Proof that Earl is out to get me, any way she can

I spent the morning at RAPTOR doing some Spring Cleaning...

In other words, scrubbing poop out of my carriers and weeding out the moldy pellets from my education box. I sat in the warm sunshine, up to my elbows in Simple Green with owl poop floating in it and I couldn't have been happier.

People who don't work with birds of prey get understandably a bit oogie when I talk about the large amounts of rat guts to be peeled off a perch, the headless mice tucked away in the corner of a cage that must be dug out (some birds like to stash), the glistening puddles of hawk poop that collect at the base of the walls that will only come free with wire brushes.
Oh, and the vulture puke. There's always that.


Long time readers of the blog know Earl, and they also know just what Earl thinks of me.
For the newbies:
Earl is an imprinted 26-year old female Turkey Vulture. Imprints can be either a blessing (they are more than happy to do whatever you want them to, because they are so into you) or they can be a nightmare for the poor dope who has to handle them. Depending on who you talk to, this is what is going on with Earl:
Earl hates blonds.
Earl hates red-heads.
Earl hates women of any hair color.
Earl loves all men.
Earl is incorrigible.
Earl is trainable.
(Any number of people at the center can refute or back up any of those sentiments)


I can only speak from my own experience. In the beginning, (four years now!) Earl and I were buddies. She came along nicely with no crankiness. A few nibbles on my fingers (love bites, if you will) but she behaved.
A little puke, maybe. But that is par for the course working with vultures.

Something happened, though. One day, I went in to get her, sweet-talking as I usually did and offered her my gloved hand. Something snapped in her little bird brain and she attacked me.
Things haven't gotten much better since then.

When Andi, a past volunteer and extremely cool young lady, asked if she could come around on a Saturday while she was in town, I was more than happy to hang with her.
She has done work with Peregrine and Aplomado Falcons, Common Black Hawks, and I forget what else.
Oh, yeah. California CONDORS.

So when it was time to put Earl back after a weathering period, she offered to grab a glove and do it.
Well, hell yeah. Keeps me from having to do it.
Other volunteers have been working with Earl doing some special positive reinforcement (Earl loves pinkie mice as a snack), but this was just insane to watch (and awesome, too).

Proof that this is all part of Earl's plan to psyche me out, shake my confidence and generally made me look like a boob:


1. Earl steps gently up to Andi's hand, like a little lady:

And Andi said at one point, "Earl, you're so little!" Of course Earl looks little. This woman handles CONDORS. Who weigh in at about 19 pounds or so, compared to Earl's dinky 4 1/2.



2. As Andi tries to untie the falconer's knot on the perch, Earl keeps her serene composure and acts like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth:





3. Earl stands like the perfect little princess she is as Andi wraps the tether around her hand. And it would NEVER occur to Earl to actually BITE someone, for goodness sake:




4. Andi glides across the uneven driveway like a ballerina with precious Earl spreading her wings in a heraldic pose as her graceful, willing and peaceful partner:



I mean, come on.

The 7th annual Adams County Bird Symposium*

*I will never do it justice. It's just awesome.

This weekend brought the 7th annual Adams County Bird Symposium, which I have blogged about here. It's probably the most unusual symposium I've attended, smack dab in the middle of Amish country.

As usual, I picked up my birds the night before and stayed at a hotel near the event. I usually enjoy this time to myself, to hang with the birds, watch TV and listen to the woodcocks in the field behind the hotel. Now, I don't know if it was the change of seasons, the sodium levels in the McDonald's food, or the bleach odor coming from the pillow cases and sheets....but I got a migraine. A migraine that kept me awake all night long.
Six o'clock rolled into view and I was able to make it to an open gas station for ibuprofen. I'm not trying to whine about this but to set the stage. I performed my RAPTOR duties with NO SLEEP.
The closest Starbucks is an hour away from the event.
Thankfully, I had previously set up a coffee rendezvous, in the form of Les, my Yoda (this post and this post).

Les came blowing into town with his "winning" personality (first thing he said to me was "What's up, dork?") and a bucketful of Starbucks coffee for me. thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou

This revved my engine enough for the day to begin.


Vendors at the symposium range from Ann Geise, artist and field naturalist, to Ron Austing to the Ohio Ornithological Society to some Amish folks selling Leica optics.

I have to say that my little RAPTOR table was pretty popular. Every break brought huge crowds back to my corner to photograph the birds, ask questions and general oohing and ahhing.



Didn't realize that part of the Amish birdhouse/garden art table was in this shot.
I think the "Sweet Tweets" thing was a bench. Cute, huh?


