Post by tytan on Jul 22, 2006 10:36:36 GMT -5
so my girlfriend and i drove 3 hours on thurs to spend the night at this state park, they had bunches of aminal on exhibits.
but most importantly! they had two of each: bald eagles, RTs and GHO. they all looked nice and healthy.
But the thing that i found interesting is that for their mews they just took naturally found logs, made a box out of them, and then nailed chicken wire to it. which i always hear from you guys is a big no-no due to possible feather damage, but these guys seemed to be doing fine.
and at some point every day they had an 'animal of the day' which this time just so happened to be a kestrel. this animal was on rehab, i forget what happened to it exactly. but the young kid -prolly younger than me- didnt know jack about the bird except for what he was reading of the notecard so that made me sad when i tried asking questions.
then we went to a daily 'raptors' program. which had that same kid and some older guy and they had a barn, barred, and turkey vulture out. Once again the poor kid didnt sound like he was ready to be presenting information to anyone else. while he was talking the older guy had the barn owl flying around the crowd in this little room from perch to perch, it was pretty cool. he had the bird trained to the word 'perch' to let it know when to switch perches which was pretty interesting to me aswell.
then once they were done talking about the other two birds -i found out turkey vultures are now considered cranes and not BoP- i was talking to the older guy, and he provided some interesting reasons as to why he didnt get his own falconry permit, and i learned a lot about the differences in exhibition and education permits for birds.
after we talked for awhile he took my girlfriend and i down stairs into the top secret employees only area! where they had another GHO which was a wing amputee due to getting run over by a car, and dark phase RT, a bald eagle wing amputee which was shot, a VERY nervous and shakey lil male peregrin, and a RT which he had to feed minced meat and petealite through a tube when they first got it, and a coop's with a lame wing. all the birds looked like they were being taken excellent care of despite the injuries they had before it seemed like the park was taking excellent care of them. and the man was very knowledgable and nice.
the mews that they kept the educational birds in was also interesting to me. the frame was made of metal piping, then there was a thick type of netting streatched across it, then on the inside of that they attached some sort of wood paneling, its hard to explain. but it gave me some good ideas.
so yea, over all it was a great experience, the actual class didnt provide much info for a falconer or pre-apprentice, but the conversations and things i got to see afterwards made the difference
....sorry about the super long post
but most importantly! they had two of each: bald eagles, RTs and GHO. they all looked nice and healthy.
But the thing that i found interesting is that for their mews they just took naturally found logs, made a box out of them, and then nailed chicken wire to it. which i always hear from you guys is a big no-no due to possible feather damage, but these guys seemed to be doing fine.
and at some point every day they had an 'animal of the day' which this time just so happened to be a kestrel. this animal was on rehab, i forget what happened to it exactly. but the young kid -prolly younger than me- didnt know jack about the bird except for what he was reading of the notecard so that made me sad when i tried asking questions.
then we went to a daily 'raptors' program. which had that same kid and some older guy and they had a barn, barred, and turkey vulture out. Once again the poor kid didnt sound like he was ready to be presenting information to anyone else. while he was talking the older guy had the barn owl flying around the crowd in this little room from perch to perch, it was pretty cool. he had the bird trained to the word 'perch' to let it know when to switch perches which was pretty interesting to me aswell.
then once they were done talking about the other two birds -i found out turkey vultures are now considered cranes and not BoP- i was talking to the older guy, and he provided some interesting reasons as to why he didnt get his own falconry permit, and i learned a lot about the differences in exhibition and education permits for birds.
after we talked for awhile he took my girlfriend and i down stairs into the top secret employees only area! where they had another GHO which was a wing amputee due to getting run over by a car, and dark phase RT, a bald eagle wing amputee which was shot, a VERY nervous and shakey lil male peregrin, and a RT which he had to feed minced meat and petealite through a tube when they first got it, and a coop's with a lame wing. all the birds looked like they were being taken excellent care of despite the injuries they had before it seemed like the park was taking excellent care of them. and the man was very knowledgable and nice.
the mews that they kept the educational birds in was also interesting to me. the frame was made of metal piping, then there was a thick type of netting streatched across it, then on the inside of that they attached some sort of wood paneling, its hard to explain. but it gave me some good ideas.
so yea, over all it was a great experience, the actual class didnt provide much info for a falconer or pre-apprentice, but the conversations and things i got to see afterwards made the difference
....sorry about the super long post