Great big update!

The last couple weeks have been a blur, and incredibly busy for me. I apologize for the delay. I'll be doing a compound posting detailing the last few visits.

4/5/12

Today was another one of those days where I can hardly remember the first half of my day. SO much happened today. I arrived earlier than usual, around 10am, because I wasn't sure what my commute home would be like and I wanted to give myself plenty of time to get my normal activities done if I ended up having to leave earlier than usual to walk home. 

Right off the bat, upon walking in, I was assigned to feed our morning feeders. This essentially means heading out, cleaning and sanitizing their food trays, and delivering their breakfast. I was allowed the opportunity to enter Nanjiska's flight today to change the Carpet on his favorite perch. This was neat for me as he's been a staff and authorized volunteers only bird for awhile. I managed to change his carpet without scaring him off his perch, and I felt pretty good and accomplished after. 

One thing I noticed, though I can't say I'm surprised, is that all of our morning feeders act different around feeding time. Even typically shy birds like FPL the American Kestrel and Skaska the Merlin were a little bolder at the prospect of food. Skaska trailed me to the door, and pounced on breakfast as soon as I was out of the flight. I was also ambushed by I'sta the Peregrine as I walked into her Shared flight with Lil D. She was waiting behind the door, and as soon as she saw me she pounced on the quail in my hand. Silly girl couldn't even wait for me to put it down. Cetan Let me walk right up to her with her rats, and place them at her feet on her favorite perch as well. I got some neat pictures out of it. 

Afterward we headed back inside to feed the squirrel squirts staying with us temporarily. My friend (Who also works at Sarvey) and I headed in to feed the babies. The younger babies are easier. They squirm a bit and protest but once the syringe of formula is in their mouths they tend to settle down until they are full. Once they get older though, and we start to ween them off formula, they are offered a shallow dish of formula to essentially crawl around in and maybe drink a bit if they can figure it out. They generally end up covered in the stuff. To be honest they're not terribly coordinated.

....

After that I was tasked with preparing food for the deer. I can honestly say deer eat a LOT of food. A bucket of grains, a buckets of fruits, and an entire bin of various plants from around the property. A good portion of what we scrounged up was Blackberry and Salmonberry, with a few other bits thrown in. I think we must have been foraging for about an hour before we had gathered enough to fill the bin. After that my center friend and I headed up off to feed the deer. The deer are typically staff only, but I was given permission to head in with her to feed and water them. 

My friend showed me where to deliver the food we'd put together, and I was able to take a few pictures of Cinnamon and the kids. I'm happy to have the opportunity to be more involved in things going on around the wildlife center like this. 

After we delivered their food, and cleaned up a bit we head back toward the top of their paddock and changed out the water in their pool.

....

After feeding the deer I moved on to my usual cleaning for the day. There has been a bit of a shortage on volunteers during the week, so there was slightly more cleaning to do in everyone's flights than there usually is. Naturally some of our birds, like birch the Western screech owl, don't make as much of a mess. Birch is partially blind, so he really only ventures to certain spots in his flight. I was kind of off put to notice that he hadn't his food from the day before, but hoped he might eat it before his evening feeding.

Nanjiska, and Tadita were similarly clean. Nanjiska doesn't leave his perch, and Tadita has two or three places in her flight where she spends the majority of her time. Most of Tadita's mess right now is molted feathers. There are SO many feathers. I think it;'s probably one of the most tedious parts of cleaning flights right now. Everyone seems to be molting (Tadita, and Iya especially), which means there are fluffy, downy feathers everywhere. And down feathers stick to everything, including your fingers, and are stubborn to dislodge at times. Tadita's downy feathers are actually very pretty compared to the some of the other owl down I've seen. (Not that they aren't all pretty in their own way.)  Now in all likelihood, the majority of the soft wispy feathers I was picking up were semiplumes; The feathers that fill in space between the real insulating down, and the contour feathers (Basically the typical shape people associate with the word feather). 

