The old golden eagle, BURL, will be heading for Balsam Mountain Trust in Sylva, NC as soon as the weather cools off enough in Atlanta so he can make the flight. By flight I don't mean with his own wings, I mean via Delta/Sky West Airlines. It has to be 85 degrees or less at any of the stops along the way and it's continuing to be in the 90s there. He'll leave Cody, go to SLC, to ATL and then to Ashville, NC.
Because of an eye problem that would make survival in the wild very iffy, I made the decision to place him at that facility as an educational bird. In the meantime BURL is now with my subpermittee, Stacey Huston (see links), working at learning how to sit on a fist. She is a wonderful person at training these birds, has done so for many of the young raptors that come to IBR with no knowledge of how to hunt. Stacey not only shows them how to do that with patience and skill, she makes sure they are ready for a life in the wild so they can survive. The birds she's trained become some of the 20% of all baby raptors that WILL make it through their first year.
The above photo was taken by Stacey (I haven't the foggiest idea how she did that) after only a few days working with this bird. He's not facing the right direction, should have his back to the camera, but he's sitting there calmly on her fist awaiting the next installment of his training. Great job, Stacey.
I wasn't aware that Stacy trained some of your birds to hunt. What a nice partnership!
ReplyDelete