So this will have been my first week at Sarvey with my new camera, but before I delve into my day at the wildlife center, I'd like to congratulate, and gush a little over Dale the barn owl, for laying her fourth egg recently. I've been watching two pairs of owls for a bit now. Rusty and Iris, the great horned owls, who also laid their first egg recently; and Dale and Roy the barn owls.
The images are screenshots of the owl cams, so I apologize for the quality. Still, I'm terribly excited to get to watch these guys go through the entire courting, and rearing process. If anyone is interested in joining me, be sure to ask for the links. Just keep in mind that if you decide to join the conversation in the chat room, to keep things G rated in both chats.
On to Sarvey....
Today was definitely a long one. I started early, around 11:00am, and got out an hour later then usual. It was the first eight hour day I've worked in a very long time. It was exhausting, but I felt quite accomplished afterward. Especially considering my inactivity over the past two weeks due to illness, and snow. I was honestly just so happy to get back to the wildlife center, that I didn't care if I were going early, or working outside all day. Besides, I was ridiculously excited to test out my new camera.
And so the day began. We had a good number of people at the center today, and I was able to jump right into what I like best, cleaning flights. I enjoy being outside, especially when it's just a little cloudy and the air is crisp. A little snow on the ground doesn't tend to bother me either, nor does rain, and I can often be found outside sans a coat in these types of conditions. I know, I know. Not the smartest idea, but I overheat so easily, so either I feel sick from the heat, or I get a bit chilled and my nose runs; I choose the latter. I prefer things cold.
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I got to work right away, excited to be able to utilize the extra time I had been afforded. This meant starting right off the bat with birch. I consider Birch's flight to be an easy job in comparison to some of the others. He's a tiny little owl, and doesn't tend to make too much of a mess of things. Perhaps the blindness might attribute to that.
I've only caught him away from his favorite perch twice. Taking pictures of him is interesting. When my camera flashes, you can see that his pupils don't dilate in response to the light, something that is common in a sighted animal.
Later in the evening, as myself and another volunteer delivered his dinner, we found that he was out and about, and excited as I was, I made sure to get some pictures of him.
I think I like the pattern of his plumage best of all.
Next up was FPL the American Kestrel. Now, FPL is the Native American spelling of his name , which is said quite differently then you might think. It is pronounced: Jean-ah-Lee-ee, and it means Friend.
He is an Especially difficult bird to get on camera, as he is very wary of humans. Even though FPL is an education bird, he still has strong instincts, and so I'm certain he chooses to interact with people sparingly. The majority of raptors are not fond of human contact, and will go out of their way to avoid it, if they can.
American Kestrels are actually one of the easier raptors when it comes to telling gender. Like a lot of other bird species their male and female varieties have differently colored plumage as represented in this diagram: Male and Female Kestrels
Maybe one of these days I'll switch it up, and do things in a different order, just to keep things interesting, but for now, as I'm still learning, repetition is my friend. As it is, I have the habit of cleaning certain bird's flights in certain orders. For now it makes it easier to judge where I am as far as tasks for the day go. I can be awfully methodical about these things.
In any case, as is usual, Athena was up next. Now, I noticed early in the day that Athena was up and about, and keeping an eye on everyone. She was perched in the branch in the center of her flight, whereas she is normally in a nice private corner in the mornings. That was my first clue something was up.
It wasn't until I got into the flight that I noticed something peculiar, and somewhat exciting. Athena had begun to dig a nest in the corner of her flight! Great horned owl breeding season usually takes place January, through February, so it's definitely the right time of year. Also, Captive Great Horned Owls have been known to lay eggs. For instance, Alice the Great Horned Owl in Minnesota, has laid an egg every year for a few years now, and this year she surprised her handler with two!
The eggs aren't fertile, and they wont hatch, but Athena is likely to become extremely protective of any eggs she lays. She has also fostered quite a few babies in her time, and many owls have been released into the wild as a direct result of her mothering.