In any case, Tadita's semiplumes are actually fairly consistent as far as looks go. There seems to be a couple different types that I've identified, and it's fairly easy to ascertain what part of her body they came from. The semiplumes like the picture on the far left are probably from the vertical barring on her lower abdomen. Whereas the other type, with the horizontal barring are more likely from around her neck or back.

Iya came down to say hello again. She's getting pretty regular about her activity in this way. She mantled a little at first, and then fell into her routine of screeching and twittering while I went about the flight. If I move to one side, she's sidles over closer, always intent on keeping an eye on things. At one point she got curious enough about me camera that she waddled across my perch and tested the lens with her beak. It's no wonder that Iya does so well as an education bird. She has a marvelous temperament.

I tend to spend quite a bit of time in her flight on days where I have the luxury of doing so. I really enjoy having the chance to interact with one of the birds (You may have guessed, but birds are kind of my thing), and Iya always seems to be willing. She also doesn't mind the camera at all, which is a blessing in itself. I think I have more pictures of her than any of our other residents.

It doesn't hurt that she's photogenic either. While I don't know Iya's story in it's entirety, (I'll have to ask and find out),  I do know that she is a human imprinted bird. Imprinting is a pretty big part of how many baby animals establish their self-identity. To quote Audubon Portland's page on imprinting; "It is a critical behavioral process in a growing animal and occurs during a period in which the young establish the concept of “parent” and “self”."  Imprinting is a process used to establish a strong bond between young and their parents, and in some unfortunate cases it can go wrong. If a babies primary positive interaction during the critical imprinting phase is with a human, then that baby will very likely imprint upon them, and start to recognize itself as a human. Imprinting is most often an irreversible process, and generally leads to the animal being unable to survive in the wild on it's own. If you find a baby animal DO NOT try to care for it yourself. Contact a local licensed wildlife center, where the baby can be taken care of correctly, and the chances of human imprinting reduced. 

It's also important to note that while human-imprinted animals may identify with humans, and appear friendlier, they are not domestic animals. They're still chocked full of deeply ingrained instincts and behaviors, and essentially they still act like wild animals. Iya, for instance, still acts like an owl. A particularly bold, trusting owl, but an owl none the less. Chances are, if you try to stick an extremity in her face, you're going to be bitten or taloned. Imprinting doesn't take the wild instinct out of the animal. You can read more about imprinting here, as well as more detailed information here.

....

I breezed my way through the rest of the Ed flights. I got a couple neat pictures of Cetan, which was nice, as I don't often have the chance or the ability to get terribly close to her. She's a hawk, and well, she acts like a hawk. Her priority most of the time is to give me plenty of space. I think she was a little more receptive today though. Perhaps she remembered that I was the one who brought in breakfast. So what got was a series of little peeps (There's really not other way to explain the sound. She pretty much sounded like a begging chick), and she stuck around long enough for me to take a few pictures. 

She really is oddly colored as far as Red-tails I've seen go. Whenever I've shown people pictures of her in the past, I've gotten questions about whether or not she's some kind of dark morph. She certainly is much dark then the other Red-tails I typically see passing through. My personal guess is that she's a Rufous (intermediate) morph red-tail. 

....

I moved on to the rest of my outside cleaning, making my way through several of the rehabilitating birds, and eventually ending up in Hanble Okinyan's flight. She was sitting on a perch near the front of her flight, enjoying a bit of sun, and otherwise minding her own business. After the eagle salute, I proceeded to get down to work, eventually ending up at the front nearby her.

Admittedly, though I like eagles, they were never a favorite of mine. But Hanble is one of the few birds that will actually interact with me a bit when she's in the mood. She's an incredibly curious bird, and intelligent to boot. Most days I'm in her flight she'll let me do whatever I need to, as long as I give her time to think about it. I can scrub poop off of the perch at her feet if she doesn't feel like moving, just so long as I take things slow. If she gives me any sign that she's not in the mood, I just skip over whatever it is until I get a chance later. She moves around quite a bit, so getting to things isn't generally an issue. Today she was enjoying making lots of noise and basking in the sun. 

