Hey Fairbanks!

Come visit us at the Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitor Center on Saturday, April 5th from 1-4.

IMBD International Migratory Bird Day at the Alaska Zoo

Every year Bird TLC Education Volunteers do presentations at the Alaska Zoo for IMBD. The weather was gorgeous, but do take notice of the snow on the ground. Ghost the snowy owl was the only one not complaining about the snow.

Mary Bethe presented Denali the golden eagle and several other birds and presenters were there throughout the day.

We had a good crowd. They did have to bundle up a little though. Ghost didn't understand why.

 

Thanks to the Alaska Zoo for having us and thanks to Sharon Larson for the photographs.

Magic of the Snowy Owl

Watch Magic of the Snowy Owl on PBS. See more from Nature.

Ghost, Bird TLC's education snowy owl was a part of this movie.

Presentation at Clark Middle School

Chris and Maverick the peregrine falcon before the students at Clark.

Lisa answering bald eagle, Petra questions.

Ghost and me finish things up.

We had the pleasure of presenting some of our education birds to some of the students of Clark Middle School today. Students and teachers alike were asking questions and listening to our presentation. I hope they have us back again.

Photos by Cynthia Hoog / Bird TLC

Ghost & Gus at Friends of Creamer's Field

Last weekend, Ghost, Gus and I were invited to Fairbanks to help out Friends of Creamer's field by doing presentations. Since it's one of our favorite places to go, we had to be there. ADF&G did an awesome job talking about the owls of Interior Alaska and putting on an awesome program on Short-Eared Owls.

Gus being the senior owl came out first. Being a Great Horned Owl, his species is well known.

We did another presentation later in the afternoon. Ghost the Snowy Owl always attracts the kids and photographers.

Friends of Creamer's Field had lots of artifacts showing what is at their place. I know if I lived in Fairbanks, that's where I'd be a volunteer at.

Here's hoping we raised them a few dollars and got some folks interested in volunteering. Thanks to Friends of Creamer's Field for inviting us, ADF&G, and Jim & Nancy Dewitt for putting the 3 of us up for the weekend. Oh, also thanks to Nancy for taking the photo's. We had a great time!

Good Morning King Salmon

Ghost, Petra and I were guest of the USF&W Visitors Center at the Alaska Peninsula Wildlife Refuge in King Salmon over the weekend. Airfare for Ghost and Petra was provided by PenAir. On the first day, we visited Bristol Bay School in Egegik and did a 1 1/2 presentation to the students. I was amazed how well behaved and attentive they were. Many, many questions.

Lodging and transportation was provided by USF&W. Both Ghost and Petra loved being tethered outside were we stayed. The nights were cool and quiet. Being the end of the fall season, most other distractions weren't around.

Hopefully I'll have some presentation photos later. Many were taken the next day where we did about 3 1/2 hours of presentations at the visitor center. Over the weekend we saw over 250 people. At the visitor center alone we saw ove 120 people, which is 1/2 the population of King Salmon.

Ghost, Petra and I would like to thank USF&W for having us out to King Salmon and Egegik. It was great to meet the people of the Bristol Bay area, the people of USF&W and the Alaska Wildlife Troopers. I specifically would like to thank Julia Pinnix, Visitor Services Manager, Alaska Peninsula/Becharof National Wildlife Refuge. She was a great host and made our trip most memorable and enjoyable.

Busy Bird TLC Weekend so far

Britt and I started with a eagle release at the Eagle River Nature Center. Marge Brehm got to release BE 11-08 and it was a gorgeous release.

See more photos at  Britt's site.

Ghost and I did a last minute request at Alaska Wild Berry. It was a lot of fun. Premier Alaska Tours brought several buses by.

Bev and Flame at Spenard Farmer's Market.

Kristen and Sparky at the Spenard Farmer's Market.

Return to Moose Pass

Ghost, Petra and I went to Moose Pass on Friday night. Every year Bird TLC is invited back to Trail Lake Lodge to do presentations for their birding groups. We always have a good time and meet some great people from all over the states. Since I went solo, there are no photos of the presentation, but here's Ghost and Petra chillin' afterwards.

