|
|
Avalon has Arrived!
Bald Eagle K04 returns to Ventura County
|
|
Aug. 18, 2011 K-04, a female bald eagle (aka Avalon) has arrived at ORC! She is adjusting to her new surroundings. We will post photos and video here as it comes in. (See the Avalon Report below for the latest updates.) Avalon also has her own facebook page with many fans. Please see the ORC posts and photos at the Ojai Raptor Center FB page. We are excited to know she has so many fans.
The people at Sarvey Wildlife Center in Washington went to great lengths in their efforts to rehabilitate and then relocate Avalon to the Ojai Raptor Center. ORC sends a great big THANK YOU to everyone involved in that great organization.
K04, as she was officially known, was born on the Two Harbors Nest on Catalina Island in 2010 and made her way to Washington State. In February 2011 she was taken in by the Sarvey Wildlife Care Center in Arlington Washington, having been found with a broken wing and severely dehydrated. After much care and recovery time it was determined that she would never be able to fly well enough to be released into the wild. It was then decided that she could be transported back to Ventura County to join ORC's Resident Raptor program to become an education bird. See stories below and Avalon's Story video.
We're very excited to have Avalon join Hitch, a male Bald Eagle already in our program.
|
|
Avalon Report 2012 continued..
Feb. 11, 2012 New Video right
Due to several reasons, we are late posting a report about the Feb 11th training session. We do have good video, so better late than never! Mike had to go out of town for work and then got involved getting the owl box cam installed, so I’m (Tawny) writing this report!
Mike and Avalon had a great session. To start with, Mike was able to walk up to Avalon on her perch and she stepped up on the glove and allowed him to secure her jesses. He had to follow her as she flew away from him 4 times, but what was interesting was that each time she willingly returned to the perch until she felt confident enough to step up. In the past when she refused to step up on her own, she would avoid going back to the perch and Mike would have to catch her on the ground in the corner of the flight. Going back to the perch was her decision and it shows some progress.
Keep in mind this is about a 45 minute session I have edited. In real time it took about 3.5 minutes to get Avalon to place one foot up and then at about the 7 minute mark Mike had finished clipping in and moving her off the perch.
After that Mike moved Avalon away from the perch and stood using the crutch to support his arm for quite some time. We thought Avalon stood with better posture today and held her wings up better than in the past. Avalon was quite chatty and talked up a storm today. We both told her how good she was. She seemed pretty comfortable with me and the camera, so I got some nice close-up footage. Then she handled the dismount well. I hope you enjoy this week’s video.
Feb. 4, 2012 Video right
Last weekend I had the pleasure of having some of our friends and eagle fans from IWS (Institute for Wildlife Studies) join me to observe a glove training session with Avalon.
The group enjoyed viewing Avalon and took photos and video. Thank you to Kate Laird and Carole Wood for shooting, editing and adding music to the guest video this week.
Avalon was pretty cooperative and showed everyone how she could stand quietly on the glove. I'm really impressed with how well she just stands still. Many of our education birds were a lot more jumpy and active at this point, but Avalon is almost statue-like. Partly because there were more people around this time, she was quieter than usual. In this week's video you can hear me talking to some of the visitors and just discussing Avalon.
After standing in one place for most of the session, I started moving her back to her perch area when she decided to bate (jump off the glove). Now all of our birds bate from time to time, and they have learned the consequences; if you bate, you hang upside down. What counts here is how well the bird gets back up on the glove. Some birds take years to learn to smoothly re-glove themselves. In the video, you can see that once I have Avalon balanced, I flip her up with one hand, and she quickly gets her feet on the glove and regains her footing.
This ability to re-glove (get back up on the glove) is actually one of the most important actions the birds must learn. It's a potentially dangerous moment when they bate, if they strike something with their wings they may be injured. So I am really pleased that Avalon is quickly getting the hang of this simple looking but very delicate manuever.
Thanks again to Kate and Carol and our friends at IWS, they have been following Avalon since she was still just an egg in the nest.
Jan. 21, 2012 Video right
Last weekend in Ojai we finally had some real winter weather so I was only able to get in one session with Avalon. Kim and I had decided to let Avalon keep wearing the toe wraps we had put on last Thursday, so there was no 'medical' treatment on tap with this session. Since I knew this would be a less stressful day, I thought I would try something I have been waiting a long time to do. I decided to try to get Avalon to step up on the glove without having to first grab her physically. Every session in the past we had to force her cooperate, this time I wanted to have her cooperate on her own if possible.
I wanted to be all alone with Avalon, with no distractions, so I set up the camera on a tripod and got started. After many minutes and a few laps around the aviary, she finally settled down and landed on her favorite perch area. She let me walk right up to her and stick my arm and glove right under her chest. Then with a little complaining on her part she put one foot right on the glove. After a couple of minutes she finally stepped up with the other foot too! This happened about 23 minutes after I began.
