Sunny Day at the Raptor Center

Wednesday was such a clear and sunny day that I went to the Cascades Raptor Center.  Again.

The nice thing about visiting them during a weekday afternoon is that there's fewer visitors there, and I don't have to worry about being One of Those Photographers Who Stands In Front of Everything so much.

Wednesday was the brightest day I've visited, which introduced new challenges photographing the residents.  I'm not sure if using an ISO at 800 is a good thing or a bad thing--on one hand, a number of the raptors think a camera tripod is the handle to a bird net vets use, and a fast film speed means I don't have to use the tripod to get a still shot.  On the other hand, some of my photos seemed washed out, and I'm wondering if a lower ISO and a slightly slower shutter speed would have resulted in better hues.

Dmitri (Eurasian Eagle-Owl), looked stereotypically professorial in his aviary.   In addition to being a photogenic animal to begin with, his aviary is lined up along a east-west axis, which allows for good lighting on him and not on the aviary mesh.   He wasn't as vocal this time around as he was the other day.

This time around, I managed to catch Banjo (Eastern Red-tailed Hawk) being fed outside her aviary.  Usually, Banjo perches near the front of her enclosure and puffs up her chest feathers; this is cool, because Banjo's chest feathers have a kind of crescent and oak-leaf, brown-and-cream pattern on them.  I really do want to study the design on her feathers and transfer it to a creamy, ruffled scarf.

Eating snacks on a leather glove, she looks more streamlined.  I hadn't realized how dark she is on top because her perch is above eye level.  I felt lucky to see her out of her aviary, and I especially appreciated being able to get a photo of her with her wings spread -- the arcs and curves of the wings are beautiful, and the arrays of patterned feathers are fascinating.

Ra (Burrowing Owl) was out and about, and many of the other residents were resting.

It did occur to me that I had just visited the Center four days prior, and that this second visit was possibly a little obsessive.  I enjoy visiting, and I'm trying to work out why.  Part of it is raptors are cool; part of it is a desire to appreciate their natural beauty, with a notion of attempting to reproduce it in art; part of it is the Center is in a wooded area that's relaxing; part of it is that it's an excuse to photograph things.  In any case, I think I do want to pace myself so I don't burn out on it

I visited everyone, and then was thinking that I should head back home when Dante (Golden Eagle) came out for his feeding and training session.

Dante is a vocal raptor, and makes a lot of excited squeaky noises as he's fed bits of rabbit haunch.  What was most interesting was that his handler had to get some more rabbit bits, and Dante knew the tread of his walk across the gravel from twenty-five feet away on the other side of a fence.

Dante is also handsome and photogenic.   He also is dog-like with respect to food.  As I've written before, Dante slobbers a lot in order to be able to swallow rabbit haunches whole.  The new Gross Bird Fact I learned was that he sometimes cleans post-feeding fur bits off of his beak by rubbing it on his handler's beard.

I'm pretty sure this is a few degrees worse than having Smokey groom us.

Raptor Weekend

 We had a quiet weekend, which was a nice way to unwind from a hectic week.


The nights have been just above freezing, but the days have warmed up to the high fifties.  The evening skies have featured the new moon, and the morning skies Orion.


Saturday, Mark and I took a hike to the Cascades Raptor Center.  They had been closed for about three weeks to deal with some construction, and this was their first open day for a while, so there were a lot of visitors.


We were lucky enough to see three of the raptors out of their mews, a hawk, a screech owl, and a golden eagle.   Mark tolerated my photography as we listened to docents tell us about the various birds and answer visitor questions.


I didn't realize that raptors salivate a lot, and apparently, one docent gets a lot of bird spit on him.  The most surprising observation was how much Dante, the golden eagle, squeaked like my folks' German shepherd when I rub her ears as he tore a rabbit carcass apart.


I managed a few pictures of the other birds, and it was a chance to experiment with making the camera focus on a bird and not on the bars of its enclosure.   I'm not sure that I had a favorite raptor; I like them all and was enamored by all their sleek lines, and curved beaks, and the patterns of their feathers.


Mark fell in love with the snowy owl's feet -- it had white downey feathers that looked like fluffy slippers with sharp claws poking out at the toes.  I obviously have to get get him snow owl slippers for Christmas.


We stayed for probably something like two hours before hiking back to the car.  Just before we got to the parking lot, Mark spied a wild red tailed hawk in a tree.