(Walking, hooting)
- My name is Kit Lacey.
I'm the bird curator here at the Cascades Raptor Center.
(hooting)
Good morning, Dmitri.
Our mission is to connect people with wildlife.
Good morning, Guapo. Hi.
(chirping)
I'm a biologist by training,
but not with birds.
I had no idea how much I could love Raptors.
Right now it's my job to go around
and look at each and every bird.
Little morning football, Dante?
Look at their aviary, you know is everything okay?
Did something happen overnight?
But it's also kind of my good morning time.
I have relationships with a lot of these birds.
And so it's not me just saying good morning.
A lot of the birds actually say good morning
back in their own way.
(chirping)
Bald eagles are a very dramatic bunch.
Most people when they hear Atticus,
they don't realize that's what bald eagles sounds like.
Because when Hollywood shows a bald eagle,
they always play a red-tailed hawk call
over that visual of the bald eagle.
(Atticus chirping)
Other staff are just getting ready, starting to get food,
making sure everything's in order in the kitchen.
Zach, do you want a rabbit leg for Dante?
- Yes, please.
- Each bird has a label. Some birds are very picky,
so they get a specific piece of food or type of food.
- Did you ever expect you're going to be a short order cook
for a large number of raptors.
- No, and a lot of people, you know, they say,
how can you touch that food? And you know,
the benefits way outweigh the perceived nastiness
of cutting up dead food or prepping dead food.
Plus, you know, I grew up in food service.
(chirping)
- We'll talk about what programs we have going on.
Zach was going to do a training session with Guapo and
Laura, you're cool with that Dmitri
practice session out in the forest?
Now, as we're moving through 2021,
we might be starting to do offsite programs.
So we're going to have to up our game and get birds back
into training.
- This is Dmitri. He is a Eurasian eagle owl.
Eagle owls are some of the largest owl species.
Eagle just meaning large. They're not related to Eagles.
- The training methodology that we use is
positive reinforcement.
They learn very quickly. You can give a signal or a cue
that lets them know what to do. And you just say, thank you.
And with a raptors,
the best way to say thank you is with a tasty treat.
We're really fortunate at our facility that all of our
ambassadors are also on public exhibit.
- Hoo, what does an owl say?
- Hoo
- These Raptors all have different backstories.
Some of these birds were conservation bred
and kind of raised to be educators.
Other birds were wild hatched and
then deemed non releasable.
And they were very unique in that they were able
to transition into this life.
- This handsome guy is Lethi the turkey vulture.
Last summer, we started doing walkabouts on the site.
So today we're going to walk around.
Lethi's nest was destroyed.
He got taken into a rehab facility down in California,
which is where he was found. And they did everything they
could. And unfortunately he still imprinted onto humans.
So they went to go release him, and he flew up into the air
and flew right back down and started pulling on pant legs
and landing on arms and pulling on shoelaces.
- Come here. It's cause you got shoe laces. Come here.
- And that doesn't make for a good wild turkey vulture.
Lethi has been a great ambassador here.
He definitely has a fan club.
- Hi everybody. Can you hear me okay?
So happy that you guys invited us to come
and visit your classroom.
- One of the really big points that I like to teach is what
individuals can do.
- I see, I see a hand up.
- If I give this story that Western screech owls,
when their babies get caught by people's house cats.
Maybe people will start shifting their cats indoors.
For me, it's just really talking about
those little things that people can do in their own world,
in their own life to make a difference.
- Hi everybody!
This is Guapo, the Swainson's hawk.
So Guapo helps us out. He is a professional teacher.
Goes into schools and into the community to teach programs
all about Raptors. Raptor feet are amazing.
Do your feet have talons for catching mice?
- That's silly.
- Our whole mission is to encourage conservation attitudes.
Helping people actually understand what's out there in the
environment so that they can have something to care about.
- How did you get started doing this, Zach?
- I saw a raptor program when I was in second grade in
Michigan, and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.
And then I just fell in love with working with animals.
- Behind the scenes, totally different population
of birds in our wildlife hospital.
- Not an easy ear to examine.
- Members of the public find an injured raptor,
bring it to our hospital,
and the number one goal is always release into the wild.
- The other day a lady came up here with four barn owl eggs.
They moved a hay bale, the eggs were in the hay bale.
(opening cage)
He is born last night, and he is born Monday morning.
Summer is the busiest time of the year.
Babies fall out of nest, babies get abandoned.
(chirping)
And for every species which comes here,
we have to devise a different plan: how to raise babies,
how to reintegrate them into the wild population.
With barn owls, we are extremely lucky because
we have a foster parent pair.
We have two former education birds, Nanny and Soren,
and she does an amazing job. And we get really much nicer,
young owls than we could raise in the clinic.
She grooms them. She feeds them exactly the right amount.
We have no problem
with anything getting imprinted.
And the last stage of their time with us is
live prey training.
We set up an area where we feed them live mice every day.
So this way we assess if they're able to hunt.
Well, look at that. Perfection.
So ready to go.
Say goodbye to the free lodgings.
There's many mice. From now on it's do it yourself.
(car arrives)
Then we have made arrangements at three farms
where they will be placed.
- We have so many barn owls this year, Annie,
you wouldn't believe it.
- 2020 we saw a record number of birds
into our hospital. Close to 500.
We've never been anywhere near that number of cases.
(owl snapping)
This year, it looks to be another really
record year for intakes.
Are these injuries human caused?
I think the vast majority are.
- It's your sibling, it's okay.
All right!
- We do see a conflict between that wildlife
human interface all the time.
Hi Newton.
There's something about raptors.
I think if you look across cultures, across the ages,
you'll see raptors. You see raptors represented in
religious symbols and gods.
There's just this connection. And then people gain empathy.
They get interested,
they engage, and it's much easier to get my message
across to really, you know,
care about all the wildlife that we share the world with.
Good morning. Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.
You're so round and cute.