Once she lays an egg, or starts fostering, I won't be entering the flight myself. In fact, with any luck, she'll have an egg by my next visit, and I'll be able to take a picture through the netting of her all nestled up. I'm still cursing myself for not having the forethought to get a picture of the nest though.
I think I would have been surprised if Athena didn't show up against the netting today, especially this close to nesting time. That's not to say she was unusually aggressive, but she was pretty restless, and very vigilant throughout the day. Sure enough, sometime while I was in the flight next door she hopped her way over to the netting, and sat there surveying everything.
There was a bit more fun later in the day, as a visitor came through the center, and she started hooting up a storm. I've heard these hoots referred to as territorial, tail-cocking hoots. With a corner of the flight well on it's way to being scratched up, and made comfortable, I think she's got every right to start acting a bit territorial. 
Scratching around in the dirt is probably, also, the closest she will ever get to building a nest. Most owl species don't construct their own nests, and will instead use the nests of other birds, hollows in trees, Openings in rocky slopes, and even human-made nest boxes. The only species I've read about currently that could be seen as an exception to the rule is the burrowing owl, which will occasionally dig it's own burrow if a suitable burrow isn't readily available. Then again, they seem to do just about everything differently, enough so that I've taken to calling them the anti-owl. But that's beside the point. Owls will often return the the same nest site year after. If you want the chance to see wild owls close to your home I'd recommend learning about, and building a nest box in your area. 
If you have any questions about Great Horned Owls, go ahead and ask. If I can't answer it myself I definitely know people who can.
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Next up was the Snowy owl, Nanjiska. There's really not a ton to say about him today. He spent the entire session perched upon his feeding tray, watching me as I cleaned. I did manage to take a few photos of him while I was in there, but nothing dissimilar to my previous photos.
I did get one interesting picture though. Perhaps it's only interesting to me, but I thought it gave a great idea of just how powerful and dangerous those talons are. Nanjiska was actually the first animal I caught sight of upon coming to Sarvey. I remember I was being taken on a tour of the facility, starting with the clinic, and as we swooped around the corner, there he was, right out in the open, sitting on a perch. I don't remember why he was in the clinic. He was probably being medicated for something or other. This was watched one of the staff cleaning leftover medication off of the feathers around his bill. Turns out that leaving it there can lead to irritation resulting in the bird losing feathers.
That was the first lesson I learned at Sarvey. Perhaps that's what makes him such a memorable bird for me. He isn't quite as animated as some of the others though. There's just something about ear tufts that make some owls seem so emotional. He's still an undeniably gorgeous bird though.
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If you have any questions about snowy owls, feel free to ask.
Tadita the Barred owl's flight usually goes pretty quick. She's another one of those birds that doesn't tend to make much of a mess, or at least, not on Thursdays. Usually when I enter, she's in her favorite perch toward the back of the flight, high above any who might enter. I get lot's of beak snapping from her, and she gets good and fluffy when she sees me. She definitely likes her space.
Those big, dark, soulful eyes of hers are one of my favorite features of Barred owls. They lend them a much softer expression then their light eyed counterparts.
Iya was up in her favorite perch today to. It's one long bar that she utilizes every bit of. She seems to be on a different part of it every day, but it's always the same bar. Iya was actually pretty quiet today. She did a bit of chattering when people walked by, but otherwise she was pretty content to snooze while I cleaned things up. 
Several of the other educational animals went just as quickly. Skaska the Merlin flew to his usual hiding spot when I entered the flight, and stayed there until well after I left. Celi the short-eared owl, after some initial hissing and snapping, settled back down to sleep, and Cetan the red-tailed hawk hopped around her flight with purpose. 
I cleaned a few of the Rehab animals flights, but I'll come back to that later. For now, I'm going to focus on our permanent residents.
Nothing was really out of the ordinary until I reached I'sta's flight. I was surprised to find both I'sta, and Lil D in there. It turns out that the snow caused some complications with Lil D's old flight, and so the two were boarding together for a bit. At first I was worried about entering the flight, because I wasn't sure what the dynamic would be. Especially with Lil D's tendency toward flight. 