This was Storm's second annual appearance at the symposium, since he's a local boy.
(He was found there in 2007,just a few miles from where the event is held)

He spent a good bit of time on the floor, instead of his perch (he hates perches)...



...and at one point, he fell asleep:

Go to this post to read about Storm's "Golden T".



He also spent a lot time on TOP of his carrier, which is unusual.
I don't usually let the birds sit there, but it made him happy and kept him from
a. Being underfoot and attacking my shins, and
b. Jumping around and irritating his legs by yanking on his jesses.


Thirteen the Screech Owl did his best Animatronic impression, to the delight of the crowd:

I am always careful to bring birds that will be a good fit for the venue where we will be presenting. A large, quiet room is a good place to bring our Red-tailed Hawks, our Barred Owl and Kestrels or Earl the Turkey Vulture, while a noisy, constantly moving crowd would suit Lucy and the rest of our owls.
Part of being an animal presenter is knowing the limits of your animal. This was a noisy crowd with an overnight stay involved.
I overnighted our Red-tails once.
That won't be happening again.



But I can't stand it anymore and have to tell you about the day's highlight.

I was holding Lucy the Peregrine Falcon and answering questions during a break. My energy was flagging and I wondered how I would be able to stay awake for the rest of the afternoon.
(I vaguely remember Les calling me "a Princess", but I didn't smack him because
a. I didn't have the energy, and
b. He brought me coffee so I owed him my soul.)

Out of the crowd a man appears and asks if I would bring Lucy up during his talk.
I looked up at him...and it was Thane Maynard.

Being from Cincinnati, I was born knowing who he was, but if you don't know, here's a quickie bio:
He is the director of the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
He does a daily show on NPR called "The Ninety-Second Naturalist".
He has appeared on Good Morning America, the Today Show, CBS This Morning, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
He has co-authored a book with Jane Goodall.

Okay? He's kind of a big deal.

I knew he was going to be a speaker, and I was in full-on Geek-Out mode, but when he just materialized, I felt my knees go a little weak.
He knew Lucy's name and how she came to be at RAPTOR. I don't know how he knew that.
So he wanted me to bring Lucy up during his talk about conservation success stories, etc.

I tried to be cool as I said, "Sure. I'd love to."


After he walked away, I looked around at some of my friends near the table and the squealing began.

I somehow got through those two minutes of standing up there with him. My face was on FIRE and my voice was shaky, but everyone said I did okay.

So, anyhoo: Here's a photo of me, Lucy and Thane Maynard!!

(Photo by my awesome sister-in-law Rachel, who was as geeked out as I was)

Running the gauntlet

The past few years, I have wised up and only asked for one or two things for Christmas. Sure I could tell people that I want socks, and clothes, a gadget that helps me find my keys, and an automatic bra warmer*. But I have learned that to make it easier for people who care about me, I just say I want ONE THING.
Last year, I wanted a Garmin. And Geoff delivered. Easy.

This year, it was simple. I wanted a triple-layer, 17-inch eagle glove from Mike's Falconry. A glove that has three layers of cowhide from the elbow all the way down to the tips of the fingers.
IMPENETRABLE.

If you are new to this blog, I handle some rather persnickety birds of prey and my arm resembles the arm of a person who indulges in heroin. I was tired of putting my limbs in mortal peril every time I took out one of our red-tailed hawks (big females with attitudes that defy any words to describe them).
So that's all I talked about....the glove. The eagle gauntlet. My arm and how much I like it to remain sealed in its protective covering.


My Mom delivered this year. It makes the decision easy for your mother when all you want is something that will protect the skin that she used to rub baby lotion into.

I lovingly rubbed melted Jess Grease into the new, beautiful masterpiece of leather-making.
The first bird I tried it on was my Lucy:

(Photo taken by balancing my camera on Lucy's rock perch, among the feathers, guts and feet of the previous day's meal of quail)
I tried it on Scarlet, one of our Red-tailed Hawks. She jumped around too much for a photo (I got lots of hawk-shaped blurs).

Priscilla the Barred Owl was next...


And let me just say that this glove, in all of its triple-layer glory, is overkill for our smaller birds.
A simple, single layer is all that is needed. Their feet, while armed with pointy ends, are not really strong enough to puncture more than one layer of leather.
But I will be using the new glove anyhoo.
:)


I couldn't even feel Storm's feet through all of that leather. For all of his bravado, his feet are small and dainty.


I enjoyed watching those dainty feet scrape and gouge the new leather:

The more I use the glove, the softer and more pliable it will become.

