This afternoon we were invited to the Raptor Centre
www.raptorshelter.org/for a tour of the shelter. It was such a wonderful afternoon! When we got there we met Karl, the guy who runs the centre, and then we went inside the centre. We watched a slide show all about owls and birds of prey of Alberta and got to ask questions and hear all kinds of facts about them.
Jennifer I thought of you because every so often a joke picture of a Turkey Vulture would pop up and he would tell us a fact about them like that they scare off predators by vomiting in fromt of them :) I like turkey vultures more and more :) I think they are COOL!!!!!
I finally got ask an expert about the bird of prey we have on our land - last year in the Summer we had a bid that visited us every night. Around 3am it would sit on our roof and then fly around our land from post to post and it would screech. It iisn't a screech owl becaus screech owls don't screech. So we had no idea what it was! No one seemed to know! So I asked Karl! Turns out we are actually lcuky enough to have the Provincial bird living on our land! It is a baby Great Horned Owl! The beautiful owl you can see in the pictures below is the owl that lives on our land and it nests here because the owl that screeches is actually the baby - they only screech until they are 6 months old!!!! The Raptor centre actually has one that is 6 years old and because it never learned from an adult NOT to screech, it still does it!!!!
So the owl that we have flying around our place now is the adult version - I love it because it teases our dogs! It will call out to them for ages in a teasing manner and drives them crazy :) You can hear it sitting out there...maybe on the workshop roof......taunting them with it's call :)
After the slide show we met up with another guy and went outside to see the outside birds including the Great Horned Owl and the Golden Eagle.
Then we went upstairs into the building and met with a wonderful lady who showed us all kinds of interesting things...from jars of pickled feet from birds who had had their feet electricuted from sitting on the electrical wires and having their wings touch another........to pellets with WHOLE skulls in them......to bandaged wings, to nasal gastric tubes and machines to measureblood levels to see how hungry an owl is..........
They even have a real baby incubator in there used for owls.
We then went in to see more birds who are in recovery stages inside. A tiny Saw-Whet owl (we are putting bird boxes on our land for these) and the most STUNNING Great Gray Owl! It looked like an old Professor!
We had the most wonderful afternoon! The voluntary staff there are amazing and really know their stuff! The birds are stunning...poor little things were probably terrified, but are so beautiful. We really are very lucky to live in a part of the world where these creatures live wild and free for the most part....and there are places like the Raptor centre that nurse them better. They say that many of the birds are there because they are hit by cars - the birds fly into the road to get near roadkill or get mice etc and get swiped by cars :(
Thank you Raptor Centre :) What a great place!!!!
Lots more pictures to come!!!
