Holy guacamole! Have I ever fallen behind on this blog. I apologize to my two devoted readers :0)
Since the arrival of three of the birds in that whirlwind weekend, I find it harder and harder to make time to sit down and write. So today I will give a brief summary of what’s happened since the peregrine falcon and red-tailed hawk arrived home.
I decided that for the first few days after getting the birds here I would work with them by myself. Although I had several anxious volunteers chomping at the bit to jump in and help, I really needed to learn the birds’ personalities myself and allow them a little time to settle in to their new surroundings without being totally overwhelmed. This would allow me a little time to train the birds as well as to figure out how to best train the volunteers based on the birds needs and abilities.
Each bird was handled several times a day, gradually working into more areas and being exposed to more new things. Because the red-tail had already been in an education program, I assumed he’d be the first bird comfortable in public. The falcon, being a high-strung falcon, I thought would be the last, and the owl… well, owls are just owls. In general, great horned owls adjust to captivity and public activity pretty well, so I wasn’t too worried about him.
Once the birds were a little more comfortable, I started training the volunteers with the red-tail. Since he’s already manned, I knew he’d be the easiest for them to handle. As the volunteers learned how to hold jesses, tie falconers’ knots, and handle a bate (when the bird attempts to fly off the glove), I saw some great potential. More and more folks were contacting me about volunteering, and we went from four volunteers to twelve in a matter of a couple weeks. Needless to say, this has kept me busy.
Just as the volunteers and birds were getting a routine settled, I had to leave for ten days! A short trip home for some quilting classes with my mom in South Dakota, then straight down to Colorado for my best friends’ wedding. After the wedding came a very exciting trip…headed to Kansas to pick up the turkey vulture!!!
Fortunately, my wonderful friend in Colorado, Lynn, accompanied me to Kansas where we got our EXTREMELY shy vulture. Lynn and I had made this exact trip 51 weeks previously to get a vulture for the program I used to work with. What a fun trip. This vulture, however, was the polar opposite of the last one. Shy and nervous, we were careful not to upset her on the drive back to Denver. That same evening, I headed to Laramie to spend the night with a friend who also works with birds and had space for the vulture to get out and stretch her wings before heading out for another seven hours of driving back to Cody. We’ll leave out all the details of the trip, but after some vomiting, an herbal remedy for fear (which worked fabulously), and a stop in Casper for lunch, we (the vulture, my dog, and myself) made it safely to Cody where the vulture was put into her new home and left alone to acclimate.
