Today was my first day volunteering at the Raptor Centre. I scrubbed out quite a few aviaries, helped in the flying demos a little bit and assisted in flight training some young Red Tails and Harris Hawks.

One young Harris Hawk decided to land on my shoulder twice instead of my glove. Lucky for me he didn’t bear down with his talons and was easily tempted back to the glove for his piece of meat. A little scary, but I’ve been torn up so badly by rabbits at this point that the raptors don’t worry me. They don’t want to hurt me, they just want their tidbit. Rabbits are the ones with the real killer instinct!

I’m glad Gaston vacated this pen before I was sent in to clean!

During our last demo of the day, I was asked to clean out the Marabou Stork enclosure while he was performing for the demonstration. He had shed some massive flight feathers (he has a ten foot wingspan), which I was very impressed with. Cleaning aviaries may not be the most fun thing in the world, but it’s a great way to get an up close look at a lot of very cool feathers as well as get to know the personalities of some of the birds. It’s also a great feeling knowing you’re helping to make the birds more comfortable.

I also had an exercise in taking a flying lure away from a Saker Falcon that had just finished catching it for the demo. I had to wait a while for her to calm down and then distract her while I quickly hid it behind my back. I was able to do this when I popped her back on her weathering perch. Once birds of prey have something they think is food in their talons, it’s an interesting task to try to get them to give it back to you!