It was time to try it on Isis, our leucistic Red-tailed Hawk.
Isis is a very large RTHA. A rather strong RTHA. A rather jumpy RTHA. A RTHA who squeaks like a dog toy.
I went in to get her today, and after a minute of fake-out jumping and squeaking, I got hold of one of her jesses and lifted her. She was NOT coming quietly, and struck out with her free foot.
And she found the only vulnerable area on the entire glove...the tips of the fingers. All of that leather needs to be sewn together somewhere, and just one of her eight talons sliced through the seam on the end of my third finger.
I got her off my hand and went to the barn. I took off my glove and there was a nice ribbon of blood unfurling from the end of my finger.
Deep and messy. Not serious, but..... I got to thinking that I hadn't had a tetanus booster in a while. Like 20 years or so.
When I first started at RAPTOR, someone suggested that I get a booster, because I WOULD get hurt at some point. That was nearly four years ago. Did I listen? Nooooooo.
So I spent the afternoon today waiting in an Urgent Care office to get a booster shot.


Sylvester:
"I disapprove of you bleeding."

* Come to think of it, that's not a bad gift idea.

Releases are the BEST!

I wasn't present for this one, but I know the feeling of letting a bird of prey free.
A true sense of accomplishment...our rehabbers work unbelievably hard to turn these battered birds back into fierce angels of the sky.

This female peregrine was found in downtown Cincinnati in mid-July, with a wing injury. This was one of the PEFA hatched on the PNC Bank building this year.

After a few months of tender loving care, free meals and rest, she was released back to the wide open sky above Cincinnati.

Is it me, or does that toe crossed over the others make her look nervous?

Off she goes, back where she belongs...

A new blog and boobage

If you read my blog with any regularity, you know that I am passionate about a few things.
Something that I don't talk about much on the blog, but I use as a big sticking point in my education programs is the "outside/feral cat" problem. Recently on the BirdEd listserv, a dialogue was started after Alley Cat Allies' legal director authored an article in the American Bar Association Animal Law newsletter. I had reserved a blog name way back when the Cape May feral cat problem reared its ugly head, and this newest discussion lit a fire under me.
The plan is to get some heated and hopefully proactive dialogue going between the birders and the cat-lovers.
So when you get a chance, head over HERE. It's in the infant stage, but if you ever come across an interesting article regarding TNR programs or feral cat news, shoot me an email and maybe we can get the pot stirred a bit.



RAPTOR, Inc. has a very good friend in Peggy Flierl, owner of Wild About Birds in Milford, Ohio. She handles the injured bird dispatch during the week and is a generally great person.
She has a yearly Sidewalk Sale to benefit RAPTOR. Customers can bring in "gently used" bird feeders, Peggy cleans them up and sells them. She then matches what the feeders bring in and donates it to RAPTOR. That just totally rocks.
Today, Marc and Cindy took some of my (I mean our.....hee hee) education birds to the store for the customers to view and appreciate. These birds and others are what their money is going to.


Cindy (who is our Bird Care Director, and a damn fine person) with our red morph screech owl, Rufus.


Marc (another damn fine person) with our male American Kestrel, he-who-has-no-name.

Scarlet, the Brat Princess of the Mews.

While chatting with customers, I noticed a tiger swallowtail just sitting on the sidewalk. I went into Butterfly Whisperer mode and offered my hand. And up she went.


Very weak and quite tore up in the wing department.

She (I'm calling it a she, but I have no idea) then wanted to scale Mount Everest...er...my chest.
So she landed on the boobage:


God. Looks like a speck on the Hindenburg.

No-No the Barn Owl and Earl the Turkey Vulture

How do I trump that?

Julie chimed in on the Innard Spree from yesterday: cottontail killed by a canine. I concur.
Do I have a choice? I mean, it's Julie Freakin' Zickefoose. : )

After my walk through a CSI episode yesterday, I did the trail loop and ended up at the kiosk for the Clermont County Parks.
It's always interesting to come across a sign about me (well, a program I will be doing):


If you are in the area of Chilo Lock #34 on June 28th, stop by and meet me and our birds.
But I'm wondering how I will even stand a chance against the program coming up after mine that day:


Sam the Bald Eagle from the Cincinnati Zoo. If I am not mistaken, this is the bald eagle who does flight demonstrations at Reds baseball games.
What can I do with "my" birds that will be as memorable as a freakin' bald eagle?
I mean, seriously.

Happy RAPTORversary

It seems like it has been 100 years.
Two years ago, I started at RAPTOR, Inc.

It started out as just a thing to do on Saturdays. Wanting to do something real and tangible for birds, something other than just putting out seeds and suet.
When they asked if I was interested in doing education programs, my life took a turn for the better.
The first time I ever held a raptor...the red screech owl. Can you believe I was nervous?

