That's My World Tuesday

Welcome to my submission to the inaugural edition of the new meme that's My World Tuesday. The purpose behind My World Tuesday is to become a virtual tourist guide sharing your world and what you love about it with others on the web. So of all of the really cool places that I spend my free time I decided to begin with a place where I volunteer my time every Wednesday afternoon.

Welcome to The Raptor Center. TRC was founded back in 1974 by Dr Gary Duke and Dr Patrick Redig, who was a veterinary student at the time, at the University of Minnesota, for a more detailed history check out this link. The mission of TRC is, "to ensure the health of raptors and the world that we share through teaching, research, and service." The teaching portion of the mission statement refers to the education and intern programs that TRC has through the University of Minnesota. As far as research TRC has pioneered many of the devices and procedures used around the world today for avian veterinary medicine. They have also worked on research into West Nile and other diseases that effect raptors, as well as authoring the Care and Management of Captive Raptors which has been adopted by the US fish and Wildlife Service as the authority on the care and management of captive raptors.
The part of TRC that I am involved primarily with is the service portion. As a member of the education crew I assist in the care of our education birds as well as help to educate the public about raptors through tours, programs and public events.
All of these first several pictures are public areas at TRC. They are designed to help us to educate and inspire people when they visit TRC for a program or just a visit.

We have around 30 educational birds that help us with our mission, they are the true ambassadors to The Raptor Center. These birds do programs on and off site. When they are at TRC they live in mews behind the building. During a tours we bring people back into this area to show them the birds and tell them a little bit about them. When I am not giving tours I am feeding the birds, cleaning their mews or portable cages, or helping out with what ever is needed.
Public programs are held on Saturday's and Sunday's and private programs can be arranged on site or off site at most other times. In the photo above Lois, one of our great horned owls, demonstrates how silently she can fly during a program.
We also have 4 public events during the year, a public release event in spring and fall, an open house in the spring, and a fund raising event in the summer. All of the bird pictures in the post, with the exception of Lois were taken at one of the public releases. Maxime is the largest of our bald eagles at around 10 pounds.
Whisper is a barn owl, something that we do not often see in the wild any more in Minnesota
This is the last picture I got of squeek. They decided to out him to sleep about a month back because he had severe arthritis and was in a lot of pain.

Boreus is a boreal owl which are more common in Canada, although we do get a small migration in Northern Minnesota during the winter.
Samantha is the largest of our great horned owls. She is great at using her size to intimidate new volunteers. Fortunately I have gotten past that state.
Cinnamon is a female American kestrel and one of my favorites. She is very well behaved and usually sits close in her mew so that people can really get a good look at her.
The boys on the other hand are often very hyper. We have 2 male kestrels, Barron above and his brother Jack, who are imprints. This means that there is nothing physically wrong with them but unfortunately they spent too much time with people when they were young and did not really learn how to be a kestrel.

Taiga is another of my favorites. She is a merlin falcon. Because of some trauma she can not grasp hard enough with her talons so we can not release her back into the wild. She is usually pretty calm except when you first give her food she sometimes lets out a cry. It is a good thing that she does not do this the entire time that she eats because she is an extremely slow eater.
Juneau is one of four peregrine falcons that we have as an education bird. The others are Artemis, Annie and Chup who is the only male. Juneau was the bird that I adopted in 2007.
Kettle is our newest edition, he is a broadwing hawk. I have been told that broadwing hawks do not always do well in captivity because they are kind of high strung but poor kettle was shot with a bee bee gun while he was still in the nest and he has a bee bee lodged in his brain. We can not remove the bee bee for fear of killing him but because of it he is mostly blind and probably has some brain damage.
Alley is one of our red-tail hawks. She is the coloration that we typically see here in pretty good numbers in Minnesota.
Casper is also a red-tail hawk but he is light phase Krider's hawk which is a subspecies of red-tail.

TRC is a great place to volunteer or visit. They are also a good charity to donate to if you have a little extra money sitting around. If you happen to be in the Twin Cities on a Wednesday afternoon with a little time on your hand please stop over, I will be happy to show you around. Since today is Monday though, TRC is closed Monday, please take some time and visit some of the other great sites featured in this inaugural edition of that's My World Tuesday.