National Birds of Prey Centre

NEWSLETTER April 2001, Number 10

NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR Yes We ARE OPEN…………. But I have to say that it has been a pretty difficult and miserable year so far. We, like many other people else are having a tough time. January started freezing cold, but we managed to clean most of the aviaries ready for the breeding season. Some of the birds had eggs already, Indian Eagle Owls and the African Fish Eagles are always early layers. February we reopened as usual and I sneakily disappeared off to South Carolina the day before! I have to say that the three weeks I was there has been the only time I have been warm this year. I do not want to bore or distress you with the heart breaking details of the Foot and Mouth outbreak (FMD) which hit the UK on February 19th, the TV news is gruesome enough to watch. The farmers are having a horrific time, and we offer our heart felt sympathies to them. We also are saddened at the awful loss of domestic live-stock, some of which will be irreplaceable. We, as with others in the tourism business have been very badly affected, I won’t go into finan-cial details, but we are probably 80% down on visitors, we have cancelled the five day courses, all the special events here are 100% down. Film work is down, shows are cancelling, some birds due to go abroad have been cancelled because we can’t send them in the foreseeable future. Its not a lot of fun. We have just heard that there is to be a round up of all the 5000 sheep in the Forest of Dean – our tourist area, and they are all to be slaughtered. I don’t think I want to come back as a sheep in another life. I don’t think anyone realised what the knock on effect of this tragic illness would be to the farm industry, the tourist industry and the moral of all those affected in the countryside. I can’t really describe it to you other than to say its like living with Russian roulette. However, we are determined not to be beaten yet. We have restructured the falconry experience days so that we do not go off site – instead of hunting in the afternoon, participants are going to learn to swing a lure and fly a falcon and then end up with a simulated hunt round the field. We have been out in the local towns put-ting leaflets on cars with one free child ticket. If anyone feels like doing this for us – let us know, we can print more! All but one of my staff have voluntarily taken a 20% wage cut until the end of May. We just ran our

MEMORIAL WINDOW FOR PHILLIP GLASIER Many of you will know that my father died last year, and we are putting in a memorial window in the lo-cal church. We have nearly £3000 in the Memorial Window Fund and I would like to thank all those who have donated towards this. In particular those from the South Carolina Center for Birds of Prey, who are not really falconry based and never met my father. Some of the falconry Clubs have sent us cheques as have many individuals. I am not going to name everyone, you know who you are and you also know I hope, how much I appreciate it. The window is well on in the de-sign phase. I have to say that al-though I knew we wanted to do this, I had no ideas at all. However in January I needed to get things moving, and so looked at the list of names I had been given by the church committee in Gloucester. I had phoned a couple and spoken to them before Christmas. So as I was going over to Stroud to take a bird to the vet, I chose the one closest to there, to go and see. I am very glad I did. We had a chat, then Graham Dowding visited the Centre and the Church, and after another visit by me we had a design on the way. The window is in fact two small windows. Each one will be filled with birds of prey, eagles soaring, falcons, owls and so on. At the bottom of each window will be a reminder of falconry. One side will have a hawk on the fist and the other, a man, dog and falcon. I am excited about it. Once we have the design a little further on and approved by the Church, I will put it on our website for all to see. We don’t have enough funds yet to cover the costs, so I am hoping more people and clubs throughout the world will want to get involved.

first three day Owl Course, which went very well. We are going to run as many evening events in the summer as we can. So tell friends and come along. We ARE STILL OPEN and will stay that way unless FMD hits any of our immediate neighbours, which God forbid happens. We are taking all the bio-safety precautions we can. There is disinfectant to drive through, dips for your feet as you come in and leave – please use these. So help us by visiting and bringing a paying (preferable extremely rich!) visitor with you – every little counts at this stage. And to assist with our precautions, please leave your dogs at home, as we would rather they were not let out of your cars and this is hard on the dog.

THE YEAR SO FAR • Gary and John hospitalisation in Ja-

pan • A tree from Gloucestershire Wildlife

Trust • Thank you to Wall’s Ice Cream, we

have a new entrance sign • Poplars chopped! Hooray • Last minute demo at Eastnor Castle • Staff leaving • Coffee Shop improvements • JPJ meeting with Tony Blair, sort of!

