News From The Mews

The fiercest little predator in the Northwoods just may be the Tiger Salamander. Though they don't roar like a tiger, they are just as dangerous - if you are a worm, that is. Our little salamander snaps at anything that moves nearby when he's hungry. If he's lucky, he grabs hold of a worm and shakes it vigorously to subdue the prey's movements. And in just a few gulps, the worm, who is nearly as long as the predator, is swallowed whole.

Cleaning the raptor mews may be a dirty job, but it can lead to some interesting discoveries. Under a pile of shredded newspaper, I found this feather from Carson the Red-tailed Hawk. The central shaft forms a slight S-curve, telling me this came from Carson's alula, a bird's "thumb."  I noticed faint lines along the feather vane like frets on a guitar's fingerboard. Known as stress bars, these lines are weak spots in the feather. They form if the bird undergoes heightened stress as the feather grows. It might be physical stress like starvation or psychological stress like escaping a predator. For Carson, I believe these stress bars are caused by her permanent wing injury affecting feather growth.

"I'm surprised that the birds seem relatively fine with the construction noise behind the mew," I told my raptor training mentor at our last check-in meeting. "They're little on edge when it's particularly noisy, but generally okay." "That sounds about right," she said. "Noises alone are usually less scary for raptors than seeing the action." A crew and heavy machinery across the street make Aldo a little nervous. Aldo the kestrel demonstrated this to be true last week. An excavator digging directly behind the building, out of sight? No problem. Aldo might pause before hopping on the scale, but he'll get there. A crew doing roadwork across the street, farther away but in view from his window? Scary! I entered the mew to weigh Aldo, but he was much too busy keeping an eye on the construction equipment and screeching his alarm call loudly. Any training would have to wait until the roadwork was done.

I'm at the kitchen counter preparing dinner and my husband walks through the room. He wraps his arms around me and I nearly jump out of my skin because I wasn't expecting it. The surprise made even a sweet gesture not very enjoyable.  Now imagine I'm preoccupied with eating my meal and someone suddenly pokes me with a needle - my annual flu shot. Yikes! That would be very upsetting.  What if I knew that injection was coming? What if I could consent to it? Wouldn't that make the unpleasantness of a painful poke a little bit better? That's the idea with "predictor cues," a concept I learned from cat trainer Tabitha Kucera. One method she uses to give cats voluntary injections is Pet-Pinch-Poke . She says "pet," telling the cat that she is about to touch them. Then she says "pinch" before tenting the skin and "poke" before inserting the needle. The cat knows what is coming with each step, taking the surprise out of the interacti...

Aldo loves showing off his nest during the breeding season. When the kestrel hears me coming, he jumps down to the ground in the back corner of his mew. He trills excitedly, bowing. This behavior is rather inconvenient for me when I need to weigh him or take him out for a program. Since he's looking for attention in his nest, I remove his audience by stepping out of sight. I quietly wait in the hallway. I listen for the flutter of his wings to tell me he has flown back to a perch. Then I know it is safe to enter the mew and give him a treat. I didn't realize how much I rely on my ears during this morning routine until construction started on the library's new building next door. An excavator moving dirt is loud enough to drown out the subtle whisper of Aldo's wings in flight. I shift my strategy and shuffle down the hallway just enough to be able to see the perch through the window. I still remain quiet until I see Aldo appear, giving me the green light to enter the mew...

Normally a rather debonaire fellow, Aldo the American Kestrel was a soggy mess after an enthusiastic bath on a hot and muggy day. I chuckled at his disheveled look. His feathers were soaked and matted together, revealing an interesting piece of anatomy. Just behind his eye was a hole - his ear!  Mammals have prominent external pinnae that stick out from the head to funnel sound into the inner ears. Bird ears are less conspicuous. The simple hole is usually covered by protective feathers, so this was a rare glimpse at Aldo's auditory system!