Fall Release

 

 This past Saturday was The Raptor Center's annual Fall Raptor Release. This event has been held at the beautiful Carpenter Nature Center, over looking the scenic St Croix River, for the past 5 years. Even with the cold and cloudy weather that we had we still had a good crowd. The highlight of the event is when we release rehabbed birds back into the wild. This year we released 6 birds. Two of the released birds were bald eagles. We only birds in the appropriate habitat and since the Carpenter Nature Center is right on the St Croix near to when it joins the Mississippi it is great habitat for eagles.  

My main job at the release was to take pictures. This was not so easy this year since the cloudy skies made the lighting difficult to work with. Fortunately we did have a bit of clearing as the day went which did give us a little light to work with. My other duty during the event was to help out at our raptor rings. We bring many of our education birds out to the release so that during the day people get get a good close look at a variety of different raptors. The ed raptors are divided into rings. This year we had 3 rings, one with bald eagles and our turkey vulture and 2 others that have a mix of hawks, falcons and owls. So while I was getting some nice close ups of our ed birds, like the one above of Samantha the great horned owl, I also answered questions about the raptors. It turned out to be another great event.