 thank you for joining us on In the Studio. Today we'll be talking about the California Raptor Center at UC Davis. The Raptor Center is part of the number one ranked School of Veterinary Medicine here in Davis and I'm joined today by two guests. First to my left is the Director of the Raptor Center Dr. Michelle Hawkins and Julie Cotton who is our outreach coordinator at the Raptor Center. Thank you for joining me. Hi good afternoon Matt. And who did you bring with you today? So this is Grasshopper. Grasshopper is a Swainsons Hawk and they are threatened here in California because they nest during their migration after their migration from South America and because of pesticides and loss of habitat here in the United States their nesting sites have dwindled and so now they're a threatened species in California. And Swainsons Hawk they are native to California they've always been here? We do have Swainsons Hawk here and pretty much through the United States but we're part of the Pacific Coast Flyway migratory pathway for them as well. Excellent and who do you have today Julie? So I have with me this is Forrest. He is a great horned owl. Forrest is about two years old now he was brought to us at the Raptor Center as a baby bird in the summer of 2015 and there's nothing physically wrong with him he's a very healthy bird but unfortunately the person who found him kept him for too long before they brought him to us he became what's called imprinted on humans so he lacks the normal behaviors of a wild great horned owl and he is far too comfortable around humans to ever go back out into the wild. Now great horned owls are a very common species one that people very likely have either seen or heard in their own neighborhoods. You can find these guys across the United States from the west coast all the way to the east coast. They are the owl that makes the very stereotypical hooting sound the hoot hoot hoot that we're very used to hearing at night in and around our neighborhoods in forests. They're a very adaptable and powerful nighttime predator. Okay so Forrest cannot be released back is that the same with Grasshopper? Yes he came to us as a juvenile and he had cataracts in both of his eyes and so we were able to help him get vision in one of his eyes but not in the other and these birds need both of their eyes to be able to hunt correctly. So if we have a bird that is a daytime bird that has to use its eyes to hunt whereas a lot of the owls use their ears and acoustically identify their prey. These guys have to have both of their eyes working and functioning properly to be able to to do their job out in the wild. Okay so both Forrest and Grasshopper then are education birds or what you call the education birds for the raptor center. There are two of our educational ambassadors. Great yeah we have about 35 birds that currently at the raptor center that visitors can come and see whenever they would like. Some of them are trained to the glove as these birds so that we can take them and take them out into the public so that we can educate the public about about these birds and how we impact their environments. And maybe we should get into that a little bit. If someone were to want an educational program to come to their school or something like that how would they go about getting that? So we offer programs both on-site at the California Raptor Center as well as off-site where we bring some of these animals in our museum specimens to classrooms. We do have an education office anybody who's interested in one of these programs is welcome to give us a call. We do recommend calling at least a month or two in advance because we actually do book out pretty quickly. So we do offer those on-site tours where you can come to our facility you can see some of the birds as Michelle mentioned we have up to about 30-40 birds that live full time at the raptor center so people can come and get a class on raptors get a guided tour around the facility. We also have off-sites which I lead we go to classrooms we go to community centers in and around this area we bring birds like forest and grasshopper and same idea we give basic classes about raptors teaching people about the birds in our area and what they can do to help our wild raptors. But there are other ways that people can come and visit these birds and find out more about them from us we do have two open house events every year one is coming up on May 6th May 6th Saturday May 6th so it's always on the first Saturday in May or the third Saturday in October we're also now participating in Biodiversity Day and these birds will be welcoming visitors next weekend not this coming weekend but the following weekend April 22nd for the UC Davis picnic excellent and so we've talked about the raptor center a little bit let's talk about where it is exactly in the town of Davis if you would like to come and visit the raptor center how would you get there yeah so we are about a mile south of the campus on old Davis road excellent so you just go under the overpass the I80 overpass and straight over the train tracks over the railroad tracks that are now open again for those of you and Davis and you take a left right before the levy yes and the raptor centers open Monday through Friday Monday through Saturday Monday through Friday is 8 to 5 and on Saturday is 9 to 12 9 to 12 on Saturday and people are welcome any time there's no fee for parking or anything like that they can just come and perform a self-guided tour at any time absolutely as long as it's a group of under six people you can do a self-guided tour we do ask if you have a group of more than six people to make a reservation for one of those on-site tours at the raptor center but yes as you were saying we are open on weekdays from 9 to 4 and we're open on Saturdays from 9 to 12 and then you can check our website and check our bulletin board at the raptor center for updates on any special events around campus that we're participating in and something fun to do too is bring a bag lunch there's a nice picnic table right out there at the raptor center and another fun thing at the raptor center is not only do we have the raptors that stay at the raptor center there are many wild raptors that live in and around davis and there's a great walking trail along the creek where you can see species such as wild swainsons hawks red-shouldered hawks i've seen harriers kites so there's a diversity of wild raptors that you have the opportunity to see around the raptor center and so these are education birds but then the raptor center also rehabilitates wild raptors that are injured or sick and but the public doesn't usually get to see those right that's right um yeah i mean our primary mission is to provide medical care and rehabilitate these birds we want to see these birds going back out into the wild for sure so the the veterinary medical teaching hospital at uc davis um it provides all of our medical care so our team there um we can we can work with all of the specialists in the hospital if we need that level of care so we feel like we can offer the highest level of care these birds could get anywhere and then once we've we've completed the medical at least treatment