I finished up my routine outside with Hanble, and headed back indoors for the evening. Most of the usual night time volunteers have been absent as of late, but in their place were a couple new girls who were wonderfully enthusiastic about doing what they could to help out. Between them, and the one girl I usually work with we were able to handle most of what needed doing inside, and I reverted to helping my lead catch and medicate. This was my first night staying until close, and it had been a long day so far. Even so I was still happy to help. We did a bit of medicating, and toward the end of the night it came time to catch a few of the big guys. First up was an eagle who turned out to be a walk in the park compared to the first I'd caught. He was having a wing issues, and needed to be medicated.

After that was the interesting one. We had to tube feed an adult swan formula as he wasn't eating on his own. I've heard often since I started volunteering that swans are more difficult to handle than eagles. I can say that definitely proved true, and I came out of it with a couple new scars, and a nice gash across the face. Did you know that swans have surprisingly sharp claws? I found that one out for sure. 

After the swan, we spent the rest of the evening preparing the clinic for the next morning, and then headed home.

....

4/11/12, & 4/12/12

I'm combining these two days as I spent the entirety of the second inside the clinic, doing things there. 

Early Wednesday morning I received a call from my lead asking if there was any way I could come in and help out. I've told her many times in the past that I'm happy to come in on days that the wildlife center really needs volunteer help, so I readily agreed and set off toward Sarvey.

When I arrived I immediately set off to work outside. There were some immediate changes this morning. Birch, our western screech owl had been moved inside, since he was feeling under the weather. I cleaned his flight, along with FPLs easily, and upon returning inside I was informed that Athena had stopped sitting on her eggs, and I was asked to clean her flight. As long as I was careful, it wouldn't be a problem. She becomes markedly less territorial once she's done egg-sitting. Admittedly, I was a bit excited to get in the flight with her again. It's been a good month or so since the last time I had. On the other hand though, I knew I was about to walk into an owl disaster zone. Nesting owls are messy things, and since you can't really be in the flight long enough to clean while they're incubating, it was desperately in need of some attention.

Athena was up in her usual corner when I entered the flight, and started hissing away as soon as she saw me. She didn't seem much more offended by my presence then she had been in the past though, so I was overtly worried. I took my time cleaning the flight; plucking pellets off the ground, and raking gravel. She had molted several pretty feathers as well, that were scattered about. I made sure I'd cleaned the rest of the flight before getting anywhere near the eggs, and when I did finally, I was able to sweep them covertly into my bucket without any excess fuss from Athena. She was definitely done with them. To me they didn't seem all that different in size and weight then a chickens egg, though they felt more solid; if that makes sense. They were delivered inside to my lead.

....

I cleaned Nanjiska's flight next, and spent a little time sitting with him. He was residing on the ground that day, and he settled down fairly quickly after I started talking to him. I took a few pictures, though none of them turned out especially great. I was more focused on getting him comfortable so I could clean the flight around him. He makes much more of a mess when he spends his time on the ground.

Iya was a bundle of fun today. I barely had the chance to get into the flight before, once again, she was down to visit. At one point she ended up with a rat off of her feeding tray. She made all sorts of delightful owl noises while hanging out above my head. Sometimes she seems to be more interested in hanging on to the rat than eating it. It took me quite a while to convince her that I really was not at all interested in eating her rat.

After she finally decided to swallow her food we settled back into the usual routine. I'd clean, she'd make noise to get my attention, or stare distractedly at something outside of her flight. My friend (one of the girl's I frequently work along side), happened by and the two of us enjoyed a moment with Iya, who fluttered over to her feeding tray to check out the newcomer, and just be generally social.

These sorts of situations of course offer me the opportunity to take great photos of her. I don't think I'd ever have learned as much about my camera without the opportunity to take pictures of the education animals here at Sarvey. Being able to share them is especially rewarding.

If there's anything I've learned about Iya, it's that she's not camera shy, and she's incredibly photogenic as far as owls go. This is coming from someone who thinks owls in general are hard to take a bad photo of. Iya is the bird that will get up close and personal with the camera. She'll be interested in it for a bit, and then generally slip into an I couldn't care less mindset, seemingly.

