A "Miner" New Addition

It has been an exciting summer here at the Center.  The spring was productive for both our breeding program and the programs of our friends and we have some new and exciting birds in our collection as a result.  Since I can't talk about them all at once (and because I have already introduced the Eagle Owl), this post will be an introduction to one of the smallest additions of the year; a hatch year female Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia).  As both the common and scientific name (cunicularia="miner" hence the EXTREMELY witty title to this post) suggest, these small owls spend a great deal of time on the ground in burrows of their own creation as well as the holes made by other ground dwellers including snakes and groundhogs.  They have remarkably long legs and are quick on their feet.

This individual owl was bred by a friend of the Center in New York State and was hand reared with her three siblings ("creche" reared.)  Ideally, this will allow us to capitalize on the benefits of a human imprinted owl for training as well as have a bird that will breed (as she knows what other burrowing owls look like having seen her siblings as well as humans.)  In this video, you can see that she clearly recognizes other burrowing owls (or rather what she believes are other owls).

With any species that we add to our educational programs and demonstrations, the first challenge is to identify behaviors that are unique or particularly interesting that can be utilized to teach.  The obvious behavior with these small owls is their fondness for tunneling.  Eventually, we will have a network of tunnels in a variety of locations for the owl to navigate, but the first step was to familiarize her with the tunnels we would use as well as the reward associated with passing through the tunnel.  Video 2 shows her cruising the tunnel.  It took less than 5 minutes to train this behavior initially and now she wants nothing more than to run through the tunnel!

Go Fly a Kite

The summertime here in Charleston brings lots of things: oppressive heat, mosquitoes, fire ants, hurricanes, tourists and beach traffic.  Fortunately, it also brings one of my favorite things as well. Kites.  This remarkable group of raptors are found all over the world and its members show some of the most incredible adaptations for spectacular flight and strange diets.   There are approximately 20 species of kites, 2 of which can be seen with regularity over the treetops in SC during the warmer months and no matter how many I see, I still get giddy like a schoolgirl whenever I spot one.

Today, for example, we were nearing the end of our morning flying demonstration with our trained Yellow-Billed Kite (Milvus migrans parasitus).  This is an African species that, while significantly larger than the native kites, is a great example of the typical kite morphology: long tapered wings and a long triangular and forked tail.  He is one of the most amazing birds to watch as he nimbly catches bits of beef thrown by the trainer often  becoming completely inverted in the process.

As often happens, some wild birds were attracted to the activity near the ground on the flying field (birds near the ground often indicate the presence of food.)  Today it was a pair of Mississippi Kites (Ictinia = Greek for Kite mississippiensis = the type specimin was collected in, you guessed it, Mississippi) who came in to check out the action.  As hard as I tried to keep my eye on the bird I was training, I kept peeking over my shoulder to see if the wild birds were demonstrating any wild acrobatic skills and in fact, they were.  I saw several stoops, and amazingly enough, only a few flaps of the wings in the 10 minutes they were overhead searching for dragonflies.  Even though I have seen it a million times, it was breathtaking.

In case you thought you had to be in the middle of nowhere to see kites, I will relate another kite encounter from earlier this week.  I was preparing to take my wife and daughter out for a morning on the water when I realized that the paddle was conspicuously missing from our  boat.  While it is well equipped with 90 horses of Japanese power, it is never a good idea to travel up the creek without the paddle, so it was off to Wal-Mart.  Something about Wal-Mart (well, lots of things about Wal-Mart) immediately puts me in a fowl state of mind.  But, since the Folly road store is mere minutes from my house and all I could think about was getting on the water quickly, that was the only option.  After nearly crashing with someone driving the wrong way in the parking lot and having to pass up 2 parking spaces due to the shopping carts carelessly left behind, I climbed out of the car prepared to go on a rampage when I heard one of my favorite sounds.

Eagle Owl Diaries

So, it is time to begin the story of the new Eagle Owl.  I have now spent 1 week watching every poop, casting, and most recently, jump.  Did I mention poop.  I will tell you about the things that come to mind as I look at the owl.  Hopefully, they will be fun to read about as well as educational at times.

Eurasian Eagle Owl (Bubo bubo  from the Latin for "horned owl")-  The largest of the world's owls according to most authorities. It depends on the criteria you choose which you would identify as the winner.  Wing chord? Height?  Body mass?  The "Eagle Owl" wins most if not all in some cases. Big owl.

The Center purchased a pair (two of them and one male one female) a few years ago from an educator in Ohio.  She was not having luck with the pair breeding as the male only seemed to vocalize at humans and the pair "fought" too much in their enclosure. Both were "social" imprints or "creche" reared birds that grew up fed by a human along side other owls.  The behavior was not surprising.  I thought that they were young enough and we gave them a shot hoping that they would mate with one another instead of spending their entire lives looking for unrequited human love.

