Week 7:
Passing Milestones

July 8, 2021

This week I passed a few milestones, and I feel great about everything I have learned so far.

My week started with being in charge of a program on-site with a small family. I gave the family a tour and presented a couple raptors. After the program, I trained a volunteer on tier 4 raptors. There are 5 tiers of raptors, each with a different difficulty level of handling. Tier 5 raptors are the easiest to handle, while tier 1 raptors are difficult to handle. Tier 4 raptors include Fennamare the Barn Owl, Wannago, one of the Great Horned Owls, and Killy the American Kestrel. Killy is in this tier because he has a lot of stress, and it is difficult to catch him. Training our volunteers was helpful for me because it allowed me to handle those three raptors more. I have not handled the Great Horned Owls too much since I was trained because I was afraid. Training our volunteer actually ended up training me as well. I successfully handled and showed the volunteer how to handle Wannago, which was a milestone for me. Now I feel more comfortable handling the owls.

We recently got a Golden Eagle from Bramble Zoo in South Dakota. The first thing we had to do with the eagle was brought it to the vet. This eagle got lead poisoning and ran into electrical lines, fracturing her elbow in two places. For the past four months, this eagle has been in rehab at the zoo. The zoo decided to give us the eagle for additional rehabilitation. We took it to the vet to see how the fracture was healing and learned that she is developing arthritis in her elbow, which will eventually cause it to lock in a certain position making the eagle unable to fly. Due to this tragic news, we will no longer be rehabilitating the eagle. Instead, we are going to train the eagle and use her for education. It will be many months before the eagle will be trained and placed in a mew for guests to see. She is currently in a flight cage where no guests can see her, so her stress levels stay low while her wing is healing. When she was brought to us, we were told she was male, but we have concluded she is female due to her weight. This will be a long process for the eagle, and I wish her all the best. I learned a lot from this interaction.

Another milestone I experienced was traveling across the state with my coworker to pick up chicks for our raptors. We get our chicks for free from Hoover’s Hatchery in Rudd, Iowa. The food we feed our raptors is dead. The process of getting the chicks was interesting, to say the least. We had to transfer all of the chicks from the crates to bags. I learned more about where our raptor food comes from during this process, and I got to see more of Iowa.

This week we had a few programs onsite, and I learned how to make a leash and a leash extender for the eagle. It is now my responsibility to make more leashes and leash extenders for our raptors. These allow us to take our raptors on programs, and we use these to attach our raptors to perches which give the raptor some space to bate but not enough to actually fly.

We ended the week with an event called Family Day. This event will occur on the first Saturday of every month now until it gets too cold. This is an opportunity for families to visit the Iowa Raptor Project and learn about the birds. We had snow cones, lemonade, and we brought out three of our raptors. Aura and Saguaro were attached to perches in the field while we held Tigerhawk. Aura is our Turkey Vulture who was found 30 years ago in a snowbank and rescued. She has been with us ever since. She is fully flighted and in great health. I had not gotten the opportunity to handle Aura until this event, which was another huge milestone for me. I learned more about Aura and her personality when I handled her before and after the event. A fun fact I learned about Turkey Vultures is they poop on their feet to cool themselves off during the summer months. Due to this adaptation, they are pretty stinky this time of year. Saguaro is our Harris’s Hawk who was used as a falconer’s bird. Falconry is when people use birds to hunt, similar to how dogs are used for hunting. To be a good falconer, the relationship with your bird is significant. Saguaro did not have a good relationship with her falconer, so she was given the Raptor Project. Saguaro is fully flighted and healthy. Both of these raptors are humanly imprinted, which means they rely on humans to survive, which is why they cannot be released. I fed Tigerhawk on the glove in the morning, which was another milestone of mine, and I presented him to all of our visitors throughout the day. This event could have been better if it was broadcasted to more people, but the people who did arrive enjoyed themselves.