Please take care of our fragile world

How soda caps are killing birds .I was sent this very sad article regarding trash and its impact on birds and I want to share it with everyone I can. Throwing away your trash is such an easy thing, yet so many people choose to throw it on the ground for convenience. Not only do animals, such as the birds in this story, eat the trash but they also take trash items such as fishing line back to the nest. This line can get woven into the nest and wind up strangling a baby chick as he moves around in the nest. Trash bags are another item that cause trouble for birds, many pictures of birds with trash bags over there bodies are easily found online.

please please please take care of your environment. We don't think a little item such as a soda cap is a big deal, but there are billions of people in the world and if more and more people keep discarding trash improperly it turns into a huge deal that will not only affect wildlife but also ourselves.

Releases

Over the summer I was also able to do a couple releases featuring kestrels and a great horned owl. April-september are some of our busiest months due the heavy increase of mating among the bird species. I am not sure of the stories of the birds I released by we were able to get them back up and running and back into the wild.

Some Fun Facts about these two birds:

The American Kestrel is the smallest falcon in North America, and the second smallest in the world. They can dive at up to 60 mph and can see Ultra Violet light.

The Great Horned Owl are called Tigers of the Sky because of their fierce hunting habits. They also love to eat skunk, they lack a sense of smell so they can't get bothered by skunk stink!

I am the worst, I know. So much has happened since I last updated. I have become and Sunday Daily Care Lead so I am in charge of the Sunday crew and I tell them what to do! Woo Hoo for them! Haha I have also joined the Liberty Education Department so I am training to take birds out to programs and educate people about conservations and Arizona Wildlife. I am very excited and I can't wait to start programs! We also have an
Aplomodo now in our education department and what a beautiful bird! I hope I can work with him soon. Here are some pics from over the summer.

Walking Snickers the Great Horned Owl back to his enclosure.
Tiny baby Gambels Quail
Frodo the Burrowing Owl giving the evil eye Aka an Angry bird
Me and Acoma the Red Tail Hawk doing a practice session

More Acoma! He is probably my favorite bird at Liberty.

California Condor

Here is the California Condor with lead poisoning that we are taking care of. He is slowly but surely feeling better! I also included a video of him with his wings out sunning, he is huge and he still isnt fully stretched out!

Dont call it a comeback

Call it laziness. After a month hiatus I am back with lots of good pictures and stories. since our last meeting i have been bullied by a turkey vulture, bit by a raven and done some successful bird grabs. One of the most exciting events since the last post is the California Condor we are taking care of due to his lead poisoning :(.

First lets focus on the Barn Owl. These owls are cute but they can be very mean! When feeling threatened they open their wings and bob their head from side to side, but when this doesn't work they emit this ear piercing screech. I got to experience this screech in ICU one day when I was assigned to grab a barn owl. I open the cage and immediately I get the spread wings and head bob, I strike fast for the grab and thats when the screaming begins. OH MY GOSH, it was so loud. Part of my head was in the enclosure because I had to lean in to grab and owl and the screech was just bouncing off the cage walls and it just amplified the volume. Even my gut instincts in me were telling me to " put the bird down and walk away!" but of course i had to persist and grab the owl so we could deliver the proper meds. The owl kept screeching and screeching! We quickly finished up the meds and put the owl back into its enclosure with some yummy mice to calm him back down. Below is the picture of me holding the owl and I also put a video of the barn owl screech so you can hear what it sounds like.



I will not have any more long gaps between posts I promise! Next post I will talk about the California Condor #22 we are saving.

new post coming soon

I will probably update tomorrow as it is friday and i wont have anything to worry about for saturday! haha

fun day in ICU this past sunday. I got to grab the meanest Barn owl ever ( pic will be included) and a cute little kestrel decided to take a ride on my arm when I was cleaning its cage. Also i want to post a link to a barn owl screech video. It is amazing how loud these birds can get!

stay tuned!

yahoo

I completed my 3 months of training! I have trained in ICU, Rehab and Education, so I can tutor any new people who come in to volunteer. Now that I had each section out of the way, I started again in ICU. I really like ICU because it is so hands on and in the summer its nice to be in air conditioning and in winter its good to be inside and warm. HAHA. Right now the intake of animals is low but at the same time that is good because that means animals aren't getting hurt! A lot of birds are migrating right now so their chances of getting injured increase. This is due to them possibly being hit by cars, powerlines, animals they might not be used to encountering etc. Not related to the season changes is the high mortality among raptors due to ingesting lead from hunted animals. When a carcass is left with lead this absorbs into the body of the dead animal, then when other animals such as eagles or turkey vultures feed on the carcass they ingest this lead. The lead then infects their own bloodstream making the birds very sick and many times leading to death. Recommendations to fix this problems are using as much of the carcass as possible and properly disposing the rest, copper bullets or removal of the bullet if at all possible. I will get off my soapbox now but to learn more about lead poisoning in birds you can click
here
.

Back to ICU. IT was an exciting day.I completed my first successful bird grab. I had done a bird grab before but that was on kestrels which are smaller and also a severely injured owl that wasn't really a training in grabbing. I had first tried to get a red tail hawk out of its cage for him to receive his medicine but he outwitted me. He was able to get my right hand in his steel grip talons and I had to have my friend mike bail me out. Again this is another situation where bird handling gloves come in handy. I still can't believe how strong raptor grasps are, even with the gloves I could feel the talons digging in and even with the glove I had minor scratches on my arm. ( VERY very minor, not even worth documenting really but i couldn't believe it broke skin through the glove, imagine what it could do on bare skin). Here is my buddy mike and the red tail hawk that won.

After that unsuccessful grab I tried again on a cooper's hawk. This time I just went for it fast to give the bird no chance to grab my glove and it worked! Even I was a little surprised at how efficient that fast process worked. Here is me holding the cooper's hawk, sorry for the horrible picture of myself, i am a wreck. haha. . I also grabbed a couple kestrel's later but they are so small you can just cup them with two hands and dont have to worry about one hand being tied up due to them grabbing you.

Later, my team lead was feeding a Harris Hawk while I was tending to some seed eaters and all of a sudden I hear " Bird out! Big Bird out!!" and I turn around to see the Harris Hawk loose in the ICU room! A very organized chaos followed, everyone quickly donned gloves but the big bird net was outside! It was now going to be a little harder to grab this Harris Hawk. Luckily my team lead grabbed a towel and was able to throw it over the hawk and grab him. He was an angry hawk he probably thought his freedom was so close!

That about wraps it up for ICU this week. Now I have to go back to studying for finals boo!