Quick aside for an interesting "lost bird" video.  I hope it adds to your understanding of these really cool owls.



From the beginning, he vocalized at humans. I tried to train him for a season with a lot of stress and without much progress, so we decided to put the two together and watch carefully.  No fights. Excellent!  He called at Audrey and Jen McT. especially, but really would call to anyone passing by.  Not so excellent!  She stood in the corner for weeks on end.  One day, she was squatting.  Could it be?  In fact it was! An egg!   For ten days, I convinced myself that it was infertile, but a good start for the pair.  It was incredibly difficult to wait for ten days without checking for fertility.  Like knowing your Christmas presents were unwrapped in the closet but not being able to peek.

At our 10 day candling, there was positive development! There were lots of "high fives" and other celebratory gestures.  Back under mom.  Still nearly a month of incubation to go.  Mom sat as tight as any bird I have ever worked with.  I had to literally pry her off of the ledge to check the egg weekly.
Finally, after 34 days, the check revealed no egg.  In its place, a fluffy hatchling!  Shortly after hatching, I took the next image in which you can see a yellow "day old chick" as we refer to the feeder chickens we use for a portion of most birds diet as well as the fluffy white owl chick.  The "day old chicks" weigh about 30 grams on average. The owl chick looks tiny in comparison!

When we want to train an owl for educational work, we typically hand rear them from 2 weeks of age on.  If the eggs hatch in our incubator, they are often hand reared from an even earlier age of 1 day!  At one day, the Eurasian eagle owl chick weighed less than 50 grams.  As you might imagine, young birds are fragile and need constant care.  It is best to let the parents do some of the work whenever possible!

This is what it looked like the day I took it from its parents to begin its training.  "Taking" the bird from its parents sounds awful and in this case, I had trouble looking at the parents for a couple of days. I got over it as I know they will.  Knowing that a life as an educator has been pre-arranged for this individual makes it easier to understand the course of action we took.

Today is the chick's "3-week birthday" or however you want to look at it.  Current weight: 818 grams.  Hopefully, we are on the way to a full adult weight of 2000 grams or more! Thats a lot of "day old chicks!"

Yellow billed kite video

Yellow Billed Kite from Ben Mongold on Vimeo.



Here's a cool video produced by our friend Ben Mongold.  Shows the yellow billed kite in action.  Slo mo is cool!  Plus a cool Neil Young tune. Groovy.  Enjoy

Meet me in Zihuatanejo

I have had a busy few weeks.  With several events, trainings, trips, etc, our schedule at the Center has been packed.  When you add the beginning of the raptor breeding season, vacations and the fact that there just aren't enough days in the week for us to get everything done and have time to recharge you end up tired.  Satisfied, but tired.  I will share a few experiences from these last few weeks along with photographs from my new camera.  I hope it is educational and enjoyable.

It seems that no matter how hard I try not to, I always schedule some big program and neglect to avoid scheduling three other big programs on the weekends surrounding it.  It is not my strength.  I can however power through them after having done it for years.  Last Thursday, I spoke with over 1000 students in Beaufort County including a brand new charter school (that I was highly impressed with!) and a boys and girls club group with great leaders, and finally, a full house on Fripp Island for the Audubon Club meeting!  Beginning to end, it was a 13 hour day.  I took our marvelous black vulture, Harris' Hawk, Spectacled Owl, and Tawny Eagle.  I had help with loads and unloads from Pete Richards and some others from the Audubon Club.  Next year, plan to have an assistant.

"Meet me in Zihuatanejo"

Eggs really are the rage this time of year.  Everybody is either laying them, hunting for them, dying them, scrambling them or trying to break out of them.  Very popular.  At the Center, the eggs that are getting the most attention are those which remind me of scenes in two of my favorite movies.  Think "Shawshank Redemption" and "Raising Arizona."  Both have great jailbreak scenes concluding with some sort of rising from a pool of sewage.  Chicks hatching are not quite as wet and messy, but the scene is filled with excitement just the same. There is always the chance you won't make it.  

We breed a limited number of birds at the Center every year for education.  It is now officially the time of year when owls hatch chicks.  I was corrected by a friend at the Audubon meeting that owls don't have "babies" only people have "babies". I appreciate correctness and therefore now call the man who corrected me a friend despite having spoken to him only once.  At any rate, owl eggs started hatching last Thursday while I was away.  Things have not been easy for those trying to get out of Asian Brown Wood Owl (Strix leptogrammica) eggs over the last few attempts.  In fact, only one had made it out alive and only lived a few minutes on the outside.  Young pairs often take a few trys to get things right.  We did what we could to help, but the breakout can only be executed from the inside.  Blood vessels in the egg membranes must be gradually pinched off by the chick's beak (with egg tooth) movements.  Outside help, while well intentioned, can cause death from "external" bleeding.  Yikes.  

