News From The Mews

 

"Would you be willing to donate an egg or two to science?" I asked Hayley, the Museum's Assistant Director. Hayley has a flock of backyard chickens at home and I was wondering if their eggs are stronger than store-bought eggs. Luckily she was willing to sacrifice a few for the raptor program demonstration. After meeting Aldo the American Kestrel during each live raptor program, we take a look at the problems associated with DDT that their cousin the Peregrine Falcon faced in the mid-1900's. DDT was fantastic at killing pesky insects, but it also thinned the falcon's egg shells so much that the eggs broke during incubation.  "I made an omelet for breakfast this morning," I tell the audience. "And those eggs were pretty easy to crack. If eggs are already pretty fragile, maybe we didn't have too much of an impact on the birds." So I set up the Egg Smasher for a science experiment: how much weight can a healthy egg hold? We slowly add weight to...

I always hope for a timely response to cues during training sessions. When I ask Aldo to step on my glove, a behavior that he knows well, I want him to step up right away. If he doesn't, I know that he's not interested or distracted by something. For new behaviors, I'll give the birds more time to figure out what I'm asking them to do. I've found that Otto needs plenty of this "processing time." When I ask Otto to go in his crate, he has to think about it first. I know he's not ignoring me or saying "no" because he is still engaged. He needs to evaluate the distractions outside, check if there are any tidbits remaining at his feet, loosen up his foot if he thinks he has a piece of food, and figure out what I'm waiting for him to do. Once everything checks out, he's ready to hop in the crate.  The good news is that with practice, Otto's processing time is decreasing. Sometimes he walks into the crate right away, eager for more tid...

Glove training wasn't working. Otto the Great Horned Owl was telling me repeatedly, "no thanks." So I had a decision to make. Would I continue training on the glove? I still had a hundred and one ways to change up my approach to see what would work for Otto. Or would I shift gears to try something new? I felt like I needed a break from the glove (and I'm sure Otto did, too), so I decided on a gear shift. After wiping off a layer of dust from the plastic, I hauled the bottom half of Otto's crate into his mew. Our new goal: crate training. If Otto could walk into his crate, in theory I could carry the crate into the classroom and he could walk out onto a perch during a program. He wouldn't need to sit on my glove at all! I was determined to set up Otto for success, so we started small in our first session. Would he enter the bottom half of his crate for a piece of food? I set a chunk of rat inside and he practically ran in to get it. Success! Now would he stay t...

When the tornado warning alert blared from my phone last week on my day off, I wasn't sure how worried to be. Just to be safe, I decided to move our "kids" - Wally and Calypso, our pet rabbit and cat - to an interior room of the house to wait out the storm. Wally got his favorite hay treats in his crate and I knew that would keep him happy for a while. Calypso, on the other hand, is not a fan of thunderstorms. She cried and pawed at the door of her carrier. To help her calm down, I played relaxing "music for cats" on my phone. She was still anxious and I remembered a trick I'd been practicing with Otto the Great Horned Owl. Just like I did with Otto , I started the 123 pattern game by saying "1, 2, 3" and offering Calypso a treat.  1, 2, 3, treat, 1, 2, 3, treat, 1, 2, 3, treat. Any animal, whether they are an owl or a cat, can find comfort in predictability and patterns. Calypso stopped trying to escape her crate and sat down to wait for the next ...