I think she'd make an excellant stock art owl. Stock art essentially boils down to photos of a subject in a particular stance, or pose; usually against a plain background. Stock art tends to be used most commonly in matte painting and photo manipulating. Both art forms involve different degrees of incorporating photos into artwork, or sometimes just combining elements from several different photos.

It can be difficult to separate a subject from it's background, which is why a lot of stock artists photograph their subjects against plain or solid color background. (Think of the green screen effect.)

I say Iya would make a great subject for this sort of thing because she is easy to photograph in a fairly intimate setting, by herself, (As opposed to being held by someone, or in a public setting.) She's also an especially pretty barn owl if you ask me. I'm only a little biased...

Also, Nictitating membrane alert! I love catching birds mid-blink.

 ...

Cetan managed to be photogenic again today. Kind of a nice streak for her. I only hope she'll stay so cooperative. After those sweet peeping, begging calls last week I've found her especially endearing. Owls may be my thing, but other birds tend to find ways of getting under my skin.

One neat, kind of gross thing that Cetan does comes about from the way she eats her food. Assuming she gets rats, of course. She is actually able to peel the skin and fur off of her meal completely, and just go for the parts inside that she likes. It so unreal. It has got to take skill to skin something that way. I hear all the time about master hunters pulling this sort of thing off, and here a humble red-tailed hawk has perfected it. Just awesome. This sort of thing is why birds are so terribly neat.

It'd probably not something I'll end up taking a picture of, to be honest.

I didn't clean I'sta and Lil D's flight today, but I did photograph I'sta on my way to clean a few of the rehabilitating animal's enclosures.

It was a bit wet that day

....

Hanble Okinyan had her first legitimately anti-social day today. I only took one picture of her before moving on to clean her flight. She stayed out of the way the entire time, content to just watch things from a distance for once. 

Afterward I was back inside long enough to catch my breath for a moment before heading back out. I was headed toward the Yurts that house our resident corvids. I was surprised to find that Rex was back in his yurt. He had been moved out of it temporarily while we had some renovations done, and I had cleaned the flight he was in earlier already.

Luckily I didn't have to worry about stressing him more than necessary. His yurt was clean already when he was moved into it, so I only had to clean the crows Heckle and Jeckle. They're nice birds to spend time around. They make noise, and try to get your attentions. Heckle laughed several times for me. After I finished their yurt, and scrubbed some poo off the outside of Rex's (He's had some wild raven friends visiting him lately), I moved next door to cano's flight.

Cano's flight has had a lot of renovation done too. There is now a blind between his usual perch and the corvids, and someone (I suspect I know who) was kind enough to weave branches and greenery into the area around his perch, to offer him a more comfortable, secluded experience.

I don't take many pictures of Cano, because frankly, he doesn't like being bothered in his own territory, and sometimes the camera does legitimately bother him. I usually test his reaction to the camera itself, and if he's having none of it that day than it doesn't happen. Today he was calm enough for me to take a few pictures. I think his newly remodeled flight may have instilled some confidence in him.

....

With Cano ended my outdoor activities. I headed inside for the afternoon which proceeded to be fairly uneventful. Some baby feeding happened, lots of food was made, and I might have caught an eagle in their somewhere, but my memory is kind of fuzzy. What I do remember doing was feeding fuzzy baby barn owl for the second time. This little guy is a temporary resident of ours who will be released once he gets old enough. I had the opportunity to get pictures of baby this time around.

Now that's just a ball of adorable. 

The day ended fairly soon after that for me. Technically an early day though I must have still worked close to six hours. I remembered to eat lunch with a bit of hounding. That's a step. But I wasn't especially worried since I ended up leaving around four. The reprieve was nice, as I was up bright and early the next day, and headed back in.

Thursday was a bit of a blur really. I think I've gotten so used to having a solid routine down, that spending the day inside kind of threw me for a loop. When I arrived I went immediately into feeding baby squirrels. Everyone else was occupied, so I jumped right into it. Not long after I finished feeding one of my shifts showed up, and asked me to clean bunny incubators. I think I must have spent around three hours in that little room. There were bunnies everywhere. 