It turns out that both birds were calmer than I expected, much to my delight. I was able to clean the flight relatively easily without startling them, and even got some nice pictures out of it, where before I could for the life of me photograph Lil D.
I have some good, but sad news. We've found Placement for Lil D at a raptor center, so not long from now, she'll be on her way to a loving new home. If nothing else, I'm glad I got to say goodbye, and get some good pictures before she leaves.
After leaving I'sta and Lil D, I made my rounds, cleaning a few other flights, and eventually found myself over by the eagles. Wambli Askate was making a ton of noise, something she is prone to doing. Usually when I hear and eagle screaming off in the distance I assume it's her. She's the type of bird that will stare you down, and call right in your face.
Her eyes are still pretty dark, and her head isn't fully white yet. I'd put her at around four years old. She's an incredibly spirited bird.
A young bald eagle reaches his adult size by the time that he can fly, but his plumage remains a mottled dark brown with bits of white, With a considerable amount of white on his breast and belly. Around his third year of life you'll notice changes start to take place. His brown-tipped beak and eyes begin to show signs of change, growing lighter. His beak will eventually be bright yellow, and his eyes a beautiful light yellow, that can appear silver in some light. Bits of white plumage will start to appear around his head and tail. Around his fourth or fifth year he'll start to resemble an adult Bald eagle. His white plumage will fill in, leaving streaks of brown kind of like Askate's plumage to the left. He'll also retain bits of white in the dark brown plumage of his body. In his next molt he'll attain the clean white head and tail bald eagles are well-known for, and his body plumage will become a solid brown, no longer flecked with juvenile white.
Eagle flights are always interesting. They tend to have larger, more open flights then the smaller birds, since they need a lot of space to get around. Trekking around some of their flights can be quite a workout. They don't tend to leave a ton for my to clean up, but it's usually pretty spread out.
I think the part of cleaning an eagle flight that takes the most work cosists of cleaning the vented excrement off of perches and walls, and raking the gravel or dirt to loosen up anything that congealed on the ground. But another thing you have to look out for with eagles, that would be really easy to overlook if you didn't know any better, are pellets. That's right, owls aren't the only ones who regurgitate!
Eagles are opportunistic feeders, and often don't know when their next meal will be. They've developed a special adaptation called a crop, where they can store food in between meals. There are actually many wild and domestic birds that have crops as well. An eagle's pellet consists of the undigested parts of their meals, such as fur, large bones (Their strong stomach acid is able to break up small bones,) fins, scales, and feathers. These items that cannot be ground up and digested in the birds gizzard, are regurgitated in the form of a pellet. I pick up quite a few of these when cleaning Hanble Okinyan's flight. With an eagle, they can get pretty big
too.
If you have any further questions about Bald Eagles, be sure to ask!
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Just to give you an idea of the time frame the work spans, by this point in the day it was maybe around 1:00pm. I had just a few more flights to clean, and I soon found myself heading off in the direction of the yurts where our resident corvids live. I'm especially fond of corvids, and their problem solving skills. Heckle The Northwestern crow, and Jeckle, the American Crow are neat birds. I can tell them apart by looking at them. Heckle is slightly smaller than Jeckle is. American Crows can be found all throughout America, whereas Northwestern crows are only found in the Northwest, hence their names.
As an example of their awesome cognitive ability to reason, I used to work for a coffee chain around five years ago. Since our outside garbage cans were supposed to be emptied by the city, and not us, they would often get really full. Sometimes we could go out and empty them anyway, but when it was busy there was really nothing we could do. Well, even though we didn't like the mess, the crows loved it. They would fly to the garbage cans, and pull things out; They'd spread them all over the ground, and once they'd picked them clean, they would go back and repeat the process. The end result was a bunch of garbage strewn all over the sidewalk right in front of our store. 