NATIONAL BIRDS OF PREY TRUST LAUNCH –

POSTPONED

The National Birds of Prey Trust was initiated last year, but to get it off the ground with a financial boost the trus-tees had organised a special launch

to be held at Gatcombe, with the kind permission of The Princess Royal, on May 13th this year. Sadly it like many other events has had to be cancelled, which is a great shame as we had a number projects that we had intended to support this summer. However as with everything else, you have to look on the positive side. At least it gives us a little more time to get a brochure even better than it would have been.

JAPANESE CONTRACT This is now the fourth year we will be working in Japan at the Nasu Animal Kingdom. We did not know until March 19th if they wanted us back, although I send the proposed contract for this year through in January. So the finalisation came through on the 25th of March. Thank goodness for email. I was able to send through the contract and the various letters to get Ben a visa, on the day they agreed, but what a job. John Crooks left us as an employee, but not a friend, at the end of February. Although I asked him if he would be interested in working in Japan, he decided not to. So this year Ben is in charge. The Animal Kingdom have decided that they only want one person this year, but we have organised that in the busy periods there will be two of my staff. So as we did not have John, I was very pleased to be able to get Charlotte Hill to do the first five to six weeks with Ben. Charlotte has worked with us before and is very experienced. She is also going to join us here for the summer as Gary will be going over to Japan to help Ben. Two of the owls out there have not been well, so I have been treating them by email from about nine thousand miles away, which has not been easy, but the last report was that they are improving. I will be glad when Ben is back over there to be with them. This year, finally, we will be having Japanese staff full time to learn how to work properly with the birds. We stay out there working until November 3rd and then winterise the aviaries, feed up the birds, check all is well and safe for them to rest through the winter and then come home again. I should perhaps add a footnote here. You would be amazed at how much advice we give to people from all over the world, particularly on sick or injured or problem birds. I am not sure if email is a curse or a blessing really. However it does allow us to answer as quickly as possible and refer people on to my poor vet Neil Forbes who has more than enough to do in life, but still tries to help people when he can.

Palmnut Vultures (Gypohierax angolen-sis) Sarah Jane Rumble. Remember when we had a few days of very wet and gale force winds in December? Well, we decided to go to France! At 2.00am on a very wet and windy December morning, we left with two boxes, paperwork and the land rover to travel to Jardin de Plantes in Paris. The plan was to collect a young pair of Palm Nut Vultures to bring back to the Centre as part of a breeding project. Arriving in plenty of time for the ferry, we were delayed at Dover for four hours before setting sail in horizontal rain and gale force winds… the crossing took considerably longer than planned. Arriving on French soil thank-fully in one piece, a mad dash to Paris! After a navigational nightmare and negotiating the Christmas shopping traffic, we were made extremely welcome at the zoo. Sadly did not have time for a look behind the scenes… we had arrived more than five hours late. The juvenile Palm Nut Vultures were caught up by their keepers, checked to ensure they were fit and well to travel. A few fond fair-wells followed, reassurances that we would look after our precious cargo, then we were off again with warnings of rush hour in Paris ringing in our ears. We made it out of the city and relaxed a little before arriving at Cal-ais to find out the ferry had been delayed by six hours. We had not eaten anything all day, so I won’t even mention what was said when we found the café closed. Another rough crossing and back in the UK, we drove past hundreds of lorries waiting to be ferried across the channel. It was early hours of the morning, but not sure when so we decided to pull in at the services for a quick nap before pushing on… no chance, our passengers were wide awake and knocking very loudly on their boxes. More coffee and off again… arriving back at the Centre about 6.30am, 28 ½ hours non-stop and in the office working at 9.00am. The good news is that the Palm Nut Vultures have settled in at the Centre very well, and have been joined by two other unrelated birds. All four are happily on show to the public in barn 2… bring oil palm nut seed with you, we are a bit short of them!