After that I tasked to clean out the enclosures in the bird room. I started into that routine. Catching the bird, stowing it in a safe holding bin, cleaning, resetting, and making sure they have food and water. I spent awhile at this, since none of the food had been prepared yet.

Around that point I just agreed to take care of the bird room for the day since everyone was especially busy today, or had things they absolutely needed to get done. With this task came feeding baby owl, and the tiny Anna's hummingbird that has been staying with us temporarily. Feeding a humming bird isn't too difficult. She eat's a mixture of sugar water and bloodworms. We offer it to her in a dropper and she eats her fill. This happens roughly every thirty minutes or so depending on her appetite. She was eating pretty well.

I spent most of the day checking in on the bird room, and prepping food and formula. Lucky for me I had several other volunteers to help me out with the things that needed getting done such as laundry, dishes, and feeding baby squirrels. The other volunteers go nuts over feeding babies. 

I help my lead with medicating that evening, and got a couple of the girls to tackle medicating birds for the first time. I did a particularly under the weather rock dove to demonstrate how, and then let them do their own. I'm proud to say they did great! 

Afterward I went on to medicate one of the bald eagles staying with us. This guys eating on his own so he doesn't need to be caught and tubed anymore. Now that he's eating he get his medication slipped into or injected into his food. In this case chunks of beef heart. We then offer it to the bird with a long pair of forceps. My goodness he must have been hungry. No coaxing, nothing. He was so excited to eat that beef heart that he kept propelling himself forward and sometimes losing his balance. This boy had an absolutely voracious appetite. He ate every last chunk within a only a few minutes, and then complained for more. I'm really glad to see him eating so well. I've caught him a few times now, and I've been following his progress a bit. I'd love to see him go back out into the wild again.

After medicating, two of the girls left and it was down to just three of us. My fellow volunteer went on to finish up some cleaning, and feeding, and my lead led me into the mammal room. I was then showed how to tube bunnies. Tubing bunnies is not an easy thing, and it can go wrong in so many ways. I was understandably nervous, but I was also pretty determined. That first poor bunny had to put up with the learning curver, but I eventually got the tube in there and was able to feed her without any mishap. I proud to say the same can be said for the other bunnies I tubed. Not a bad start. I learned so much from today. 

After the bunnies were all fed and put away we finished up the last few things we needed to, and fed the hummingbird while we waited for someone to pick up the other volunteer. I felt like it was a rather relaxing day at Sarvey in comparison to what I normally do. It's nice to go home feeling accomplished.

Sweet on Sarvey 2012

So this last Saturday was the Sweet on Sarvey fundraising event, meant as a means to raise money for the center's hectic baby season. I had signed up to volunteer for the event way back at the beginning of March. So at around 9am one of the staff arrived to take me to the event, where we immediately began to set things up. We were the first ones there just about. We were pulling out tables and chairs, when the rest of the set up crew arrived and then the real work began. 

We had tons of stuff donated for the auction this year, on top of decorations and other necessary things. The day started off kind of yucky and damp, so we were unloading the vans in the rain, and hurrying to get everything inside, while a few of the others started adjusting tables and laying down tablecloths. 

Once everything was unloaded I headed back inside where I found myself setting up the auction tables.

These were the tables lining the room where the auction items and artwork would be displayed for the silent auction. The photo above was from the setup process, and so it looks kind of sparse. We ended up with way more stuff than we had room to display on these tables, and actually had to rent another room to display items, as well as set up items in the hall. 

Everyone worked their butts off to get things set up. Even the kids that tagged along helped out as much as they were able to. Here's Margie posing for a picture with the daughter of another staff member. (Hey, at least we were keeping ourselves amused.)

Shortly after I finished setting up the auction tables, one of my leads, Melissa, arrived, and I was whisked off to the kitchen to help prepare things there. The dessert portion of the event was a pretty big deal, so there was a lot to get done. Thankfully we seemed to have an overload of volunteers for the event itself, and I found that about 3-ish I actually had time for a welcome break. I'd been working since 10 after all. So myself, and one of my friends from the center headed outside to where the birds were being photographed. 