Every time we had some down time, I would be forced to go outside and clean up after the crows, and after awhile I started to get a bit fed up. When it was slow, if I saw crows outside, I would rush outside and chase them away. It didn't take them long to figure out that there was actually no real threat in me doing so. So after about an hour of this, it got to the point where when the crows saw me,they would hop about a yard away, and stand, waiting expectantly for me to turn my back again. If I stood in the doorway, and they could see me through the glass, they would wait, but as soon as my back was turned, they were back in that garbage can again. From that moment on, I started to noticed them cackling at me, almost as if they were taunting me, every time I left the building to take the garbage out. Crafty, crafty birds.If you ever have the time, I highly suggest you watch some videos about them on YouTube, or read about some of their behavior. It's really interesting just how developed these birds are, and hey, the video with the crow "snowboarding" down the side of a roof on a jar lid, is just awesome.
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After a brief run-through of both of the yurts, I moved on to visit Canowicakte (Chawn-O-We-chalk-Tay). He was perched in his usual stop in the corner of his flight, sound asleep. I was sad that I had to wake him up to clean, but the cleaning had to happen, disgruntled owl, or not. He watched me carefully as I moved across the flight, picking up feathers, and pellets; raking gravel; and scrubbing away. I've always found him an interesting comparison to Athena, our other Great Horned Owl. Athena is a bulldog of a bird. She's pugnacious, territorial, and she's the type of bird that will get in your face if she has to. Cano, while he still has what I like to think of as the fiery Great Horned spirit, is somewhat more subdued. He is alert, and cautious, but he more likely to move away from you, than approach you like Athena has done to myself on several occasions. This visit was a good indicator of that. When I got close to him today, be made it a point to amble away, and proclaim himself done after only a few pictures. With talons like that, who am I to refuse?
It was only recently confirmed to me that Cano is suspected to be a male owl. I'm not sure what it was about him that made me so sure he was. It might have been the fact that he's so much smaller than Athena. Maybe it was diminutive personality, or the proportions of his body, but somehow I was really darn certain that he was male, and I just couldn't shake it. I think he just looks like a boy owl to me. Kind of like how you can look at the fronts of some cars, imagine their headlights and bumper at a face, and think to yourself, if I were to anthropomorphize that car it'd be a girl. Well, maybe you don't do that, but I have on occasion, I admit it. Some of the newer models look awfully unhappy all the time. Cars aside, I just had this feeling Cano was a boy, and it's nice to feel somewhat vindicated in the matter.
Honestly, with the majority of owl species, its really hard to tell them apart by gender without having to do a blood test. There are some species with tells, such as in barn owls, where the female will often have a dark wash over her breast, but even then it's not a reliable way to tell gender.
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Around this point in time, I headed back inside for what I thought would be the rest of the day. One of my fellow volunteers, who works in the evenings, had arrived, and instead of cleaning the squirrels, I was being pulled to the clinic to help catch a Barred Owl that needed to be force fed. A lot of the time, when a bird arrives scared, and injured, it will refuse to eat for some time. This results in us force feeding the bird until it is able, or chooses to eat food on its own. Catching a Barred owl for medication is what actually made me fall in love with them in the first place. They are easily a favorite of mine. I love their big dark eyes, and soft expressions. This particular bird had some fight in it, which is great. A passive bird is usually not a good sign.
After the feeding, Myself and the aforementioned evening volunteer did our rounds cleaning the squirrel cages. She doesn't particularly like to get in the runs with them, and I don't mind getting in but having someone to hand stuff to, and send to bring fresh water &c. is honestly a huge help when your surrounded by hyper-curious balls of fluff, and teeth, that are constantly trying to devise a way out. The second set of eyes is a godsend. The two of us usually team up to do the squirrels, and it takes us about half as long as it would otherwise.
Upon reaching the Eastern Gray's we found the cage empty, and in need of cleaning for the next squirrels. At this point my fellow volunteer and I headed back inside, to ask about the empty cage, and found out that the squirrels were going home for release. Great news! At that point, my lead asked if I'd be willing to walk a new volunteer through cleaning the squirrel run, and so the tw
o of us trudged outside and got to work.