Several had reached the pipping stage (seen in picture above), but had failed to turn in the egg and therefore failed to break out.  The chick must rotate and chip a "belt" around the egg separating it into two halves.  We weren't sure if it was an issue of humidity or some congenital defect.  We fixed the humidity issue and were patiently awaiting this egg's pip.  36 hours went by with little rotation.  Aargh.  But he had started with 2 cracks.  He had rotated some.  A step in the right direction.  Keep going little fella.  Keep going. 

When I arrived Saturday morning, we were almost there.  Like most good escapes, the bulk of this one happened under the veil of darkness.  Just a little way to go.  Don't give up.

Saturday afternoon, I could see the egg flexing as the chick stretched its legs and wings.  I could not resist assisting at this point because I knew all of the veins had been closed.  It was only a tiny application of pressure and with a snap, the chick rolled out onto the hatching incubator's surface, mostly wet, but with a small fluffy area that had been exposed to the outside world for a day.  Notice that the egg must serve as a sewer as well as a home. I think it looks most like John Goodman covered in mud.  

The final shot is of our new Asian Brown Wood Owl chick lying on the beach in Zihuatanejo with its old friend Andy Dufresne.  Freedom is sweet.

A couple of cool experiences

Had several cool experiences this last week.  One relates well to the bird side of the blog and the other touches on another theme and that is music.  I have not had any moving food experiences recently, so that should be coming soon I hope.

Getting the message out ( in ever increasing concentric circles around the Center)   is one of the most challenging components of our job in the education department.  Whenever someone wants to talk to you for a TV show or a newspaper or a webcast, you say sure.  Most are perfectly well meaning, but sometimes the process is irritating.  Schedules don't match.  You need something difficult from a bird.  Challenging, but often energizing.  I do it a lot.  Talking with Leslee Johnson was fun.  She listens well.  Is able to converse intelligently (which isn't a given)  and writes nice stuff about the environmental topics I enjoy.  Here are some links to articles she wrote based on our conversation.  Brevity is not my strength, and fortunately, she had 3 stories planned.  I guess 300 words is what humans are reading now a days before switching off.
Fierce canaries in a huge mine (how about that title!).  Nice  chatting Leslee!

The second cool experience happened the other night at the Charleston Pourhouse.  I have been playing music for a long time.  I started my true professional career in a group called Wheelhouse in 1997.  Matt Weldon and I played acoustic music to lots of drunks in many fine establishments with bartenders named Randy.  While I often jest about my songwriting prowess, I have only ever recorded two original songs.  One about my dog that I wrote while playing in a band with my friend Ray Murphy.  The other I wrote during an art history class as an undergraduate.  At the PoHo gig, we had a small, enthusiastic crowd.  We had requests for songs from  the record.  There was a young lady who knew all the words.  She sang the melodies and we could have harmonized to them.  Every word.  Started with a duet with Chris on "Montana Cowboy" a high lead solo tune.  All the words to my song "True Wisdom, " all 7 minutes of it.  And she sang on key.  Felt really cool.  This video reminded me of it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZoJJeBeStg .  No pictures in this edition.  Deal.  Thanks Flatt City fan, for liking our record.

Snow, Red-Tailed Hawk Sex, Wildlife EXPO!

So, I will finally give a brief report on the Wildlife Expo. I can blame the delay in posting this report on lots of things, but I won't.  Just be happy it happened before the original predicted date of 2016!

We had a great year this year as usual.  It was stressful as could be throughout, but despite rain, snow, and several local birds, all went off without much of a hitch.In our first rehearsal, a wild coop gave our lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus) a flyby on the ground and then landed on the A-frame perch just a few feet away and looked at us for a minute or two.  Audrey debated trying to catch another one bare handed, but decided to let this guy go.  We saw him periodically throughout the weekend, but fortunately, no more close calls.

As if on cue, the aforementioned lanner took a 30 minute leisurely stroll around the city on Thursday in his second rehearsal.  While he was never out of radio range, he was out of visual contact for longer than I would have liked especially considering the recent appearance of the coop and the onlooker on the church steeple.  I tell you, my life gets shorter by years with each passing EXPO.

The same onlooker and her mate gave the audience a show again this year on Sunday afternoon.  They sure do like to be watched.  On a church steeple?  And on the sabbath no less.  The nerve.  Another example of the really important fact that birds don't observe the same set of "rules" that humans do!

We also had snow this year for EXPO.  Friday night was a virtual whiteout for Charleston with 4+ inches of the fluffy stuff.  It made for a beautiful drive into the Center to load birds and added a nice touch to the events at Marion Square.

As with all EXPO's past, the best thing about this one is that it is over.