OWL Rehabilitation Society - Week One.

My second internship started on Thursday August 25th. OWL (Orphaned WildLife) Rehabilitation Society is under direction of founder Bev Day. This Birds of Prey rehabcentre is worldwide renowned for its efficient training and pre-release cages. This week started off differently because OWL's second Open House of this year was coming up. Visitors got to see more birds and had acces to several interesting rooms of this facility so everything needed to be prepared. Highlight of the weekend: the release of a juvenile Bald Eagle on each day. Daryl, a long time volunteer, was the lucky Star on Saturday. As soon as Bev had given a few thank you's and a brief history of the eagle, it was time to go!

OWL has two types of educational birds: Permanently injured birds in the front-educational zone, these birds are left wild, set in pairs and are often used as fosterparents for incoming orphans. The side-educational birds are different. A few are permanently injured, some of them are human imprints while others are born in captivity. There is one thing they have in common, they are all glovetrained and handfed daily. I've learned a lot about these raptors last weekend because I talked about them for approximately eight hours, : ). Interesting how people of all ages react differently on these magnificient hunters. One bird I was talking about was Katie, a female North-American Kestrel (Falco sparverius).

This gorgeous little falcon is a human imprint in perfect condition. We feed and train her daily on the glove and I already had the opportunity to do it myself, what a wonderful scene...all beautiful stories in life start with small things. Unfortunately, OWL gets patients in on a daily base: I've seen injured Barred Owls (Strix varia), a juvinile Osprey (Pandion haliaetus) and a juvenile Cooper's Hawk (Accipiter cooperii) with nerve damage, coming in. An injured Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) was on its way by sportplane when I left OWL on monday. Cars, windows and humans are the main enemies of these raptors. Please keep your guns inside and keep all your garbage in the car till you get home folks, even fruitleftovers!

This is why and how I do it my friends, Hands-On experience and working with the best on these magnificient birds! At present, I'm a shadow of the supervisors but hopefully in the future...maybe one day I'll supervise myself. I'm enjoying this final chapter of what is still a wonderful journey. And ofcourse, Big Up for my all time favourite BlueBerryPicker...thanks babe, for letting me do this! I close this story with one of the most beautiful purebred falcons I've ever seen, Falco cherrug...Meet Sally.

To be continued...

The Beast The Beauty and The Rocket.

Permanent Residents of North-Surrey!