Ravensbeard-Wildlife-Center-STORIES

SQUIRREL BABIES UPDATE!

I released the Stone Ridge brother/sister duo this week. "Kinsey" and "Cheney" were especially independent babies, not much wanting the security of their soft-release cage. They hit the road running and found a nesting box in the woods, where they jointly made a nest for themselves. They abandoned that nesting box after 2 days and must be living in a tree now, although I haven't found their nest as of yet. They come and go to the feeding stations, ravenous after a night in the wild. Occasionally they'll jump up into the soft-release cage (their home for the past 2 months) and eat from their constant supply of fresh fruit and vegetables and nuts. They look healthy and beautiful..... doing all the squirrel stuff they should be doing.

Teresa J.

SLEEPING BEAUTIES

This is a photo of a batch of squirrels that I'm rehabbing.

5 of them are a litter from Barclay Heights in Saugerties. Victims of a tree cutting company who took down their tree and them with it. The 6th baby is "Zoe", who was found in Kingston more dead than alive. She had been on the ground for several days without mama's milk and she was terribly dehydrated and falling over on her side. She is now thriving with the Barclay Heights gang and she adores having other babies for her family once again.

They are 3 1/2 weeks old in this photo. All of them are growing nicely and are ready to graduate from the dog carrier to a large 30" x 30 x 60" squirrel cage. I love them dearly.

Teresa J

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Boxing the Hawk
by Nathaniel Shelley-Reade

I sat there with the bird in my hands as my father drove down the driveway with an unassembled moving box in the back seat. He handed it to me with a look that spoke for itself. We assembled the box and I struggled to put the bird inside, for she was a big bird and hard to handle. It seemed ominous, as if it were dead leaving in a box, but it wasn’t dead. We’d saved it, hadn’t we?

It was nine o’clock on a cloudy Wednesday morning. I was not yet at school because I wasn’t feeling well. I was sitting on my deck reading a rather dense book about time travel, when all of the sudden I heard a crash, like a branch falling from high in a tree. I looked across the yard to the tree where the noise originated, I saw two wings, one on either side of the tree, hanging upside-down. The word owl instantly found its way into my head as I stood up, dropping the book. I slowly circled my way into a good viewpoint. I saw the bird hanging upside-down and struggling to take weight off of its talon, which was trapped between two branches.

I stood still searching my brain for clues as to how to handle the situation. When nothing came up, I decided to... well, wing it. As I walked toward the bird I grabbed a decent sized stick with the idea of helping the bird in its task of taking the weight of its talon. When I got within five feet of the bird I realized two things, the first being that the bird was a red-tailed hawk, a beautiful one at that, the second thing that I realized is that it had no intention of letting me anywhere near it. I kept myself out of talon range while I wedged the stick into the tree to give the hawk’s other talon some support. I then ran inside, yelling for my father to wake up, to get my ski jacket and two unmatched gardening gloves.

As I tore back outside and across the lawn I remembered my field biology teacher telling me that one was lucky to get within thirty feet of a red-tailed hawk. When I had got back to the hawk it had calmed down considerably and appeared to have accepted its fate. I figured that logically the only way to free the hawk was to free its leg, and to do so required more than my two hands. So I inched near enough to the hawk to put my hands on its back and support it horizontally, taking all its weight off of its talon. There I stood, sweating in a winter jacket, holding a fully grown red-tailed hawk at arms length from my chest. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, my father poked his head out of a window on the third floor to ask what was going on. I explained as concisely as I could that I was holding a hawk in my hands and needed him to come and free its talon. Right after I’d finished explaining the situation to my father, my dog, an eighty pound ridge back that enjoys hunting and for the most part killing, decides to let himself out. That's when things got really crazy, my mom came out with a portable phone in her hand to tell me that she was on the phone with some wildlife protection agency and they needed to know what kind of bird it was, my dog started in my direction barking up a storm, and as if that weren’t enough, the hawk began to flap its wing in my face and dig its beak into my gloved hand, drawing blood. Still with the my hand in the birds beak I called for Matthew, my fifty pound, eight year old brother, to grab my charging eighty pound dog. Matthew does this to the best of his ability, with one hand closed tight around the dog’s collar and the other wrapped around the deck’s rail. Then I yell to my mom that it is a red-tailed hawk. Finally I turn to the bird and say in the most commanding voice that I could muster “You’d better let go!” and to my surprise its clamp loosened and my hand was free.

My father casually strolled across the lawn, examining the situation like a chess board. When he got to where I was he, as gently as possible, pried the bird’s talon loose with a piece of wood that he had brought with him. Of course I, not prepared for the ease at which this feat was accomplished, was by no means ready for the bird’s sudden burst of freedom and energy. Struggling to keep hold of this flapping, biting, and scratching creature I nearly trip several times on my way toward the house. My brother, upon orders from my father, laboriously dragged the dog inside, which calmed the hawk significantly. My father then went inside to help my mom with the frantic attempts to obtain expert help on the matter. Leaving me to sit, still in my winter coat, on the deck holding this bird in my sore, bloody and then exhausted hands. The bird calmed down and allowed me to hold it in peace. It looked into my eyes with a piercing glance, obviously mustering more command than I ever could, that said “Let me go.” What was I to do? I figured that since I’ve seen the hawk with a mate in the past, the mate would care for her, if she could fly.

I set the hawk down on the ground and watched the sad sight of a hawk, queen of the sky, unable to lift her feet from the ground. As I scooped it up, it stared at the ground like a general retreating from a defeat. There I sat with this wounded bird, its pride lost, for near twenty minutes.

Suddenly, frightening us both, my father walks out of the house saying that he was just on the phone with an expert and she said not to do the following: do not feed the bird, do not release the bird, and most importantly do not hold or handle the bird for it can suffer a heart attack. I thought this strange because I had been holding the bird for over forty minutes. However, it seemed to understand that I was helping it and not trying to harm it. On my fathers orders I put down the hawk in the middle of our lawn so we could see it and went to look for a box. The hawk expert told us that we should put the hawk in a box in a calm area. When I emerged from the house, without the jacket on (thank god) and without luck in my search for a box. Thats when my father left to purchase a box large enough to contain the hawk.

Soon afterward, he returned with an unassembled moving box in the back seat. As we assembled the box and began to put the hawk in, the hawk realized where it would be residing for who knew how long. It began to put up a fight. Then, just when it seemed to give in, it sunk its good talon deep into my, now unprotected, forearm. The bird then proceeded to sit quite still, its talon still deep in my arm, with a look that read “You wont get me without a fight!”

I watched my father drive down the driveway with a box. A box to take the hawk away. A box from which the hawk may one day emerge...

On July 24, about one and a half monthes after I had rescued the hawk, it was time to release it. What a large affair that was. My mother thought it a great coincidence that it should occur the same day as my brother’s birthday party, however I do not think the hawk enjoyed the crowd of fourth graders gathered noisely around. But they soon fell silent when it came time to release her. When everyone was ready she was brought fourth in a box.

As soon as the door was opened enough for her to escape she was off. Still not able to fly quite right, she flapped her wings and did not get more than five feet above the ground, rather like a chicken. She stood still on the lawn, looking regal like a king, everyone seemed to be holding there breath. She stared off into the distance absently, still in shock. Another red-tailed hawk soared high above crying out, presumably to it’s mate. Finally, it seemed, she was home