Last weekend, I had an excuse to go visit the raptor center once more. I somehow won a couple of raffle prizes and had to pick them up. But I procrastinated since the center was a few miles up the wooded hills, way southeast of the city. I was told that the prizes were to be given away to someone else if they were not picked up soon enough. That compelled me to visit.
So, here are what I won! Yipeeee!
Neat, huh?
Going up to the raptor center was worth it. Made sure I brought my camera along. It was awesome looking at and taking pictures of the birds. Prepare to read a long blog entry.
Okay, at my previous blog, I promised to show pictures of Lethe, the turkey vulture.
This is Lethe. Lethe had human imprint. That means, he’s not afraid of humans. Same thing with Kali, his female companion. When I was a volunteer at the center, a few of the tasks I had to do were clean the cages; feed the birds; count mice and chicks (they are food to these birds) and feed them as well; help with meds.
So back to Lethe. Every time I went in his cage to feed or clean, he would run towards me to check out my shoes/shoelaces. I had to shield myself and had my son (or vice versa) distract him. And here’s the reason why?
Both Lethe and Kali can fly; however, when you go in their cages, they run to check out your shoes.
And speaking of shoes, I made a mistake on my first day as a volunteer. It was orientation day, which meant being introduced to the birds by going in their cages and know the do’s and dont’s of taking care of them. A couple of the dont’s I could remember were to: 1) NOT SHOW YOU ARE SCARED when you are in their cage; 2) NOT WEAR SANDALS. I wore sandals that day.
The first cage we went into was the crow’s.
This guy (after it was given a name, they discovered it was a female) has human imprint as well. Someone captured it and made it a pet. However, Edgar was not properly fed and thus, got a deformed beak (in photo, top beak curls upward). Deformed beak or not, it hurts when she pecks. She was the one that pecked on my toes that orientation day. I will never forget it.
Another time, she preened my hair; or rather my head. I have dark hair and she thought I had to have my head feathers preened. That hurt even more. There’s one thing about Edgar: when a whole bunch of visitors come, especially children, she gets all excited and would say ‘hello’. First, you do not hear it that way. But a few of those ‘hellos’ do come out distinctively as the human sound of ‘hello’. It’s weird! And children loved it and would rush to her cage, while she’d get to twirl her toys for show.
Next cage to Edgar’s is this guy.
Zachariah, or Zac, is actually female. She does not like women. Somehow she can determine the difference between a male or female human. I never ventured into her cage. I didn’t want to know what she’d do if I got in there. She’s way bigger than Edgar, mind you.
My son loved her. Zac would eat her favorite foods (grapes and nuts) from my son’s hands. To this day, Zac remains his favorite. Oh, Zac can say ‘whatchadoing’.
Exciting note about the corvids (corvus): they are definitely NOT RAPTORS. Why are they in the raptor center? The director, prior to establishing the raptor center, had these two birds as her first rehab birds. They are her favorite birds. She also has a few dozen (indoor) cats, and a parrot that thinks she’s the queen of the house and makes sure the cats behave when she’s around.
Zac and Edgar are the two fellas I also mentioned in my past blog.
What a beauty, huh?
What do you think this is?
I really had fun at the raptor center. One area I couldn’t get to when I visited on Earth Day Celebration was this structure that shows the comparison between the length of a human’s stretched hand to stretched hand with that of a raptor’s wingspan and which bird would match you closely. It was so popular, there was a long winding line to try it out.
Last weekend, there was no one there but me. I waited quite a long time for someone to come up so my picture could be taken. And here’s how I measured up.
58 inches!
I am a couple of inches longer than the wingspan of a ferruginous hawk.
This is a ferruginous hawk.
Well folks, cheer up. We are almost close to the end of this blog entry.
This precious looking bird is a juvenile barn owl. It was found recently alone among some haystack in a barn (but of course!). They couldn’t find the rest of its family.
One can tell a juvenile from an adult, as this barn owl shows, by the downy feathers covering the bird. This little one isn’t named yet. But doesn’t he look cute? When the education rep came out of the med house while I was waiting to pick up my prize winnings, I had the honor to meet the owl up close.
The owl was curious as to what I was holding. It was silver and looked attractive to the bird. The silver object was my camera. As the ed rep passed me by, the bird couldn’t take his eyes off the camera.
That’s it folks! I hope you enjoyed this entry. I apologize that it’s quite a long one.
