Mark Your Calendar - Our annual and very special Earth Day Open House will be Sunday, April 17, 2005 from Noon to 5 p.m.  Come join us for music, refreshments, activities and behind-the-scenes tours...and admission is free.

Membership / Donations - Click here to join or renew your membership or make a donation online.   Any donation you can make would be greatly appreciated and wisely used - our focus is on the birds and education programs, with overhead and fund-raising expenses kept to a minimum.

And a very special thank you to Lewis Davies, a young man who raised donations for us rather than receive presents on his birthday!  This is the second year he has done that for us, and he did the same one year for a childrens musical group.  What an amazing and generous young man!  (Says some neat things about his parents, as well, if you ask me!)

Grants - A sincere Thank You to the Willamette National Forest office of the US Forest Service, Harris Foundation, Kinsman Foundation, and Lane County Audubon!   These organizations have recently provided vital financial support for CRC programs.

Flight Cages - The two 100 foot flight cages built as a result of the support of the Kinsman Foundation are regularly put to good use.  This includes the flight training of two young spotted owls brought over by the High Desert Museum. 

eCards - Why not send a beautiful Raptor Card via e-mail to family and friends.  The web site has a great e-Card feature.  Click here to send one.

Science Projects - Do you have kids in the family who need a topic for a science project?  Check out the Raptor KidsNest for suggestions

Volunteer Feature - Jean Daugherty is a native Oregonian who has been volunteering with CRC since January of 2001.  A social worker by profession, she runs a transition program for women being released from prison and jail in Eugene.  She is a member of the CRC Education Team and has been glove training birds since November of 2003.

Sponsorships of education birds have been popular this year and we are very grateful!  Sponsors get a certificate with a photo of their bird, the bird's natural and personal history, an acknowledgment of their support on their bird's enclosure and on our website, and a family membership to Cascades Raptor Center for a year, which includes free admission and discounts in the gift shop.  The birds get someone besides us knowing just how special they are, plus some sponsors bring treats for their bird, like crickets for the saw-whet owls or cat food for the corvids!  We love it and appreciate it very much!  Food for these magnificent birds is a huge portion of our costs, and sponsors help carry some of that burden.  If you might be interested in sponsoring one of our wonderful birds, click here for more information.

Suggestions - Have a suggestion?  We would love to hear from you.  Just write to Louise@eRaptors.org

Thank you for your interest in the Cascades Raptor Center!  Remember, any time you would like to unsubscribe to this newsletter, just reply to this e-mail with unsubscribe in the subject line.

Education - During 2004, our birds helped bring a message of conservation and wonder to over 50,000 people, in one way or another!  We presented 40 programs in area schools, at Service Clubs, and community centers, and hosted 86 field trips to the Center - which together totaled over 4,500 participants in our Raptor Experience programs, from pre-school to college classes and senior birders. We also spent 15 days with booth displays at community events like the Children's Celebration, Lane County Fair and the Eugene Celebration!  And, of course, we were open to the public 4 days each week, plus the Open House, so that well over 3,500 more visitors had a chance to experience the wonderful variety of birds we have on-site.

Our Education Team has grown to 15 members, so we are ready to bring the world of raptors to even more people during 2005.  In-house, we presented a 2-day intensive workshop for a dozen of our volunteers providing them with a hands-on introduction to raptor rehabilitation, from physical exams to tube-feeding, giving shots to immobilizing fractures, as well as providing an overview of shock, diseases, treatments, housing, regulations, and more!  We have a GREAT crew of volunteers at Cascades Raptor Center!

West Nile Virus - WNV finally hit Oregon in August, starting first in the southeast corner of the state and moving towards us from there and up from the southwest. It had a very odd progression through California, spending a good part of the spring in just a few heavily hit counties in southern California and then, literally, racing through the rest of the state in only a few weeks. The first cases, in crows, confirmed in Lane County were in mid-September, and our first case - which was also the first non-corvid bird confirmed in the state - was found in mid-October. 

