Hawks Aloft conducts education program at Farmington Museum

If you’ve never met a Swainson Hawk in person this is your chance. Hawks Aloft, a New Mexico nonprofit, recently traveled to Farmington Museum to conduct an education program to local children and their parents. You’re watching the local News Network, brought to you by Boon’s Family Thai Barbecue and Pop’s Truck and RV. I’m Wendy Graham Settle. Hawks Aloft’s research provides valuable insight into the welfare of local raptor populations through rescue, rehabilitation, and education. Their presentation includes the presentation of permanently injured nonreleasable raptors.

For example, this bird here has a missing eye, or, his eye’s depressed, excuse me. And it could be a physical disability, but some of our birds have also been kept illegally as pets. So they’re habituated towards humans and imprinted so they don’t know how to be wild birds.

Sternheim and her education partner, Liz Roberts, traveled from Albuquerque with three raptors, including Beauty, a turkey vulture.

In the wild sometimes you’ll see them stretching out like that with the sun shining on their back. And it’s kind of like a solar panel, where they’re getting the warmth and it’s helping maybe get rid of some little bugs or something and it helps keep them warm and they love it ’cause they love to be warm ’cause turkey vultures migrate.

Swainson’s Hawks are known to hunt in teams. They’re the longest migrants of any North American raptor, returning to the same nest site every year.

They kind of look similar, don’t they? They’re coloring, don’t you think? But just teeny and big. But they have very different wing shapes. Look at his wing shape. So he has broad wings, like Beauty-O is basically a broad wing hook. So long wings, wide wings that help them fly all that way and help them when they’re flying so they don’t have to flap, flap, flap, flap, flap all the way. They get up high on those eddies, the way the air moves up high, and they fly and glide and then they fly. So those big wings help him do that. Now he’s showing off his wings. Do you see that? He’s showing off his wings.

Hawks Aloft was started in 1994 as a conservation. Today it’s a member-based, non-profit, contributions-supported team of more than 20 nonreleasable birds of prey. Educators from Hawks Aloft will be back at the Farmington Museum on December 3rd. To become a member, or to report an injured bird of any kind, go to www.hawksaloft.org. Thanks for watching this edition of The Local News Network. I’m Wendy Graham Settle.

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