After a year and a half of transporting and rescuing birds, the Raptor Center offered me an opportunity to advance to the next level - the next chapter in this adventure. Flight Crew.
There are five flight crews that help with the physical conditioning of recovering raptors by exercising the birds and assessing their abilities as they regain their flight strength and skills. I was assigned to fill an opening on the Thursday crew, joining one of my mentors and favorite raptor experts, Terry. Terry was mentor to Jim Johnston, who brought me into the program and trained me with all that I know about rescuing birds (see http://waybackstories.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-first-bird.html). She has had years of experience and is usually assigned the toughest and most interesting rescues. She also handles many of the more public eagle releases. Her opinions on the potential and capabilities of volunteers is respected by the staff, and useful in her role as dispatcher, which she seems to perform any time the center is closed.
Along with more mundane chores involved in maintaining a healthy environment (read: cleaning the flight rooms and mews), flight crews exercise the birds. On this first day of training, I was joined with Ted, one of the team members. The crew of five or six splits into two teams, each with its own roster of birds assigned to fly that day. As with the rescue role, training is done by doing. The first doing was to clean one of the mews after a bird was removed by the other team. Then it was time for our first flight.
On this first training day for me, we were flying Red Tail hawks, who are not particularly tranquil, even in the best of times. Especially when just caught in and brought from the dark of their flight room. My first task was to place a towel over the hawks head while Ted held the bird. Doing that renders them motionless, allowing me to wrap and attach leather straps, called jesses, to their legs, and then attach a long line to the jesses for flying.
Then we walked the two blocks to an open field located right in the middle of campus. I was taught how to "cast" the line attached to the jesses and the birds legs through my hands as my partner tossed the bird into the sky and the hawk took off. I learned how to minimize the drag of the line on the bird by letting it slip through my leather gloves, but keeping enough of a grasp to be able to stop the bird when it reached a boundary - either the trees surrounding the courtyard or the road - or perhaps an unaware university student cutting across the courtyard. I also had to learn how to keep from stepping on the line, which was strategically splayed on the ground, or to keep the line from getting wrapped around my legs or around my coat buttons. On one of the eight exercise flights given to the bird, I did all three - stepped on the line, wrapped it around my leg, and caught it on a coat button. That made for a sudden stop for the hawk, bringing him to the ground with a thump. Needless to say, the bird - and my partner - were not impressed. I was taught how to follow the bird with my outstretched arms to avoid tangles, and vowed to always do a better job of preparing for the unexpected direction the bird might take at any time.
On one occasion, I got a first hand look at why safety glasses are so important in this line of work. As my partner picked up the bird at the end of the line following a flight, it resisted being recaptured and wrestled a leg free from his grasp, catching his cheek with the very tip of his talon, lightly breaking the skin just below his eye. His skewed glasses gave indication that they did their job of protection. I left that day with the understanding that you need to always be aware and anticipate the unexpected, just as in the rescue role.
The last activity for this first day was the assignment of removing articles from the bottom of the owl mews. In particular, the pellets were to be collected for use in education. Pellets are a wadded collection of bones and other indigestible matter that owls eject. I kept my head down as I searched for those pellets under the three Great Horned Owls that were disturbed by my presence. More than once I thought I felt them brush my hair during their confined flight overhead. It brought back the memory of a few weeks prior when on one of my rescue trips a Great Horned gave me my first minor injury in working with raptors by sinking one of his super sharp talons into the palm of my hand. Again, always expect the unexpected.
Can't wait for next week.
P.S.
For reference, here is a view of Terry capturing an injured eagle recently, giving a good idea how big these birds really are.
There are five flight crews that help with the physical conditioning of recovering raptors by exercising the birds and assessing their abilities as they regain their flight strength and skills. I was assigned to fill an opening on the Thursday crew, joining one of my mentors and favorite raptor experts, Terry. Terry was mentor to Jim Johnston, who brought me into the program and trained me with all that I know about rescuing birds (see http://waybackstories.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-first-bird.html). She has had years of experience and is usually assigned the toughest and most interesting rescues. She also handles many of the more public eagle releases. Her opinions on the potential and capabilities of volunteers is respected by the staff, and useful in her role as dispatcher, which she seems to perform any time the center is closed.
Along with more mundane chores involved in maintaining a healthy environment (read: cleaning the flight rooms and mews), flight crews exercise the birds. On this first day of training, I was joined with Ted, one of the team members. The crew of five or six splits into two teams, each with its own roster of birds assigned to fly that day. As with the rescue role, training is done by doing. The first doing was to clean one of the mews after a bird was removed by the other team. Then it was time for our first flight.
On this first training day for me, we were flying Red Tail hawks, who are not particularly tranquil, even in the best of times. Especially when just caught in and brought from the dark of their flight room. My first task was to place a towel over the hawks head while Ted held the bird. Doing that renders them motionless, allowing me to wrap and attach leather straps, called jesses, to their legs, and then attach a long line to the jesses for flying.
On one occasion, I got a first hand look at why safety glasses are so important in this line of work. As my partner picked up the bird at the end of the line following a flight, it resisted being recaptured and wrestled a leg free from his grasp, catching his cheek with the very tip of his talon, lightly breaking the skin just below his eye. His skewed glasses gave indication that they did their job of protection. I left that day with the understanding that you need to always be aware and anticipate the unexpected, just as in the rescue role.
The last activity for this first day was the assignment of removing articles from the bottom of the owl mews. In particular, the pellets were to be collected for use in education. Pellets are a wadded collection of bones and other indigestible matter that owls eject. I kept my head down as I searched for those pellets under the three Great Horned Owls that were disturbed by my presence. More than once I thought I felt them brush my hair during their confined flight overhead. It brought back the memory of a few weeks prior when on one of my rescue trips a Great Horned gave me my first minor injury in working with raptors by sinking one of his super sharp talons into the palm of my hand. Again, always expect the unexpected.
Can't wait for next week.
P.S.
For reference, here is a view of Terry capturing an injured eagle recently, giving a good idea how big these birds really are.
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