Eleonora’s Falcon (Falco eleonorae) For about three years I have had a single Eleonora’s falcon, 18 months ago I was loaned a second bird – a dark phase female and we paired them up, hoping that my bird was a male. Hope was not substantiated, we now had two girls. I was therefore de-lighted to be emailed by a friend in Ger-many, who wanted Merlins and who had a contact breeding Eleonora’s Falcons. We

managed to breed two male merlins for him and they came over to collect them and bring a male Eleonora’s for us. I am very pleased to say that we paired him up with the dark female and he is already starting to display, even though she will not lay until about August. Ornate Hawk Eagles (Spizaetus ornatus) After a long drawn out wait and much or-ganisation we sent our male breeding Sec-retary Bird out to Walsrode Vogel Park (bird park!) as they have an egg laying fe-male who breeds and just lost her mate, and

our female has not laid for years. We are hoping very hard, that it works and we get a young bird back. However, imagine my de-light when they asked us if we would like to take their captive bred Ornate Hawk Eagles here on loan for breeding. Needless to say we said yes and they are here, very beautiful and I am going to work on getting them un-related mates over the next year. Red Kites (Milvus milvus) At the same time as delivering the Secretary Bird and collecting the eagles we were con-tacted to see if we could home an injured German wild Red Kite. As we have a breed-ing and release programme for these, we were delighted, so we organised to collect it at the same time. Even more pleasing was the fact they had two for us and on our re-turn to the UK, we discovered that both are male, which is just what we needed. So we now have three unrelated pairs and two un-related birds that we are flying, who will be paired up at a later date.

GARY OFF TO TRAIN AT NICK FOX’S For those who follow the comings and goings of our staff, you may remember that Martin Patter-son joined us last year to work on the incubation. Sadly Dr Nick Fox offered him huge amounts of money to go back and work for him, and very sen-sibly he did, although we wish he could have stayed here! However in a couple of weeks Gary is going over to Carmarthen to work with Martin and brush up on his incubation knowledge. He is looking forward to going, and we are looking for-ward to him being much more experienced on his return and even better at record keeping than he is now. Hopefully Martin will teach him a little bit of cleaning at the same time!

WILDLIFE WALK UPDATE & BOG GARDEN APPEAL With enormous thanks to Forest Products at Huntley, about six miles from us here, we have now got a very pretty woodland walk, or it will be in a couple of weeks once the leaves are here on the trees. Ap-proximately twelve years ago we planted a wood at the side of the flying field. It grew, as they do and we thinned it out, as you do and early this year we started work clearing the under story and putting in a path. Forest Products, who make some very nice garden furni-ture, have donated the edging for the path, which winds its way from the barns, through the woods down to the pond. They also gave us an arch to exit the wood and some really nice benches to sit on and contemplate the wild daffodils. We have collected wood chippings from them and covered the path, so all you have to do now is visit and take a walk through the wood. Once you are out of the wood you walk round the large pond and up towards the middle pond, which very soon will have a wild cherry tree in bloom in front of a beautiful copper beech tree. There you will come to the new bog garden, which An-gie has been making (and re making) this winter. It has been completely submerged at least three times because of the rain, but it is looking great now. If anyone has any more plants that would be suitable for the bog garden or the ponds, let us know. But no Canadian Pond Weed please, give it back to the Canadians…..

INTERNATIONAL NEWS A perspective of raptor work in Panama from Arthur Middleton (USA)