We have a RAPTOR board meeting tomorrow night. I fully expect a card or something.

Come on down!

I just got off the phone with one of the coordinators of the first annual Queen City Bird Festival at the College of Mount St. Joe here in Cincinnati, on May 3rd. They asked if RAPTOR would like to be a part of it, and I responded with a resounding, "Heck Yeah!". It started out as a small event to sort of coincide with International Migratory Bird Day, but it has grown substantially. Some of the events are bird walks, a blessing of the Clifford Bird Observatory, bird banding demonstrations and of course me and the raptors.
There will also be food, music, vendors...a very fun time, if you ask me.

We talked a good long time, and it turns out that it is this guy:

David Russell, a professor of ornithology I saw at the Ohio Ornithological Society Owl Symposium last year. The bird he is holding is Larri. That's Larri with an I (a female)...a very old education great horned owl at Houston Woods.
The birding world in Ohio is very, very small. ( A story about just how small in a later post)
What a funny guy. His wife is an associate professor at Mt. St. Joe, and is also a bander. Now that's an interesting couple.
So if you are in the area, and want to come have a good time please come on by!
May 3rd, 2008
College of Mount St. Joe and the Motherhouse
5701 and 5900 Delhi Road
Cincinnati, OH

And if you haven't met any of RAPTOR's birds yet, I will have them perched out for the public. Come and learn some cool stuff, get some great pictures of live birds of prey.

(You can come by and meet me, too....)

: )

By the way, the Owl Prowl at the Spring Grove Cemetery will be that night. A full day of birds.

Keeping the birds' heads above water

I really want to post about my visit with Trixie before she left, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.
The big story around here is the water. What they are calling "moderate" flooding, has shut down roads and schools all over the area. For example, Isabelle's school was closed today due to a power outage from high water. We haven't seen this much water since the big Flood of 1997.

After a program last night (and being soaked to the skin getting birds and putting them back...can't use an umbrella) I was looking at the driveway at RAPTOR and thinking, "Well, Mill Creek won't get this far." There was a nice stream of water coursing down the driveway, but that happens frequently during heavy rain.

Today, the water got that far.



When I arrived for the board meeting, all of the education birds from the west side of the yard had been evacuated to the barn in carriers. The water is deep enough to drown all of our small birds and even our larger, non-flighted ones. Birds of prey can't swim much, by the way. And if they are permanently disabled, their chances are zero.


Mill Creek isn't even visible through these trees when it is in its banks. And here it was, in the yard. And yes, that is SNOW.

During the 2 hour meeting, the water had reached my car:


There was a small spit of dry land to the back door, but my feet got wet as I got in the front.


Isis: "I hate this carrier. But I would rather be here than in my mew, treading water."

The trick is to figure out how to house the birds until the cages are dried out. That might take 2 days. Perching them out in the yard won't work, even if someone babysits them. The yard is so saturated, the perches won't stay up.
The last part is what makes me really nervous: There is one way into the street that RAPTOR is on...over a bridge that crosses Mill Creek. If that closes, I guess we would have to swim across?

You can lead a raptor to food.....

Today, while putting some program birds back, Melinda was there doing something with some of the rehab kestrels. She called out, "Susan? Do you have your camera?"
Well, heck yeah. I always have my camera.
"Bring it in here."
I grabbed my camera and went into the mew she was in.
(Sorry for the poor quality...the lighting was tricky in there)
And here is what was going on:

This is what you could call "Raptor Fast Food." A live mouse in the mew with two kestrels.
Make that SEVEN live mice in the mew.
Melinda was doing some live prey training. These kestrels are young ones, and the urge to kill and eat a wiggly mouse is supposed to be instinctive.
This is how they did:

"You want me to EAT this???? It's still moving!"


"Help me, you laughing humans! This mouse is SMELLING ME!!!!!!"
To be fair to the kestrels, they may have tore into the mice after Melinda and I left.
But it was just too funny and cute to watch these happy little mice crawling all over these fierce predators!


This is a ringing endorsement for Zick Dough:
One of the presumably younger chickadees sampled the fresh suet tonight as Nellie and I sat about 10 feet away. The other chickadees are a little bit smarter than that.

Click on the photo to enlarge...you can see the little ball of suet going down!
I hope to have some really cool pictures for tomorrow's post.
Hint: It has to do with birds of prey. That's all I am gonna say.

An apology, and some angry birds

Word of the Day:
taciturn \TAS-uh-turn\, adjective:
Habitually silent; not inclined to talk.