I like working with other people. I think that's the one point of the evening after cleaning flights, that I look forward to. The staff and volunteers are always pretty friendly, and with everyone tending to come on the same day during the week you get to know each other a bit. For the rest of that evening, I found myself working with not one, but two new volunteers, helping them find things to do, and teaching them where to find resources, and prepare foods.
With all the good humor, and the friendly conversation, the evening went by really fast, and I honestly enjoyed myself. I spend a good portion of the week cooped up at home, so Sarvey is one of my regular chances at socialization. I'm a bit of a dork, but I'm a friendly, and dedicated person when you get to know me.
By the end of the day I was exhausted, but happy, and heading home I felt as if I'd truly earned the chance to relax for the evening.
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Our visiting wild ones....
Just in case you remember me mentioning the distinct smell Ospreys have in the last update, I have an answer to why it happens now. It turns out the the smell associated with fish eating birds comes about as a result of the oils in the fish they eat. Thus, the fishy, musky smell common to Ospreys!
Also, with the snow causing some complications in the eagle flight, our visiting Bald Eagles were moved into a smaller enclosure. I could hear them flying about long before I entered the flight, and upon opening the door, was quite surprised to see the two of them. I had two scared eagles in an enclosed space, and one of them didn't fly particularly well.
I was careful going in. I stuck to the sides of the enclosure, to give them the space to fly back and forth, and made sure I waited for them to make up their minds before I moved, when they got nervous. The process was all together, pretty darn slow. The eagles had a hard time keeping still, and as a result I was nearly body-checked by directionally challenged birds on a couple of occasions.
The bird wasn't being aggressive in the least, he just has a wing injury, and hasn't learned to compensate for it yet, so instead of flying straight, he flies at a curve, having to correct himself halfway through. Needless to say I got brushed by his wing a couple times. It's pretty exhilarating being that close, but I can honestly say I'll be glad to see them out in the larger flight again. Those birds definitely need the room to maneuver.
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With Athena acting all nesty, and all of my Bird Cam owls happily laying eggs, I presume it's only a matter of time until Baby season starts. I don't know much of what to expect, this being my first year, but regardless of what I end up doing I know it's going to be crazy. From what I've heard we receive babies by the bucket load, all demanding the utmost care and attention. SO many babies. I know that getting through this summer is going to be nothing if not interesting, and I'll definitely have a new found appreciation for just how hard everyone works.
Also, with the snow causing some complications in the eagle flight, our visiting Bald Eagles were moved into a smaller enclosure. I could hear them flying about long before I entered the flight, and upon opening the door, was quite surprised to see the two of them. I had two scared eagles in an enclosed space, and one of them didn't fly particularly well.
I was careful going in. I stuck to the sides of the enclosure, to give them the space to fly back and forth, and made sure I waited for them to make up their minds before I moved, when they got nervous. The process was all together, pretty darn slow. The eagles had a hard time keeping still, and as a result I was nearly body-checked by directionally challenged birds on a couple of occasions.
The bird wasn't being aggressive in the least, he just has a wing injury, and hasn't learned to compensate for it yet, so instead of flying straight, he flies at a curve, having to correct himself halfway through. Needless to say I got brushed by his wing a couple times. It's pretty exhilarating being that close, but I can honestly say I'll be glad to see them out in the larger flight again. Those birds definitely need the room to maneuver.
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With Athena acting all nesty, and all of my Bird Cam owls happily laying eggs, I presume it's only a matter of time until Baby season starts. I don't know much of what to expect, this being my first year, but regardless of what I end up doing I know it's going to be crazy. From what I've heard we receive babies by the bucket load, all demanding the utmost care and attention. SO many babies. I know that getting through this summer is going to be nothing if not interesting, and I'll definitely have a new found appreciation for just how hard everyone works.
That's about all I have to say concerning this weeks adventure. I hope anyone who reads this enjoys my account of the day, and I'm already excited to share my experience next time.