The Peregrine Fund is building its Neotropical Raptor Center just outside of Panama City, Panama. To date, much of their work in Panama has been research on the Harpy Eagle. What people have found over several years in South America is that Harpy Ea-gles, and some of the various hawk-eagles (Ornate Hawk-Eagle, Black Hawk-Eagle, Black and White Hawk-Eagle) are frequently shot. So the work in a place like Panama involves an important stewardship, especially in the case of the Harpy. A pair of these eagles raises one eaglet every two to three years, and so public education bears a rare urgency. But try as he might, the visitor to that part of the world will find it nearly impossible to find a Harpy Eagle. So the question is, how do they get shot? I had the privilege of tracking a young female eagle for some time with Peregrine Fund biologist José Vargas. She carried two transmitters and was placed on Smithsonian’s Barro Colorado Island for daily observation, as part of the Harpy Eagle research program. About a month after I first saw her, she left Barro Colorado by crossing to the mainland at its nearest approach, a penin-sula called Peña Blanca. Over four or five days she wandered up through the peninsular forest, ate a young sloth on the way, and came out the other side between two small villages called Lagartera and Las Pavas. We always tracked her with special care, but when she approached those villages, we began following her more closely. One day--her seventh or eighth off the island--José and I were watching her through field glasses from a hilltop. There she was across the broad valley before us, sitting on the only remaining section of an old wooden fence. Never mind she had only ever perched in cool, sheltering tropical forests for two years-she was just perched on the fence, visible to the world, staring at nothing. The obvious worry was that someone unpleasant would spot her. A traveller appeared, riding a horse on the lone dirt road at the foot of the hill, blurred by the terrible heat. He was making his way from Lagartera to Las Pavas, ever so slowly. It seemed a lucky thing, at the time, that routines such as the daily commute cause inattention to the landscape—he remained oblivious to the eagle, staring down at the road in front of him. He passed on, and she passed out of his field of view. As this traveller grew more dis-tant and mounted the next small hill-top, the eagle struck off in flight. She crossed her valley gliding, to land in a dead tree on a limb that stretched out directly above the fading road. We would agree afterwards that this was the longest flight we had ever seen her make. The man on the horse stopped fully; dust rose as his horse stomped nervously. She just stood there on the limb, not 10 meters from the man, bobbing and swaying her head so vigorously that the limb bobbed and swayed with her. Had he carried a gun that day, and been inclined to shoot her, he could have done so before we were audible. As it happened, he remained there watching for a mo-ment, then trotted on. We were too distant to speak with him. Visitors to South American forests will find it nearly impossible to spot a Harpy Eagle; they rarely move during hot days, and never soar. But what we saw that afternoon was the eagle being the visitor. She was utterly curious. It may be that young Harpy Eagles, as they disperse in their early years, come across and take interest in people. Young eagles can be curious and inexperi-enced, and forget fear for short spells. You like to think that wild animals coming across people will regress to a more comfort-able place, but it appears that is not always the case. The young Harpy’s quirkiness affected her in other ways too; she ate an ar-

madillo the next day, and that’s not in the rules either. In the US and UK we talk of shooting as a serious problem for predators. It is, simply because it happens sometimes and there is not much logic involved. But a Harpy Eagle wandering into range of a gun in Panama, and making itself known, probably has as much chance of being shot as it does of leaving unscathed. The main reasons are not complicated. Consider the female Harpy Eagle herself: standing on the floor she may look straight ahead at your waist. She is the most powerful eagle in the world. Her feet are immense and worrying; the toes are short and fat; the talons are long, curved, and sharp in a wild adult. Her legs might be two inches thick. She can kill sloths, howler monkeys, and white-faced capuchins with ease. Her eyes are white-green, and set back below warlike brows, and the overall size of her head is exaggerated by a tall dark crest, often raised with disturbance from below. Now imagine that eagle staring at you with great interest, at close range. So for people who kill animals because they are threatening, the Harpy Eagle is a particularly reasonable target. Sometimes peo-ple want to overpower or to possess the thing, so they shoot it. Sometimes they are afraid of it because it might hurt their family. And sometimes they are worried that it might damage or kill their livestock. A few hunters told us they saw eagles as com-petitors for their quarry. Soon after our eagle’s audience with the travel-ler, José and several others organised a meeting with the people of Las Pavas and La-gartera. One afternoon they gathered at the school building in Las Pavas; a hundred people must have showed up—that’s the advan-tage of being foreign, and funny looking. We announced the presence of this eagle, and spoke about eagles and the Peregrine Fund for a bit. But otherwise, we just stood around and talked with people in an informal way. They expressed to us their concerns, and some of the older men were particularly bothered about the eagle’s proximity to the villages. The best method of allaying those fears, and the most en-gaging for people, was to tell true stories. We told the story about the traveller looking agitated, and how she bobbed her head, and was so curious. That amazed them (though many had already heard the story from the traveller himself). We told the con-cerned hunters about the armadillo, and of course they were amazed she had worked out how to eat it despite its tough shell. And we told them we had been watching this female for a long time, and she had only ever eaten something of medium size-a sloth or capuchin monkey-every three to five days. So these were all simple, understandable ways of saying that Harpy Eagles do not hurt people, but might look overly curious at times; that they are not competitors for food, since they have such a slow metabolism. The toughest concern of theirs was over livestock. We said we had never heard of or seen an eagle kill livestock; they said, sur-prisingly, they had. One old man’s grandfather had seen a big eagle kill a chicken, and all these people referred to that same story. It became clear how an entire region could come to think eagles evil—that way in which the human imagination hears something bad and assumes it will happen thereafter, and in a place where people have nothing much to do but talk, the imagina-tion is utterly communal. It would be pointless to tell these people they were wrong, that eagles do not kill livestock. It happens—probably once every 50 years in their case, but that is enough. We told them it would have to be a desperate eagle, driven to seek easy food because of disease or injury. That brought, inevitably, looks of astonishment, as if they should have known it before. The extraordinary re-sult of honesty and this informal approach was that as we were leaving, people were asking if we would let the eagle stay in the area, and if they could name her. They were shouting out names like la Pavita and Lagarterita, and all manner of variations on their town names. That small amount of true knowledge, and the promotion or interesting thoughts about nature and eagles, and the people wanted to claim this eagle as their own mascot.