Iya was still out for photographing, so of course I had to have my picture taken with her. She's a favorite of mine after all. Afterward we retired to watch the excited attendees make their way nervously to the handler, and have a blast getting their pictures taken. 

I had the chance to talk to Kestrel briefly about being a part of the ed team someday (Probably after baby season), and then it was eagle time. Jeff hadn't quite showed up with Freedom yet, and so Kestrel did her thing and convinced the crowd that they really wanted to see a golden eagle. This was my first time watching Kestrel work a crowd, and I have to say I was really impressed. She's funny, charismatic, and full of information. I watched several people get their picture taken with Hu Iyake and Kestrel, but there are a couple that stood out. 

The first was a much older women. She pretty much exemplifies the sweet little old lady stereotype. Her family helped her out of her wheel chair, and led her over to Kestrel and Hu I. I had seen her take pictures with a couple other birds, and you could tell that she was having a blast. It was adorable. Kestrel held her hand, and she had the opportunity to interact with Hu I a bit before heading back into the crowd.

The second was a young boy, probably in the 10 to 12 range, though I'm really not the best judge of age. This kid was already pretty excited. He had, had his picture taken with Iya earlier, but his parents were letting him approach Kestrel and Hu I by himself. I could tell he was a bit nervous, but Kestrel did a great job directing him, and reassuring him. He had a few pictures taken, and then Kestrel told him to stay very still, because she was going to lift Hu I above his head. And thereabouts came the money shot. Hu Iyake with her wings spread above this kids head, and a grin on his face that clearly communicated that he was blown away and having the time of his life. You never know. Maybe this kid will be one of our volunteers someday. 

Once everyone who wanted a picture had one taken, I headed up to pose with Kestrel and Hu I. I get pretty close to Freedom quite often while volunteering, but I've never had the chance to see Hu Iyake up close, so I was kind of excited for the opportunity. After a few shots of me with my arm around Kestrel, she decided it was time to impress the crowd again, and the next thing I know I'm got a wing over my head. 

Thanks to Mark Olsson for the picture (and all of his hard work during the event)

And so, surprisingly I get my first eagle-hug from Hu Iyake. Kestrel did make sure to explain to the crowd that I was a volunteer, and had already signed a waiver that let me do this sort of thing. From what I can tell Hu Iyake stayed pretty calm throughout the time that she was wrapped around me. Even with me moving my head to talk to Kestrel. It must have been at least 15-20 seconds before she started baiting, which naturally meant I got winged a few times, but hey, I can't say I particularly minded. I kind of like the wing to the face thing now. It's almost like a right of passage.

Shortly after that Hu Iyake was back in her carrier, and Jeff had showed up with Freedom. Freedom wasn't having anything to do with the canopy, and so the photo shoot moved a bit further out. Not long after we noticed David handling Wanbli Askate, and headed over to say hi. I love seeing the primary handlers with their birds. They always seem to have such a neat bond.

Askate is a gorgeous bird too, and one I don't get to photograph often. My current stock lens seems to operate best when it is within a foot of the subject, which is generally not easy to achieve with birds. I'd like to get myself a nice telephoto lens at some point when I'm actually making money. A tripod too now that I think of it.

Soon after that, the bidding closed, and everyone was reeled inside to watch the presentation that had been set up. My friend and I watched for about five minutes before we were wrangled up to help with organizing items that people had won. It wasn't long before a bit of a queue had formed, and the chaos began anew.  I got shuffled around between so many different tasks that it's difficult to remember what I did. But essentially from that moment on, I was geared toward getting everything ready to go. Packing up the items that hadn't been bid on, cleaning, and after everyone left, breaking down the main banquet room. I was in that room up until I was the very last person there, mopping the floors. 

I can honestly say that by that point I was pretty exhausted and sore, and definitely ready to go home for the day. Everything was packed up, and the remaining staff and volunteers were just starting to make their way out the doors by the time we left to head home. It was a long day, but it was good and fulfilling.

  

I wanted to thank everyone for their hard work, and dedication to making things run as smoothly as possible. This was my first time working an event like this, and you guys made it awesome, So thank you.