On Vacation

My daughter Cassie and I are going on vacation until 10/1. We're going back east to visit family and help celebrate my brothers 60th birthday. We're headed to the Maryland / DC area on Alaska Airlines and then renting a car. We'll be checking out the museums (Smithsonian here we come), monuments (haven't seen the WWII Memorial yet), restaurants (steamed crabs and Maryland crab cakes) and malls (always new and big ones around Baltimore). We'll be back in a little more than a week with worn out tennis shoes, streached out waist bands and maxed out credit cards.

Bye-Bye for another year

Our friend John Gomes took alot of pictures at Bye-Bye Birdie and posted them on his website. Here's the link. I'll do more of a story later.

Today is Bye-Bye Birdie

Today is the day we have been preparing for since June. Today at the Bird TLC property on Old Seward Hwy, overlooking Potter Marsh, we'll be celebrating the begining of a long journey for many birds. "Bye-Bye Birdie" we call it.

For starters, we will be having walk by programs with our education birds. An informal presentation where several are being presented at a time. Once you've heard enough about one, you move on to the next.

We have 3 different bands through out the day with all kinds of bird friendly music. We'll have games for the kids and kids at heart. There will also be bird watching tours around Potters Marsh with scopes available if you don't have one.

We'll have formal presentations of "Those Crazy Corvids". Magpies, Ravens and Crows of course. Then we have "The Small and mighty". The overlooked birds of prey. And then "The Big Boys of the Sky". That's the eagles of course. There will be question periods at the end of each presentation.

There will food and drink available all day and ample parking too.

At the 3:30 is the big event. We will be releasing a rehabilitated eagle back into the wild. A success story. Last year we had a 50% plus release at Bird TLC. This year we are trying to keep that fantastic success going.

If your in the Anchorage area, come join us from 11-4 today at 15500 Old Seward Hwy and join us in saying Bye-Bye Birdie.

Joan Harris @ Tidal Wave Books

Our Friend Joan Harris will be at Tidal Wave Books tomorrow night at 7:30PM signing her book (and our favorite) "One Wing's Gift". Mary Bethe Wright will also be doing a golden eagle presentation

Bye-Bye Birdie, Saturday 11-4PM at the Bird TLC Property (Old Rabbit Hutch) on Old Seward Hwy.

With a lot of help from our new friends

We recruited a few new friends to help out with the Bird TLC property clean up. Next Saturday is our Bye-Bye Birdie event, and it would be nice if all the litter was gone. Four of our new friends from Elmendorf AFB, Chris, Stephanie, Ed, and Brian, helped Britt, Mary Bethe and myself pick up about 2 1/2 truck loads of garbage and take it to the city dump.

We got it all knocked out fast and it looks great. We're not going to list what our findings were, but the list is long and disgusting. We even returned a shopping cart to one of the local grocery stores.

During the same time our Bird TLC Ed Presenters were at all of the Kaladi Brothers Cafe's in Anchorage showing off their Ed Birds and promoting Bird TLC and the Bye-Bye Birdie event for next weekend. Sorry I don't have any pictures from that, but it's hard to be in two places at once. What I've heard though was that it was a big success.

Bye-Bye should be a great event. Lots of work has gone into it by a lot of people. I'm looking forward to it.

Check out our friends from Elemndorfs webpage @ http://oddenonline.com/. Also, thanks to Britt for some of the pictures (that's her pushing the shopping cart).

With Cindy's help, I can still pick up girls

-UPDATE-

The other week Cindy Palmatier and I went out to the flight center (We made a few eagles mad today). We were hearding through the eagles out there looking for females. This you don't really know until you DNA test. Cindy and I have been around a few eagles and can kind of tell their sex by eyeballing them (guessing) and comparing their size to the others (females are larger than males). We picked out two we thought were female, pulled a few blood feathers from their chest and sent them off to the lab.

Guess what. They were both females. I can still pick up girls (with feathers) with Cindy's help and my wife Ruthie knew about it too. The only thing this guy has lost is his mind.

Big Boys Toys

Some person (and I use that word loosely) dropped a large truck load of straw on our property about a week ago. Too lazy to take it to the city dump and pay $10 I guess. It doesn't matter where you live, you always have these type of people.

But later on I run into some really nice people. I call the Anchorage Fire Department (AFD) to get a burn permit. (I don't have a truck big enough to take this stuff to the dump). I get help right away. They email me the burn permit application link. When I get home I fill it out and it's approved right away.

