Wednesday, August 12, 2009

My Birthday goes to the Birds

Well today marks the passing of another year of life. I am past the age where you get really excited about birthdays so I do not really do much to celebrate. A couple of years back, 2007, I had a great birthday, if you would like to read about it click here. Last year I spent most of my birthday working, Tuesdays I work two jobs. This year I decided to spend my time with some new friends.
So I headed over to The Raptor Center after work for my normal Wednesday volunteer shift. The afternoon was pretty busy. We started with a program for fifty pre-kindergartners. Since I have not done a program for this age group yet one of the other volunteers did the program while I did all of the handling. For the show we had 3 birds, Lois, a great horned owl, Alula, a red-tailed hawk, and Cinnamon, an American Kestrel. Cinnamon is the fifth bird that I started working with and she is one of my favorites. Kestrels have always been one of my favorite birds and having this little girl on my glove is a special thing for me.
After the program we had a lot of people who stopped in for tours. So I took out a couple of tours and then I went back to feed the three birds from the program and return them to their mews. By this time it was getting late so I did not get a chance to work with my sixth bird. Whisper is an American barn owl. The challenge with working with Whisper is that she frequently gets distracted because she has such exceptional hearing that she hears things that are happening in the other rooms of the building.
Finally things calmed down and I went to work helping to get the remaining education birds fed but since it was my birthday the staff had a couple of surprises for me. First I got to help feed some of the baby birds that they are working at rehabilitating. The second surprise of the afternoon was that I got to begin working with a new bird. This is Kettle he is a broad-winged hawk. Kettle came to us when he was an immature bird because he was shot with a bee bee gun while he was in the nest. Unfortunately one of the bee bees is lodged in his head and it is too risky to try and remove it. This has made Kettle some what difficult to handle because he does not follow the typical bird handling rules and is much more unpredictable then many of our other education birds. He will certainly be a challenge for me and one that I am looking forward to.

8 comments:

Maria said...

Happy Birthday!
All of us in blogland hope you know how much we enjoy your posts... I've learned so much about birds here (and other creatures) Whenever I see a new post in my sidebar, I always visit... and I am never disappointed.
Thank you for the gift you give to us by sharing here at EcoBirder!
All the best as you seek The Best ~ Maria

Lin said...

Happy Birthday! Looks like you spent the day doing what you enjoy, and to me, that's the best way to spend your special day!

Sarah Sullivan said...

Well Happy Birthday to you!! Looks like you had a great day!!
Blessings, Sarah

Ecobirder said...

Thank you all for the nice comments.

Arija said...

How time does fly, faster even than the birds you handle.
Many happy returns of your Birthday and may you rescue and handle many more of those wonderful birds.

Jane Hards Photography said...

Belated happy b'day. Needless to say I'm so envious of all the birding you do.

Christopher said...

Well, I'm a week late, but that's not too bad considering how far behind I am on my blog-reading, but

I hope you had a great birthday - it sure sounds like it!

Cheers!

Unknown said...

Hey sir..wishing u a belated happy birthday..People like you have done a lot to save the wildlife a nd natural habitat and are inspiration for the youngsters like me..
Wishing you a smiling life..and plz plz keep doing the great work

shobin
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