Visiting The Raptor Center in St. Paul

Raptors are birds that have three special things:

1.    They can see very well

2.    They have very sharp talons to grab and kill their food

3.    They have a hooked beak to break apart their food

A few examples of raptors would be vultures, owls, hawks, eagles, falcons, ospreys, and kites.  Raptors come in all different sizes.  The smallest raptor is the Elf Owl, which weighs less than one and a half ounces and is about the same size as a sparrow (only five inches tall).  The biggest raptor ever to live was the Teratorn.  It lived during the last Ice Age but is now extinct.  Its wing span was between 12 to 25 feet!

Raptors eat only meat.  They may eat rodents, fish, bugs, lizards, frogs, snakes, or even other birds and smaller raptors.  Most raptors kill their prey.  Vultures are the only raptors that eat dead prey. 

Raptors may live in many different places.  The Great Horned Owl doesn’t build its own nest.  It finds old nests made by hawks or even squirrels.  Eagles and ospreys build huge nests out of sticks.  Some raptor nests can weigh more than a ton!  The Elf Owl lives in tree holes.  Burrowing owls live in holes in the ground.  They use holes dug by prairie dogs, tortoises, or kangaroo rats, or even dig their own.

GRIFFON VULTURE

Image of Griffon Vulture at Oakland Zoo, by Ingrid Taylar -Wikipedia

One of my favorite raptors is the vulture because it is very different than other raptors.  Vultures mostly eat dead animals.  They are the only raptor that can smell, because they need to smell to find dead prey.  Because of their very good sense of smell, they have been used to help find gas leaks.  When vultures get frightened, they throw up!  This scares off what’s bothering them and lightens them to fly away.

Many people think that vultures are ugly and disgusting, but some vultures are actually very beautiful!  Below are three of my favorites.

KING VULTURE

Sarcoramphus papa (Königsgeier - King Vulture) - Weltvogelpark Walsrode 2013-01" by Olaf Oliviero Riemer.

CALIFORNIA CONDOR

BEARDED VULTURE

http://imgur.com/a/mNNno

I’m not the only one who loves vultures.  The people in Hinckley, Ohio have a Buzzard Festival every spring to celebrate the return of the turkey vultures.

Yesterday, I went to the Raptor Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.  I met with Joanne Peterson to tour the Raptor Center and learn more about raptors and what they do there.  

CHECK OUT THE SIZE OF THIS RAPTOR'S NEST!

CLICK ON LINK TO GO TO THE RAPTOR CENTER'S WEBSITE

At the Raptor Center, they educate the public about raptors, rehabilitate injured raptors, and study raptors to find ways to help raptors and people.  At the Raptor Center, they take in up to 900 hurt raptors each year.  Most of the raptors get released back to the wild, but some raptors can’t be rehabilitated and stay as education birds.  

I got to see a lot of raptors, but the Raptor Center is being renovated so they weren’t in their usual places.  Here are some bald eagles that I saw at the Raptor Center.  The first picture is of two male eagles and the second picture is a female eagle.

Two male bald eagles

Female bald eagle

I was surprised to learn that female eagles are bigger than male eagles.  This female eagle weighs about 10 pounds, while the male eagles weigh about 8 pounds.

At the Raptor Center, you can see what your “wingspan” is.  I found that I have the same wingspan as a Great Gray Owl.

CLICK TO GO TO THE RAPTOR CENTER FOR MORE INFO

I asked Joanne how people can help raptors.  She said that we can help by keeping the environment clean by recycling and reducing our garbage.  She told me that they did a study and found out that here in the St. Paul/Minneapolis metro area, all the garbage we throw away in one year could fill the old Metrodome Stadium seven times!

The Raptor Center has a program called Recycling for Raptors.  You can bring your old inkjet cartridges to be recycled.  This keeps them out of landfills and raises money for the Raptor Center.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed learning about raptors!

Sources
Evert, Laura and Lynch, Wayne.  Birds of Prey.  Minnetonka, Minnesota: North Word, 2005.  Print.

Laubach, Christina M., Laubach, Rene, and Smith, Charles W. G.  Raptor!  A kid’s guide to birds of prey.  China: C & C Offset Printing Co., Ltd., 2002.  Print.

Peterson, Joanne.  "Raptor Center."  Personal interview.  07 Feb. 2015.

Snyder, Noel and Helen.  Raptors of North America.  St. Paul, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 2006.  Print.

University of Minnesota Raptor Center.  “Recycling for Raptors.”  Web.  8 February 2015  http://www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu/SupportGetInvolved/Recycling/home.html.