BH Raptors returning to Hill City July 9

By: 
Esther Noe

When most people hear the word raptor, their first thought is probably a vicious dinosaur from the Jurassic Park movies. However, at the Black Hills Raptor Center (BHRC), raptors are classified as birds with sharp beaks, razor talons and incredible eyesight. These types of birds are common in the Black Hills but are often only seen at a distance.
Thanks to the Hill City Public Library's free summer programs, many children and adults were able to see some raptors up close at the Boys and Girls Club on June 28. During their presentation, Maggie Engler and Judi Joba brought four different raptors and told the attendees a little bit about them.
These birds are not pets. They are deadly hunters capable of capturing prey and tearing it apart.
“The reason we have all these birds is they cannot be put back in the wild,” Joba said.
This is because they were injured or imprinted by humans and can no longer survive alone.
The first raptors showed to the audience were two American Kestrels named Hendrix and Joplin. These are the smallest species of falcon in North America and can fly 85 miles per hour. They also have black stripes on their faces to protect their eyes from the sunlight just like football players. Meanwhile, unlike mammals who have seven bones in their neck, these birds have 14 to allow their heads a nearly full range of motion since their eyes cannot move.
The next bird brought out for viewing was an Eastern Screech Owl named Little Red Riding Hoot. This female raptor has lived at the BHRC for 10 years since she is blind in one eye. Her screech owl friend The Big Bad Wolf or Wolfie for short is also at the BHRC for vision issues. Although most people think owls hoot, this kind screeches “like a horse on helium,” according to Engler.
A Red-tailed Hawk named Freya was introduced to the crowd. Due to the incorrect healing of her broken wing bones, Freya cannot fly strong enough to hunt on her own and thus lives at the BHRC. This type of raptor is also known as a chicken hawk and eats mice, snakes, prairie dogs, birds, gophers, chipmunks and squirrels among other things. The attendees particularly enjoyed her immense size in comparison to the smaller raptors.
Another fun fact shared during the presentation is that “If you have a freshly dead raptor, and you dissect its head and weigh its two eyeballs on one scale and its brain on the other scale, the eyeballs weigh more than the bird’s brain,” Engler said.
Meanwhile, Joba said “If we start with two mice on Jan. 1, a boy and a girl, and they grow up and have baby mice, and those mice grow up and have mice, and those mice grow up and have mice at the end of one year, you would have over half a million mice.” It is a good thing there are raptors to eat the mice.
Educational programs like this are at the heart of the BHRC, and they do about 120 of them a year.
“For me, it is a way to get kids hooked back on nature so they’re more interested in nature than video games,” said Engler.
Equipped with a background in environmental education and natural resources, Engler created the BHRC in the fall of 2010 as a volunteer, nonprofit organization based east of Rapid City. Its mission is “to conserve and protect native birds of prey and their natural habitats through education, rehabilitation and research.”
Currently, the BHRC is working with eight birds with hopefully two more coming soon. However, the daily care and feeding of this many birds is a lot of work. There is a morning and evening crew who are responsible for food preparation, feeding and cleaning. They also have people to take calls about injured birds, serve at special events, butcher bird food and take photos. There are 70 volunteers total.
“Every single thing is critical to make the whole operation work so it takes a bunch of volunteers,” said Engler.
In 2017, the BHRC bought five acres to expand the organization. Now, “We’re getting ready to build our wildlife clinic,” said Engler. This will include an ICU, a food prep room, radiology, exam space, surgical space and whatever else they need to care for the sick and injured.
The BHRC will be back in Hill City July 9 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at The Farmer’s Daughter. Volunteers will spread out around the store with a raptor on a glove or support and visit with whoever comes by. People can spend as much time at the meet and greet as they want. Although no one is allowed to touch the birds, there will be a table set up with feathers and bones from deceased birds that can be felt.
“The birds are stunningly beautiful, and it just makes my heart happy to help them,” said Lorena Freis, owner of The Farmer’s Daughter. “We love having them in our store. Every one of them is broken in some way, but yet they are still beautiful. Kind of like us as people.”
This event is a fundraiser for the BHRC. All the money raised will go toward building their new wildlife clinic.
So “come on out and have a good time,” said Freis. “We would love to see you here.”
To learn more about the BHRC, go to blackhillsrap
torcenter.org.

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