As all of you know, I am not usually taciturn when it comes to posting.
But I got home last night after my program at about 10:15 pm, and after the week I have had, I didn't have any post within me. I apologize to all of you for making you go to bed without my many, many words of wisdom and pithy epigram-esque writings.

Tomorrow, some volunteers are going out to our new property to tear down old decks around the barn, and I think I will be taking the girls out and get some pictures of our sweaty, dedicated guys workin' the crow bars.
(And I want to grab some of the discarded wood, if there isn't any other purpose for it. It would make good border for our "prairie experiment".)
: )

I love to watch birds drinking water. Call me crazy, (everyone else does) but it's interesting to watch a bird do anything.

"Get. The. F***. Out. Of. My. Face."

This is Two Socks, our male program red-tailed hawk at RAPTOR.
He is bunking with Isis right now, for reasons I will reveal in a moment.
BTW: I am really bad at answering comments people leave on my blog...
Lynne asked if I ever stroke or pet the program birds. The quick answer is NO. But the real answer is that the gray screech owl will tolerate a small amount of touching (I am usually dusting her off after removing her from her nest box...it's lined with sawdust).
The GHO tolerates touching on two places on his/her body...the right foot and the left wing (his/her two injury sites). I don't touch Lucy unless she has pulled a jess out and I have to put it back in (and she bites like a mutha when I do that) And I barely can hold the red-taileds, so touching them in a gentle way is impossible, and unwanted, and unwise.

A study in light versus dark, good versus evil. No, I'm just kidding. They are both nuts.
(But Marc said, and I quote: "She's a bitch, but she's cool.")
Yep, that about sums her up. And me, too, for that matter.
Two Socks is much better away from his usual mew-mate, Scarlet. She is an aggressive bitch and I he imitates her bad attitude.
This photo cracks me up...it's like someone has eaten some bad rat or something and has some "wind" issues:

"It wasn't ME!!!"
"It wasn't me, either!"

This is why Two Socks has been moved:

Observe that Scarlet is sitting on the ground. And looked more pissed off than usual.
A little lesson in bird reproduction, kiddies...
When a girl bird and a boy bird start feeling the love in the early days of Spring, they do what they are meant to do: They get busy. They knock boots. They do the deed. They get it on.
And when all this hot and heavy action takes place, since birds don't have birth control readily available, eggs happen.
Scarlet is sitting on at least one egg (Someone removed the first one yesterday, but she was sitting there again when I peeked in today)
Note on eggs at RAPTOR:
Our permit states that we are a rehab facility. We cannot breed the birds. We don't have the equipment or manpower to do it, and it's beyond the scope of what we are trying to do.
So when an egg happens (and it's not very often) we have to ensure that it does not become a baby bird. The eggs are shaken (it's just like a chicken egg at first...a yolk and a white...we are NOT killing chicks because they aren't developed yet) I think that RAPTOR will place the eggs back after addling(shaking) to prevent the birds from constantly replacing the eggs with lost ones and eventually exhausting themselves.
Sooner or later (can't be soon enough for us), Scarlet will stop laying and eventually stop incubating and her hormone levels will decrease and she will go back to her normal, hate-filled self.
***
A very quick video of the voice of Satan.
(Just kidding...it's Scarlet telling me in no uncertain terms that she wants to kill me)

Click To Play

Word of the Day:

quotidian \kwoh-TID-ee-uhn\, adjective:
1. Occurring or returning daily; as, a quotidian fever.
2. Of an everyday character; ordinary; commonplace.


I wanted to start off with this:

Someone please put me out of my misery and tell me these are horned grebes.
Field marks that I could see:
Red eyes
A few of them had brownish-red washes on their chests


I love red-winged blackbirds. Their songs were one of many from my childhood soundtrack. My parents' property has a pond of questionable depth, due to muskrats digging through the retaining wall around it. Red-winged blackbirds were a quotidian sight.


Shila, one of the "Witches of Whipple", took these photos at the Owl Symposium a few weeks ago. And I must say that the pic she got of me is heaps better than the one Jim McCormac took last week. I only have one "good side" and Shila captured it for the most part.
Check out our glamorous owls!

Our gray-phase screech owl. She needs a name.
She is calm and sweet and touchable. I usually have to pull her from the nest box in the mew and she gets sawdust all over her, and she doesn't mind when I brush it off with my bare fingers. Let's think of a name!

Big Momma (or Sylvester...it's unclear as to his/her gender)
I call her "good girl" when I go in to get her, and she doesn't seem to mind, so to me, she's a she.

Our red-phase screech...I have finally found a cute name for him: Rufus.
He never smiles.

Thanks, Shila, for sending these. Our owls look like models!