more one on one with the birds and take them out to events and shows. If you have ever been to the Renaissance Festival in Az some of the birds they use for their flight show come from Liberty Wildlife.

I start off my first run with the raven whose name I can't remember. He FREAKED out when I got in his pen, he kept flying back and forth, back and forth. I just tucked myself in a corner and did my work and just kept an eye on where he was landing. Can't the birds just sit back and watch or even better not even pay attention to me!

We move onto the next pod which has to particularly grumpy owls, Hedwig the Great Horned Owl and Henry a Barn Owl. Hedwig will just sit in the corner and hiss at you but Henry has been known to swoop at people's feet. With claws and sharp as an owls its a good thing sneakers are worn for daily care. My fellow team member who is also on his first week of Ed. toughs it out and goes into the owl pens. Luckily all went well!

Pod 3 contains Bailey a rather mean Turkey Vultures whose looks I'm sure matches its mentality, Acoma a Red Tailed Hawk and Snickers the Great Horned owl.
Bailey for some reason cares if one person is in her pen but doesn't really mind if two are there. Maybe she thinks that one she could take, but two is too much.

Pod 4 contains a Raven named Beaker who when she was younger got her bottom beak bitten off by another bird. He also contains a cooper's hawk and an Osprey. These birds are just the ones we take care of but in this enclosure are also some eagles! Apache two golden eagles reside along with the Bald eaglesLiberty and Sonora Again I can't believe how big these birds are and how BIG their talons are. My favorite in this enclosure though is Ivan are little Screech Owl. THat is so precious, it is like a little Tea Cup Owl, and if you can tell from the picture Ivan only has one eyes, hence the name Ivan . :)

Next post I will include a mini lectures I had by one of the Eagles trainer's. I got to watch him as he took Sonora out for her training and I learned some fun facts about Bald Eagles. For example did you know Eagles drool? I will get that post up faster then I did this one.

EDucation

Expect a new post by tonight or tomorrow. Until then here is a picture of Sonoran our juvenile bald eagle. She is about 4 1/2 years old and her feathers are starting to turn white! She should look like an adult bald eagle within a year.

Liberty

Liberty is our "mascot" at Liberty Wildlife. She is a bald eagle that due to a wing problem is unable to be released back in the wild. She has been trained as an education bird by our special eagle trainer. She loves him and whenever she sees him she gives out a call and she even gets jealous whenever he walks around with another bird!

Here she is calling out to her trainer while she is in her enclosure.

Runaways,grabs and attacks!

Last day of ICU training was a crazy one! It started out normal, no animals had died and we started cleaning cages. However when it was time to do the bins we had a bunch of fast little birds! We had doves ( morning and a cute little inca baby), woodpeckers, finches and pigeons. A lot of people ask why we even bother to take care of pigeons and doves but my answer is why not? It is not fair to treat one type of bird but not the other because it is ugly or we have a lot of them. Even though a dove might not seem exotic it still deserves a fighting chance! Moving on, I was working with another to get a pesky little woodpeckers out of its bin into a new clean one. Not only was he running around his bin like a mad bird but he was pecking at every chance he could get! Next thing we know he is flying out of his bin and to the other side of the ICU room. We run after him and he has disappeared! He could not be found anywhere, we saw where he went but it was like he had vanished into thin air! We searched for about 15 mins and we still couldn't find him but we had other animals to treat so we had to leave him to come out on his own from his hiding spot. At least we knew he was in that room and he couldn't have gone to far!

We move on to an injured owl in a brooder. This poor great horned owl came in with either a back problem or neurological problems. He has trouble moving but we are doing everything we can to take care of him. I was called to grab him out of the brooder and I was really excited for my first owl grab. It did kind of feel like cheating because he was very injured so it wasn't really any trouble getting him, but I will take any chance practicing my bird grabbing skills. I am holding the owl when all of a sudden the woodpecker appears and chaos ensues!Other volunteers start grabbing nets and trying to get the bird and here I am holding this owl while a woodpeckers is flying and running around. Even the owl seemed to be confused by what was going on! The woodpecker disappeared yet again behind the peregrine falcon and owl cages. Funny how the little woodpecker takes refuge behind two meat eating birds. Peregrin falcons especially will eat other birds!

The rest of the day goes without a hitch but still that little bird is hiding! All we can do is wait for him to come out. All the birds are wrapped up in ICU so I go out with the Medical Services to check up on the birds in rehab. Birds in rehab have already been into ICU and taken care of but sometimes they can fall sick again or they hurt themselves in their enclosures. We get to an owl pen with about 9 owls in it and we see an owl on the ground sitting funny. I get the gloves expecting that the medical services would go in and get the bird, but then she tells ME to get it out of the pen. I gave her a look like " are you crazy?" I am just learning how to take birds out of cages and now she wants me to jump in a enclosure of 9 angry great horned owls! When owls are angry they clack their beaks, then they will puff themselves up to make them appear bigger. When we got to the cage only one owl was clacking, not too bad. We step into the cage and every owl starts clacking, now that gets a little scary. These are all very mad owls and they all have very sharp talons and beaks. One owl flies at us and even with the gloves I am not feeling very confident. The medical services senses my nervousness and decides to grab the owl for herself. I step out of the enclosure to give her room and she swoops in for the owl. Owls start flying around then the next thing I hear is " Oh F**k! " and I see the medical services yelling out in pain and cringing! Not quite sure what to do I just yell What happened!!! When reaching for the owl she had been footed and pecked by an owl! Luckily there was not a lot of blood but I can only imagine how good that did NOT feel. Unfortunately in the battle the bird in question disappears with the rest of the owls. After the incident all I could think was holy cow! that was supposed to be me getting attacked! She knew what she was doing, I really didn't it could have been worse!

I head back in ICU getting ready to leave and then I see that darn woodpeckers on a light! I hurry up and grab a net along with the other girl in ICU and we get on either side of the bird. He starts to fly away and I snag him in my net! Success! Last Day In ICU was quite an adventure and next week its off to education !!!

Education post will come soon and will have lots of pictureS!

Apologies

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. I was sick and then I have been very busy with school work! I should have something up within a couple days. I have a really good week to recap! Bird escapes, owl grabs ( my first one yay) and owl attacks( boo!) Thanks for your patience!

and shout out to the person in canada who checked out my blog! even if it was an accident! haha :)