So I finally got what I have been waiting for! Avalon voluntarily stepped onto the glove! This is actually one of my main goals with her, just to have this cooperation. This basically means that she has now started to accept me walking right up to her with my glove. Now, the new challenge is to get her to do this each time! Here, at the 5 month mark, we achieved what I thought would take at least 6 months. Now in another 6 months I hope to have her ready for public display for the first time.
Also in this session, I carried her a little farther away from her perch, which she sees as her 'safe place'. The only problem was I moved too close for the camera so I cut off both her and my heads. Not that you need to see my mug in there. I also walked around the aviary a little to keep her on her toes. She really started squawking the farther I moved from the perch. So when I finally took her back to the perch and released her she was very happy to jump off. So, a really great session and a big milestone accomplished.
Jan. 14 & 15, 2012
If you remember from last week’s report, we had examined a cut or split area on one of Avalon’s toes, and during this inspection we noticed a couple of other areas on different toes that were unusually rough and dry. We decided to treat both feet by scrubbing them with a disinfectant solution, applying a medicated balm and wrapping the areas to keep the balm in contact. We cleaned and checked her feet again on Wednesday and they were softer and healing, so we applied fresh balm and re-wrapped. The amazing thing is that she hasn’t tried to rip off the toe wraps! She doesn’t seem to mind them at all.
When Avalon arrived at ORC In August, 2011, she had some unusual areas of wear on her feet and they seemed to improve as she settled into her new enclosure. These are the same areas we are treating now. We aren’t sure what caused the cut, so we have carefully gone over her flight cage to cover anything that could possibly be a problem. We have had very dry weather and very low humidity for a few weeks, so that has probably contributed to this. We are also adding padding and changing some perches. Anytime a large, heavy bird like a bald eagle is kept in captivity, there are challenges to maintaining their feet in good condition. She is still adapting to this enclosure and developing her habits and patterns of movement, so we will have to fine tune everything as we go along. In the meantime, we are carefully monitoring her feet and taking the precaution of wrapping for now.
I spent a couple of hours working inside Avalon’s aviary on Saturday before I attempted to work with her on a glove. At the same time, we had a crew of volunteers working on our new big flight cage right next to us. In other words, it was pretty noisy with occasional power tool sounds and people talking nearby. Avalon handled all of this very well, and we had a great session in the middle of it all. In the videos right you see me chasing her around to catch her to start the session. After that, she stepped up and I was able to walk around a little bit with Avalon standing on the glove while moving away from her ‘security’ perch. She didn’t jump off the glove once! She also does not like the crutch I need to support my arm if I have her on glove more than a few minutes, but she seemed to accept it OK today. All in all it was a very productive session today.
Then, on Sunday, we cleaned, inspected and re-wrapped Avalon’s toes again, so we have a 2nd bonus video this week! We went inside the med room in the building to do this, so we hooded her to help keep her calm. Afterward we placed her up on the glove while still hooded. Avalon did really well, and I walked her all the way out to the aviary on the glove. When we got inside the aviary, I was very pleased that she stayed on the glove when I removed the hood. That is a first! We are surely making progress. Stay tuned.
Jan. 8, 2012
Happy New year Avalon fans! Today I went to catch Avalon for a training session and I noticed that she had some blood on her left foot. I called in Kim Stroud, the ORC director, to do an exam. As you can see in this latest video, we decided to clean the feet, treat with medicated balm and wrap some of her toes. We had to wrap Avalon up in a towel to do the foot care, so she seemed in a subdued, rather cooperative mood once we finally got started going from the perch to the glove. Video right
Today Avalon allowed Tawny to get close enough to get some full screen close-ups. She was pretty calm and did no bating. Then later in the video, you can see me attempting to move her on the glove a very short distance away from the safety of the perch. Then I have her dismount the glove back onto the perch. I am able to do this several times with good success each time. Avalon's cooperation shows in several ways today: She stepped up onto the glove rather quickly each time, she dismounted back to the perch calmly without trying to fly away, and she allowed me to step away between attempts and walk right back up to take the jesses, again without flying away. I'm really pleased with the way our session went today.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
See video of Avalon's first time on a glove!
|
|
|
|
|
The Journey... K-04 'Avalon' - Avalon's story from hatching on Catalina Island until she arrived injured at the Sarvey Wildlife Center.
|
|
|
"From the Beginning" - Avalon's Story
video courtesy of Kate Laird
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Feb. 4, 2012 - Guest video by Kate Laird & Carole Wood
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Want to help us feed and care for Avalon? Eagles are expensive! Costs include aviary construction, flying Avalon from Washington to LAX, transportation to ORC Wildlife Rehabilitation Center and providing lots of fish for her to eat! Be one of the first to adopt Avalon!
Adoption for 1 year - $500
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Avalon is in the Ventura County Star news!
Check out this awesome video about Avalon and ORC's Open House. Read the full story and see more photos Here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Oct 22, 2011 - ORC and Avalon are in the news! Check out this great story and video featured on NBCLosAngeles.com.
|
|
The video below is courtesy of the Orange County Register
and King5.com. It is the news story that aired in March 2011,
just a couple of weeks after Avalon was rescued.
|
|
|
|
