A Wing And A Preyer Grant, Volunteer Training Boost Modest Effort To Care For Sick, Injured Birds Of Prey

Wriggling out of a towel, the hawk began flapping its wings, trying to escape its handlers.

“Bad news,” exclaimed Harvey Richman, hanging onto the flapping bird with one gloved hand. Watching students backed away.

Finally, the hawk gave up and perched on Richman’s glove.

“You can hear the bird panting,” said Richman, a licensed raptor rehabilitator and attorney. “This bird is not particularly happy about these events.”

More than 60 people - far more than organizers expected - showed up Sunday for a class about caring for sick or injured birds of prey.

“We’re affecting their habitat, branching out more into their territory. People want to know how to help,” said Park Ranger Tami Johnson.

About 100 birds of prey, known as raptors, are reported as injured, sick or abandoned each year in North Idaho.

“Over half of them had to be euthanized,” said Kris Buchler, park interpreter.

The birds, including eagles, hawks and owls, are particularly prone to harm by human encroachment, experts say. Rodents, one of the birds’ main foods, are driven off as fields become subdivisions. Logging topples nests. Power lines sprout, providing attractive - and deadly - perches.

It’s not uncommon, Buchler said, for raptors to be hit by cars while trying to scavenge roadkill. Others are shot. Ospreys and eagles get tangled in discarded fishing line, ripping their feathers and wings as they struggle to get free.

To save some of the injured birds, workers at the park about 20 miles north of Coeur d’Alene won a $4,871 grant from a petroleum company. The money paid for construction of a “Raptor Rehabilitation Center” at the state park. So far, the center consists of a large shed and screened-in outdoor pen. To avoid disturbing the birds, the area is off-limits to most park visitors.

Sunday’s class was the first of several training sessions for volunteers to help feed, care for and train the birds for eventual release.

“The idea is to get the bird healthy, but to keep the bird as wild as possible,” said Buchler.

Volunteers learned how to immobilize the bird - covering its head with a towel works wonders - and how to examine, transport and care for it. A hawk and owl from Spokane’s now-defunct Walk in the Wild zoo served as less-than-enthusiastic patients.

A key part of the lesson: avoiding the birds’ razor-sharp talons, which can instantly cut a human wrist to the bone. Workers wore thick leather gloves and kept a firm grip on the birds’ feet.

Farragut’s raptor center already has two tenants: young red-tailed hawks brought in by loggers after the nesting tree was felled. Park workers feed them squirrels and mice.

“We feel like we’ve hopefully made a difference with these two,” said Cynthia Langlitz, an AmeriCorps worker at the park.

The two birds, about 5 weeks old, are still covered with some of the downy feathers they had as chicks.

“When we got them, they were just all down,” Langlitz said. “They’ll have to learn to hunt, learn to fly.”

Food for the birds will be a big challenge for the center. All winter, workers have been collecting and freezing dead songbirds, rodents, a chicken and a roadkilled deer. Workers at the park trap squirrels and kill them with carbon dioxide or “a good bop,” said Buchler.

Eventually, the park hopes students and boy or girl scout groups will raise mice and rats to feed the raptors.

People who try to save injured raptors aren’t usually successful, Richman said. There’s virtually nothing that can be done, for example, for a bird that’s been shot.

And some birds will never be strong enough to be released again to the wild, he said. Those will end up at zoos or research facilities - or will be euthanized.

Still, he said, saving even a fraction of the injured birds makes the time worthwhile.

“It’s a devotion,” Richman said. “It’s a religious experience in so many ways. You’re taking truly wild critters that have been injured by man, and restoring them to the wild. The successes are wonderful.”

The moment when a bird is released, he said, is like the thrill a mountain climber gets from conquering an icy peak.

“That release,” Richman said, “is just the same as reaching Annapurna.”

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