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It’s time to look again on 2022! Examine our weblog between Christmas and New Yr’s for a wide range of tales and reminiscences of 2022 from the workers and volunteers of the Wildlife Heart of Virginia.
It is extremely bizarre to say, however I’ve formally accomplished my first 12 months on the Wildlife Heart! This 12 months contained so many firsts – together with my first expertise with Black Bears, foxes, fawns, and so many different species. And naturally, it was additionally my first ever full-blown child season! I’ve to say, these months have been a number of the hardest but additionally a number of the most rewarding as nicely. All through the season, I discovered that the infant raptors that we raised took a particular place in my coronary heart. There was one group particularly that have been a handful and a half, however they by no means didn’t make me smile.
At one level in the summertime season, we have been caring for 5 Crimson-shouldered Hawks, multi functional enclosure. This cohort initially got here in as a gaggle of two and a gaggle of three, however with the suitable dimension enclosure and correct introductions these 5 have been grouped collectively. Whereas doing their every day care and train someday I observed a gap that had been dug beneath one of many wooden panels on the facet of their enclosure. The outlet, coupled with another experiences, made me suspect that there could have been an intruder in a single day. I crammed the opening with a big rock, then went to seize considered one of our trial cameras to hopefully catch the perpetrator on movie. Not solely did we catch our intruder – a skunk – on digital camera, however the footage and photographs that I discovered recorded the following day had me full-on laughing in my workplace.
To those that haven’t labored with path cameras earlier than, they’re designed to take an image or a video once they sense movement. This motion could be signaled by a click on or whirr sound from the path cam. Our fledgling hawks have been VERY within the digital camera. There have been near 250 footage and movies that had been captured all through the night time and following morning. Apparently, the cameras began out as one thing very scary – we’ve got movies of 1 hawk doing a little defensive posturing on the digital camera. The hawk spent a number of minutes inching his approach nearer, all of the whereas being very ready for the path digital camera to return to life. As soon as it was deemed to now not be one thing scary, then the others began to analyze.
In the course of the investigation course of, the digital camera was knocked over from its upright place, the place it settled on its again with the digital camera going through straight up. It then grew to become a mattress for one of many hawks. It might need been heat from the work it was doing and that’s why it appeared like a very good sleeping spot. There have been so many photographs of considered one of their underbelly floofs. When it wasn’t getting used as a mattress, it was getting used as a perch. Because the digital camera was almost certainly making some form of sound when it was taking all of those photographs and movies, the others all needed to take a peek too. Quite a lot of the movies have been simply of the hawks wanting straight down into the digital camera and doing confused head bobs. It was so valuable. A few of them even went to the size of making an attempt to seize and eat the digital camera by footing and biting at it.
For me, one of many easy joys in life is watching our sufferers develop up. There’s nothing like watching a chicken discover ways to chicken, and these 5 allow us to see a glimpse into their conduct when we’re not round. The path cam got here out of the pen alive and with no scratch on it. All 5 Crimson-shouldered Hawks efficiently handed the entire hurdles that the rehabilitation workforce laid out for them and have been launched.
— Liz Duffy, Wildlife Rehabilitator
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