From Louise, Thoughts on Winter - The life of raptors, or any predator, is a hard one.  Split-second timing, practice, top-notch conditioning, luck, being in the right place at the right time, weather, perfect eyesight, perfect feathers, good hearing, experience, the availability of prey and the absence of predators are all factors in making it through a winter.

I can do whole programs on the phenomenal hearing and silent flight of the nocturnal owls, the eyesight of hawks or eagles with eight times the cells that we have in our eyes that lets them pick out their prey a mile away, the amazing speed and streamlined design of falcons, the incredible maneuverability of the forest hawks as they dash through the woods after small birds... but the truth is also that between 60% and 80% of the young die in their first year, and approximately 25% of the adults every year after that. And winter is the highest mortality time of the year.

Despite all the superior adaptations each type of bird has perfected for hunting, they are successful catching a meal only once out of every 4 or 5 attempts. And, of course, not knowing which of those attempts will be the successful one means they need to give it all or nothing ... going for it 100% or pulling out before expending extra energy, if the chances look slim.

Winter exacerbates the challenges - the season usually means that certain types of prey, like insects, are gone, and that the young, slow, old, or sick easy prey found in summer are scarce and harder to find, as cold weather and less food takes their toll on the prey species also. The cold weather and harder-to-find meals mean a lot more energy is expended with less return, with perhaps longer times between meals. Nature has come up with some amazing adaptations for that as well, of course: a metabolism that seems to slow down and make the most out of every calorie.

I know our birds eat less in the winter and actually gain weight!

Raptors definitely are designed for feast or famine, and can go for a few days without eating, with little damage, in the event of a bad storm or often while migrating - if they have good initial reserves.

Late fall and early winter, we almost always see a spike in the number of hospital cases we get in. In-migration into the Willamette Valley of merlins, red-tailed and rough-legged hawks, saw-whet owls, and others, a substantial proportion of which are young of the year, leads to a high level of traumatic injury and starvation. Youngsters that are having a hard time, not having gotten hunting strategies perfected, can start taking extra chances, leading to injury - hitting fences, power lines, cars, windows. Even minor injury in an adult or younger bird that is already on the edge can lead to some days without food, which leads to debilitation, immune system suppression, overgrowth of parasites, emaciation, anemia ... before they are weak enough to let themselves be noticed and caught and brought in for care.

Recent cases coming into the clinic were a very, very thin adult red-tailed hawk with an old fracture - multiple fractures, actually - of the lower leg, which was trying to heal but since he could not use that foot, his other foot had gotten infected from over-use; another red-tailed hawk with both legs broken, found in a ditch beside a road; another young, starving red-tail with an old fracture of the humerus in one wing. Probably the most emaciated great horned owl I have ever seen. A barred owl hit by car with a slight eye injury, with an older gun-shot injury to one wing. A merlin with multiple fractures of the phalanges (the digits out at the very end of the wing); a pygmy owl (fall is always pygmy owl season) with multiple fractures of the humerus; a screech owl with a vertebral displacement which was, oddly, not paralyzed. Some die, some we have to euthanize, some will survive but not be releasable ... so, oh! how we cherish the ones we get to release!

We had a sharp-shinned hawk and a great horned owl, both of whom had a wing broken in two places, who had poor prognoses but managed to beat the odds. We actually got permission to keep the hawk as an education bird, but were still cheering her on for potential release ... they both improved greatly at flying UP, then at maneuvering and long flights, and finally were successful on live prey!  We were delighted to release them both on our property.  Although we normally like to return adult birds to their point of origin, these were both 2004 hatch-year birds that would not yet have claimed a territory and were found in dangerous areas.  From here, they can disperse - there is good habitat for both of them in just about any direction.

Winter will soon be replaced by spring, and reports are in from area farmers of a bumper supply of small rodents.  We always look forward to baby season in the hope of a higher proportion of releases - less trauma, more cases where we can just put them right back under the care of mom and dad!