News Flash from The World Centre for Birds of Prey, Boise, Idaho.

WILD CALIFORNIA CONDOR LAYS EGG First Egg From Re-introduced California Condors!!

The first egg to be laid by a re-introduced California Condor occurred on March 25, in the Grand Canyon National Park. Biolo-gists from The Peregrine Fund discovered the egg in a cave in the Grand Canyon after observing nesting behaviour at the same location for the past several days. The egg was found broken, not an un-usual occurrence for condors on their first nesting attempt.

"It was so incredible, I kept doubting that it was really an egg at first," exclaimed Sophie Osborn, field biologist for The Peregrine Fund. "Although my first reac-tion was that it was an egg, since it would be the first from a re-introduced condor, I had to control my emotions and confirm what I was seeing," continued Osborn. "Any doubt I had was gone a short time later when a condor flew into the cave and moved the egg around. As soon as I was able to confirm that it was in fact an egg, I was able to express my elation and imme-diately called the office. It was a remark-able sight, a remarkable moment, and I wanted to share it with my co-workers who have worked so long and hard toward this day!" finished Osborn.

The female condor who laid the egg hatched in March of 1995. She was released on the Vermilion Cliffs with eight other condors in May of 1997. The re-introduction effort is part of a joint project between The Peregrine Fund, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Bureau of Land Management (BLM), Arizona Game and Fish, National Park Service (NPS), CORE, and numerous other partners. The Peregrine Fund, a non-profit conservation organisation headquartered in Boise, Idaho, is conducting the release with funding provided from the private sector. Regular updates from biologists can be found on The Peregrine Fund’s web site (http://www.peregrinefund.org).

"This is the first California Condor egg laid in the wild since 1986! What an important step for-ward for the entire reintroduction program. The co-operative efforts of all our partners are mak-ing a real difference in the conservation of the condor," said Mike Spear, California/Nevada Operations Manager for the USFWS.

"This is very exciting news. For egg-laying to have occurred the first year it is biologically possi-ble is remarkable! We hope this means we can look forward to wild-hatched condor chicks in Arizona over the next two to three years," stated Susan MacVean, Non game Specialist for the Arizona Game and Fish Department. "We are pleased that the re-introduced California Condors chose Grand Canyon National Park as the place where they made their first nesting attempt," stated Joe Alston, Superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park

Although this is a critical step in establishing a viable wild breeding California Condor popula-tion, the egg was broken by one of the condor pair. Based on results from captive condors lay-

The two articles above are from friends in the US working with endangered species and we would like to thank them very much for their information and allowing us to print it in our newsletter. Vultures in India. We are pleased to be able to tell you that a partnership with BirdLife International, RSPB, NBPC and the Zoological Society of London has successfully applied for and received a grant from the UK Government, called the Darwin Initiative. This will allow us to start work on a captive monitoring and breeding project with the Bombay Natural History Society We will be working with the now highly endangered Indian White-backed Vulture and the Long-billed Vulture, in Keoladeo National Park. The group has meeting here in late April to plan the work for the next year, it is a three year project and then we will start work. We are hoping that Dr Vibhu Prakash will be coming over this year to work at the Centre and learn how to deal with captive vultures and all that entails. We are also getting to-gether some excellent speakers for a workshop on the Indian Vultures at the RRF European Con-ference in Seville in Sep-tember this year. For further information on this conference http://www.ebd.csic.es/~busta/RRFmeeting.htm

ing for the first time, it is not unusual for the egg to be broken. Copulation’s had been observed so this egg may have been fertile. Biologists believe there is a chance the condors may re-nest this year. Condors are a notoriously slow species to breed and the first breeding attempts do not occur until the birds are six years or older.

