A bald eagle calls while rehabbing at Indiana Raptor Center in Brown County.
Photos courtesy of Indiana Raptor Center
Indiana’s raptors face long odds for survival from the moment they’re born, and a local organization plays a big role in helping some of those who soar above us yet sometimes come to humans on broken wings.
“It’s a very common thing now — people find these birds in their yard,” said Patti Reynolds, president and CEO of Brown County-based Indiana Raptor Center, which rehabilitates injured and sick birds of prey. The birds, she said, “come to people for help, they come for shelter when they’re not doing well.”
This “last gasp” for a raptor, as Reynolds called it, comes about because, whether people realize it, eagles, hawks, owls and other raptors are always nearby here in Brown County. Even though we might not always see them, their eyes are always watching.
“They have observed behavior (of people) … they’ll come in asking for help,” she said, sometimes almost surrendering to human care when they are injured or sick. “The last alternative is, they’ll come in for shelter.”
Reynolds recounted an incredible incident recently in which she said a vulture turned the handle of a screen door to seek shelter inside. “A lot of birds figure out pretty quickly that you’re trying to help them,” she said.
And humans have a big chance to help promote the well-being of these birds through the Indiana Raptor Center’s Raptor Rendezvous on Sunday, Nov. 3 at the Abe Martin Lodge in Brown County State Park. The rendezvous will include a live bird program and other events.
“It’s really important because it provides a lot of the funding that gets us through winter,” Reynolds said of the Rendezvous, which typically attracts about 100 or more people each year. That funding helps pay the costs of veterinary bills and food for the raptors and supports the ongoing expenses at the center.
Reynolds said the grim fact is 70% of raptors don’t survive their first year, and many young are found starving between now and February because they haven’t mastered the skills to hunt.
When the center is feeding dozens of birds the meat they need to regain strength to return to the wild, the cost can run to as much as $1,000 every three to four weeks for food alone.
As of last week, she said the center was caring for about 57 birds including red-tailed hawks, eagles, owls, falcons and other birds, including some from other nearby counties that are brought to the center because there was no other place where injured birds could be cared for.
The center in an ordinary year cares for about 150-200 “patients”, as Reynolds calls them, and so far this year there have been 142. They arrive at the center for any number of reasons, from starvation to injury or disease — West Nile virus is sometimes diagnosed — but she said at least a handful of times each year, birds have been shot.
It’s a federal crime to shoot raptors, she said, but “We get anywhere I’d say from three to six birds a year that … we can either prove they’ve been shot because they have shrapnel or a pellet in their body, or a vet can tell by looking at an injury that the bird has been shot.”
It’s hard to catch people who shoot the birds, which Reynolds said are sometimes misunderstood, especially when they might snatch up an easy meal — say, a chicken.
The flip side is, “they’re such a big factor in terms of protecting agriculture in terms of rodent control. People don’t realize how connected these animals are to our lives,” Reynolds said. She noted the loss of one mature bird can take out a whole family, because the raptor may be hunting for food for a nest of chicks.
The need for the center’s work is likely to only increase.
“We do everything we can to keep them wild,” Reynolds said. “It’s a privilege to have some part in that bird’s life … getting it back out where it belongs. That’s the reward.”
