The Birds!!! (of Prey)

The plan of the day had Gaynor and me going to Whiteman Park, mainly because they have Tasmanian Devils there, and I was pretty psyched to see one. However, on the way into the park we caught sight of a "Birds of Prey" exhibition. So we set off to see that (after a small walk around the town).

When we arrived at the entrance to the show, the girl selling admissions was preoccupied. Flying ants had swarmed her table, they were completely covering it. She couldn't easily move the table by herself, so I helped her move it farther away from the swarm. We paid the fee (AU$8) and went in to wait for the show to start. There were a few lizards in the bench I sat down on first, and lots of flying ants swarming around, having them crawling all over you is a strange sensation.

The show itself was very cool. It was a simple setup, just one trainer, a bunch of posts in a field (for the birds to land on), and benches for people to watch from. The trainer was mic'ed, and explained all about the birds as she used food to coax them into flying around. My understanding was that all the birds were either in rehab to be released back into the wild, or they could never be released. One bird had been kept as a pet, with first one wing broken, then when that healed, the other one, all to keep her from flying. Saddening.

The trainer showed us some games they used to train the birds, to help them with hunting. With one bird, she spun a ball with food at the end of a rope, and the bird had to catch it out of the air. It looked really hard, and the bird wasn't having much luck. With another one, she had a rubber snake on the end of a rope that she dragged along the ground, and the bird would dive onto it, and tear chunks out of it (apparently the snakes don't last very long).

One of my favorite parts was the barking owl named "Oscar" (as in "the Grouch"). He really did look like him, and if you barked at him, he would bark right back. There was also a barn owl, and a few other birds. That would have been enough, but at the end, we could "hold" a bird (slip our hand into the leather glove he was attached to). I was pleased.

Falcons are awesomely beautiful animals.