plan and if the birds can get out of a hospital cage we will get them back out to the raptor center so that they can be put into a cage there where they're exposed to the natural sounds that they're accustomed to that helps to minimize their stress while they're in captivity rehabilitating and then um and then a group uh brett stedman leads our group for the rehabilitation end of things once these birds for whatever their injury or illness was have recovered from that it's just like us if we have a fracture um we it takes many weeks to really rehabilitate that with physical therapy and getting your strength back so think about having to get up and fly and so we work with these birds for a good while and and have confidence that their strength is back before we release them back out and i should mention the numbers of birds that get brought to the raptor center in any given year can vary of course depending on the conditions of that year but we can get between 200 and some years even 300 birds brought to the raptor center we take care of injured orphaned and sick birds of prey and our ultimate goal is to get them back out into the wild where they belong so this time of year is our baby season so our nursery is in full swing usually the first crop of birds that come in in fact are babies of this species we get great horned owls they breed early in the year and we're starting to get some of the hawk species as well little babies that have just hatched so we take care of birds from all the way from young birds to older birds all species of raptor in this area can come through the raptor center and actually in fact you know we're saying that these um we had these chicks that literally were coming out of the egg last week when they came in we also incubate eggs if they're brought to us very commonly harris hawks will nest in the grasslands in the agricultural excuse me harriers harrier hawks in the grasslands in the agricultural areas and so when those fields are mowed they'll often find the nests and unfortunately they need that land so they'll have to remove the nest but we'll try to then take that bird through um basically pipping from the egg and then get it up to the point that it's strong enough to fly away on its own and i think there's an important lesson that forest here can teach us about baby birds i had mentioned earlier that he's imprinted on humans well imprinting on humans happens when a baby bird sees humans feeding it hears human voices i should note number one it's illegal for anyone without a permit to keep one of these birds so anyone who finds a baby raptor the best thing you can do for it is to bring it to a center like the california raptor center where we know how to raise these babies the right way to keep them healthy and to keep them from becoming imprinted on humans so we do not talk to the babies we wear a costume around them we feed them with puppets we do many things to keep them from becoming imprinted so in forest case he unfortunately was around people too much before he was brought to the raptor center and because of that because of the behavioral issues that arise from that he can't go back out into the wild but fortunately with babies that come through the center we do our best to make sure that those babies can go back and become wild birds again excellent so now is the season so just as a citizen if i came across a nest should i just immediately grab it out of the tree and bring it to you guys no tell me more about that so one of the one of the biggest challenges of course is as the babies start to fledge you know the first flight it doesn't usually get very far and so very commonly they'll drop out of the nests while they're trying to get their strength and they'll be on the ground and and that's okay the parents will feed them and as they get their strength they'll be able to fly but when people see those babies on the ground they they think that they're in trouble and so you know they're trying to do the right thing and they rescue them and bring them to us and in fact those birds generally don't need rescuing but we've then interfered with the process with the adults and in some cases some groups will even re-tree birds if they've fallen out and the nest is intact but very commonly they're brought to us people don't have a specific location even if when we go back and try to find it sometimes we can't find that's that place to to put them back so we end up having to take on the parental role so we do have a guide that we're working on that will be up on our website for telling when to help a baby bird and if you ever have a question about it the best thing you can do is call us and ask because there's some cases in which a baby bird really does need help if it's a really little baby that has been blown out of the nest and you can't get it back up in the nest that baby probably needs help if it's sick if it's injured has blood on it is very ill it needs help but when they're old enough like you were saying they're ready to leave the nest they are ready and mom and dad are still sticking around on the territory they're still bringing food to the baby and we don't want to interfere with that we don't want to kidnap that baby in our attempt to help it right totally makes sense and then also so other things that we as citizens can do I know I put up an owl box last year it is still vacant for all of those owls out there they're looking for a home but what other things can people do all right well different things that we can do to help these guys out well number one the owl box is only going to bring in certain species of owl so this guy is not going to use an owl box you'll get barn owls potentially in a larger owl box and a smaller one you might get western screech owls so that's one thing you can do other things you can do big concerns that affect raptors around here are exposure to different toxins so one step we could all take if we have rodents on our property is to not use rodenticide rodenticide poisoning ends up affecting more than just the rats in the mice that we're trying to get rid of because a sick rat becomes a very easy target for a predator like a great horned owl or a Swainsons hawk one of these guys eats a poisoned router mouse they themselves will get that rodenticide poisoning so we advocate the use of traps that aren't for example the next snapping traps or the rat zapping traps the ones that kill the prey instantly instead of poisoning it thank you so we are ending coming up towards the end of our program today which is unfortunate because it seems to have just flown by pun intended so if people want to come visit the raptor center we talked about where it is but i know that there's also a website and people can visit california raptor.org and that will take you right to the california raptor website and again come by any day monday through saturday for that self-guided tour and come to the open houses there are great time as well and that is the first saturday in may and the third saturday in october and details of those events are always on the website michelle and julie thank you so much for joining us and thank you out there for joining us on in the studio