Today several fun things happened, which is exciting since everything has been pretty routine lately.
For one I got to help with the trimming of our hawk, Lady's, claws. As a chick she was improperly cared for which included being fed a diet of hamburger meat. Due to lack of proper nutrition her talons formed weird and she is unable to unclench them now. Because of this we routinely have to trim her claws so that they do not dig into the pad of her feet. In order to do this it requires two people. We go into her enclosure and throw a towel over her, losing her sight calms her considerably and makes it easier to get her without harm. I then held her on her back in my lap while the keeper trimmed each of her claws.
After we trimmed Lady's claws we worked on the Virginia Rails new enclosure. She has been very nervous since we began introducing her to the outside so we decided to put up barriers on all of her walls in order to give her privacy. As she gets less nervous we will begin to remove barriers slowly until there are no longer any up. I also got to do more bird handling training. Today I got to take Blue, one of our burrowing owls, out on a walk around the grounds introducing her to people and posing her for pictures with guests. We were out for about a half hour and everything went smoothly.
Lastly, we went into all of the enclosures and removed old perch grass (turf) and cut/attached new pieces to the perches. This was especially gratifying in Pico, the greater horned owl's, enclosure because he generally does not move at all during the day (he's nocturnal), yet once we finished and left his enclosure he immediately flew over to his new perch and walked up and down it while making his happy cooing noises.
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