There's one draw back. I have to have a source of pressurized water. There's no water source on the property. AFD says they will dispatch a water truck if one is available when I burn. Kewl people, but one wasn't available today.

So I called on a customer / friend at Airport Equipment Rentals. Here's the conversation "Hi guys! How's the wife? How's things? I need a water truck. What for? I need a pressurized water source for a controlled burn at the Bird TLC property. OK! No charge!"

During an extended lunch ( 1 1/2 hours) I burned the hay and then washed down the area to make sure the fire was out. I also got to play with a neat big toy. Thanks go out for the help from AFD and Airport Equipment Rentals. Kewl people!

Special viewing of the Hunters of the Sky

Bird TLC has a special viewing of the Hunters of the Sky exhibit at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art on Saturday September 16th from 6-8pm (after the museum closes to the general public). This is the featured summer exhibit for the museum…and this after hours viewing is a thank you from the museum for Bird TLC’s participation. We provided a Raptor Program every Wednesday during the run of the exhibit. This is a fabulous exhibit about raptors put together by the Minnesota Raptor Center. As volunteers and supporters we would like to invite you to participate in this event.

9/11/2001

They are almost here

Next Friday the online auction will start. The live and silent auction will be on Oct 21st at the ConocoPhillip's Atrium in Anchorage.

Stweart Allison, one of our clinic volunteers on Tuesday's, design the poster. What do you think???

Also, Bye-Bye Birdie will be on Spet 23rd at the Bird TLC property overlooking Potter Marsh. For more info, go to www.birdtlc.net . That will be the place to say goodbye to all of the migratory birds until next year.

Also, Joan Harris will be signing her book "One Wing's Gift" at Tidal Wave books on Thursday Sept 21st at 7:30PM. Mary bethe will be presenting a golden eagle at the same time.

Give TLC your tired, hungry, dirty eagles

We got this fellow (BE 06-38) in from Dutch Harbor a couple of nights ago. We believe he's an older bird, but we aren't sure. His clavicle is exposed on his right side with a thin layer of scab covering it. We belive this is an old injury that hasn't healed properly. He is under weight, dirty and won't eat on his own.

Cindy wants for him to get plenty of rest and tube feed twice a day. She'll re-exam him after she returns from a trip on Wednesday. Hopfully by then he starts eating on his own again. If he is getting stronger, maybe an x-ray to see what else is going on there.

Snowy Owls never miss a good lemming year in Barrow

Photos by ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News
Click on photo to enlarge

Here's an excellent story from the Anchorage daily news today.

Snowy icon

Booming lemming population means high raptor survival as well

By ALEX DEMARBAN
Anchorage Daily News

Published: September 5, 2006
Last Modified: September 5, 2006 at 03:01 AM

BARROW -- Snowy owls that wing over the tundra and perch on telephone poles like giant white eggs are having their most productive summer in at least 15 years, researchers say.

They're everywhere you look in this coastal village, spreading long wings as they soar among weather-stripped homes or dotting sandy banks to avoid blistering Arctic winds.

Why are there so many? Mainly because the lemmings they love to eat are booming.

Barrow and the surrounding North Slope -- the nation's northernmost community -- is the only place in the United States where snowy owls gather to breed. If the food is good enough, some stick around for the frigid winters.

The rest of the story.....

BTW, Bird TLC has 1 Snowy Owl in it's Education Program. It is cared for by Leslie Lancaster in Nikiski. We have another candidate for the program, but it has just recently been applied for to USF&G

Caring for small injured birds

Laura Erickson at Birderblog has a very good post on helping cat-injured birds. Please check it out.

We made a few eagles mad today

Well, we didn't mean to. We have a couple birds that need to be placed because they are non-releasable. The people inquiring about placement would like to know the sex of the bird. To determine sex when the eagle won't tell you, isn't easy. One way is to remove a few feathers from the chest area and send them off for DNA testing.

That's why these two are a little upset with Cindy and I. We went out to the flight center this afternoon and caught a couple eagles. Besides their permanent injuries, they now have a few less feathers. Good thing it's not winter yet.

The next eagle had limited use of it's left wing. It wouldn't extend all the way and it didn't like it when we tried to extend it. Cindy discovered a swollen elbow joint with some hardened gook (Dave's technical terms) around it. After a few small cuts she removed the gook and flushed out the wounds. Then a shot a baytril to top things off. In a day or so, this guy might still be mad at us but he'll be feeling a lot better.

Last but not least, this is how Cindy looks when you interrupt her doing paperwork to take her picture.

Have a safe but fun Labor Day weekend.