Moose Pass is not a large town so there's not a lot of traffic off the main road. We only attracted a few people at the lodge.

Ghost didn't care. He said "I'm off the clock. I'm enjoying the quiet".

Petra did a few calls for the few that walked by. I think she thought they wanted her salmon. She didn't want it then, but she didn't want to share.

Nothing like a nice bath after a long over-nighter.

Thanks Dave, Doug, Chris and Nan for having down again this year. It's a big treat for us.

Happy Holidays!

Palmer Senior Home presentation

Erin, Ghost, Randy and Artemus did a presentation the day before Thanksgiving at the Palmer Senior Home to a very large audience.

The weather cleared up enough for the presenters and their birds to make it out to Palmer and back safely. The birds seemed excited about being out the day before a famous bird holiday.

Stories and questions filled the air.

 

A good time was had by all.

Erin checks off on Ghost

Erin checked off on presenting Ghost the Snowy Owl on Sunday. I was her mentor for her training. She picked up on things pretty fast.

Ghost also saw that she was a good match.

Congratulations Erin!

Ghost the snowy owl does double duty

Ghost and I did two presentations on Wednesday at two totally different venues. The first one was at Camp Fire USA which was held on Alaska Pacific University Campus (APU).
It was a large crowd of great kids with lots of questions. Ghost loves questions, especially when they are about him.
Our next stop was the Mabel T. Caverly Senior Center in downtown Anchorage. Ghost has been there before and loves going back. He gets lots of attention and the ladies there love him.
We had a full day and we were accompanied by our own paparazzi. Our friend and fellow volunteer at Bird TLC, Britt Coon came along and took these photos and helped out.

For more photos of the presentations, visit Britt's website here and here.

A beak and pedi

The talons and beak of wild birds in captivity grow and they aren't naturally trimmed as well as in the wild. In the wild they would chew more on bones and such things more than they have the opportunity to do in captivity. Ghost the Snowy Owl's diet is mainly mice and he eats them whole. I vary his diet from time to time with rabbit, chicks, rats and pheasant. He also chews on the astro turf that I have on his perches. But his beak still grows and needs a little help being trimmed or coped.

Ghost has never needed his beak coped before. His talons get trimmed several times a year though. He maintains his beak pretty good. A few weeks ago, I asked Cindy to check out his beak while we were at a presentation. She said he was borderline needing it coped. So I made an appointment for it to be done today. It's not something you can do by yourself and I know of no one in Bird TLC who has more experience performing them or is there anyone I trust more with Ghost than Cindy.

For something that's not natural to him, having a Dremmel run around his beak, he handled himself well. The whole procedure with talon trimming and all took less than five minutes. Ghost is still molting even though it's getting below freezing at night. When he was let up and got back on fist, feathers went everywhere.

So now he has a healthy shaped beak and trimmed talons. I gave him a frozen mouse as a treat. Maybe I should have offered one to Cindy since she did all the work. Well, thanks anyway Cindy!

Busy Wednesday

For starters, we have a Great Gray Owl that came to us from Tok. It was hit by a car and brought in by a good citizen. We were determining if it was flighted or still needed some more r&r. The flight test didn't work out at TLC, so later on, Britt and I took the GGO out to the flight center. We brought her back. She needs some more r&r.

I couldn't go to the Alaska State Fair today. My real job was getting in the way. Cindy is checked off on Ghost (she was my mentor). So they got to go to the fair. In this picture they are getting familiarized with one another again. She does his exams and beak trimming, but doesn't get to work with him much. She reported back that things went real well.

We also got a immature bald in almost a month ago. He had some super lice. They had him so down that he wasn't expected to live. His name is Easy Rider, because a guy wrapped him up in his coat and brought him to TLC on his motorcycle. The lice lost! We took him to the flight center also. He flew right to perch and then chowed down on some salmon we had put out for him.

Last thing tonight, Britt exercised the sand hill crane or was that the other way around? It's getting big. We're discussing it's release options now.