The California Condors are being released as a "non-essential/experimental population" under sec-tion 10j of the Endangered Species Act. Section 10j provides that the species can be released in an area without impacting current or future land use planning. This authority has been further outlined in an innovative agreement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and local governments. This "Implementation Agreement" provides a positive working relationship between the Federal govern-ment and the various local governments in the area.

There are currently 160 California Condors in the world -- 49 in the wild in California and Arizona, 10 in pre-release field pens in California, and 101 in captive breeding facilities (World Center for Birds of Prey, Zoological Society of San Diego, and Los Angeles Zoo). If you would like to learn more about California Condors please see the website http://www.peregrinefund.org/condor_factsheet.html and http://www.peregrinefund.org/notes_condor.html where you can read about biologists' firsthand encounters with these magnificent birds!

Co-operating Partners in the Reintroduction of California Condors into Arizona Co-operating Partners in the Reintroduction of California Condors into Arizona

2001 BREEDING SEASON SO FAR Up and down would describe it so far I think. We lost the first clutch of African Fish Eagles, but hatched all three of the second clutch. Only to have the parents eat one and one die the following day in the brooder room. So we are down to one, damn it, however we caught the pair up and cleaned the pen again and re did the nest and they look like them may go for another clutch, which would really help this year. The Indian Eagle Owls have had two clutches, the first all have new homes and the next three are nearly ready to go. The Striped Owls had one baby, who already has a new home and is much enjoyed. And so everyone’s intense pleasure, we have a baby Burrowing Owl after a two year gap. So he or she is doing well and will be on demonstration later in the year. The Luggers have three babies back with them and many of the other birds are either sitting or preparing to lay. Even the Stellers Sea-eagles are playing with nesting mate-rial, so we are hoping………………. CENTRE CLOSED…OPEN…CLOSED…OPEN As usual we reopened to the public on February 1st, then on February 19th the news broke of the FMD outbreak. As the situation got worse and worse, and closer to us, we decided that we would close to reduce the risk factor to our neighbours. It happened to be in a fairly dry week and although we were closed, people were still arriving as all our literature, of course, states that we are open. So we conferred with MAFF and we spoke to our local farming neighbours and with their permission we reopened. I think we have done the right thing. We are not a threat as we have no animals that are susceptible to FMD and we are being as careful as possible. We have also grounded any of the birds that might have wandered, and the dogs have not been off site since February. If we are really unlucky and the disease strikes any of our immediate neighbours, then no doubt we will have to close, we would probably not be given an option. But for the time being, we remain open, on tenterhooks, and hoping for decent weather and as many really nice visitors as possible to help the empty coffers. VALENTINE OWLS EVENINGS / BEHIND THE SCENES  The Valentine Owl Evenings were a great success.  Although, we think numbers were down initially due to the continuous wet weather.  On the last evening we had a record 123 people turn up and some arrived without tickets, the shop was packed!  No problem, larger guided tour groups than normal but we did manage to split everyone so that we could fit them all in the edu‐cation room.  Sadly, we have been advertising the Behind the Scenes Evenings for more than three weeks and to date, no tickets have been sold.   Your support  is desperately needed, so  if you would  like  to come along on Saturday 21st or Saturday 28th April 2001, please telephone 0870 990 1992 and buy your tickets now. £12.00 for adults and £6.00 for children (including food & refresh‐ments) 10% discount for members.  VOLUNTEERS EVENING – NEW DATE Our sincere apologies to all the volunteers booked to come along on Saturday 3rd March 2001. A new date has been set for Saturday 7th May 2001 at 6.30pm. To book a place on the vol-unteers evening, please telephone 0870 990 1992. We have plenty of jobs for volunteers to do now, so if you are available please let us know. Many, many thanks to all the volunteers that helped us prepare to open a in miserable, grey January… we could not have done it without you!