How often do you spend time outdoors at night? In the quiet of the woods, or maybe not so quiet? Do you know what creatures wake up at night, while we sleep? Well on an Owl Prowl at Piedmont Wildlife Center, you can find out!
On a dark night in the woods at PWC, a group of people enter the woods and start hiking along a trail. All with one common goal: to hear an owl. The instructor, Matt, leads the way. About 20 meters down the trail he stops, asks everyone to be very quiet and then lets out a loud “WHO COOKS FOR YOU” in owl speak, not actual words. The guests all look around at each other. Not sure what may happen. Nothing happens. They continue walking down the trail and stop again. Matt lets out another call, “WHO COOKS FOR YOU, WHO COOKS FOR YOU ALL” again in owl speak. And just then, a Barred Owl in the distance calls back, a quieter “who cooks for you.” The guests gasp in amazement, for many of them this is the first time they’ve heard an owl. As they stand in wonder, a few guests in the front of the group catch a glimpse of an owl flying right in front of the group. An amazing sight!
As the hike ended, the guests were left with a sense of amazement and wonder. They wanted to know more about our native feathered friends. At that time, Matt and other volunteers place big, white boxes on a table. The guests know what’s next, they are going to meet our owl ambassadors. Just then, a Great Horned owl, a Barred owl, and an Eastern screech owl emerge from the big, white boxes. We discuss each bird individually, what their story is and how they came to live at PWC. We discuss where their wild neighbors live, what they eat, and other exciting fun facts. Out of the sense of amazement and wonder, an appreciation for our native wildlife starts to become apparent. “How can I attract owls to my yard?” “How can we help them?” Goal: Achieved. This is how it starts. Appreciating our wild neighbors can help us coexist with them, which can help conserve them in the future. This appreciation starts by learning not to litter food on the side of the road because it attracts wildlife which may get hit by cars. Or by learning that using rodenticide to kill mice in a house actually kills the wildlife that eats the mice. Perhaps someone is even encouraged to nstall an owl nest box in their yard or neighborhood to give owls a new place to move in. Small changes can make big impacts on wildlife. This is how conservation starts. This is how we hope to change the word. Through amazing experiences with wildlife and our wildlife ambassadors.
Links:
Our Wild Neighbors program focuses on exploring the world of wildlife with a special focus on what people can do to help wild animals. This is a very popular program for classroom teachers. However, with minimal funding in NC public schools lately, teachers don’t always have the funding for their programs. Though sometimes, those educators get creative.
Last year, Ms. Spady, an Elementary school teacher, used a funding website (donorschoose.org) to raise money for her classroom. These funds were specifically used to bring our wildlife ambassadors into her classroom. This allowed her students to interact with native wildlife they would normally never encounter. Ms. Spady had this to say about our program and her students:
“This was a WONDERFUL experience for my students! There were smiles non-stop as the animals visited our classroom. It amazed my students that the animals that they saw could be found in North Carolina. Since we began to learn about our home state, North Carolina, this was a great way to get my students to become more interested. From this, they were able to choose one of the animals that visited and do a project on it. Since they had actual pictures of them petting these animals, they were very excited to display these finished projects for other students to see.”
To educate the public on conservation-related issues and to truly create change in our younger generations, it takes a village. Your support to help us care for our ambassadors is the first step in educating future generations. Without healthy ambassadors, Ms. Spady and her students wouldn’t be able to learn all about our native wildlife and without Ms. Spady’s fundraising abilities, her students wouldn’t have been able to educate other students about how amazing our backyard wildlife is!
Two hurricanes in a month. Hurricane Florence was devastating to Eastern North Carolina, and somehow Durham (where we are) was mostly spared. We did have massive flooding in our area, but nothing like what happened on the NC coast. However, 3 weeks later, Hurricane Michael arrived at Florida’s panhandle. Hurricane Michael was not predicted to do much by the time it came to NC; however, with saturated grounds from the previous storm, trees toppled over onto power lines all across the state of North Carolina. Piedmont Wildlife Center, located within Durham’s Leigh Farm park, lost complete power to our 2 buildings for 4 days. We were one of the unfortunate places that lost power due to a toppled tree on a powerline.
We have two main concerns when the power goes out. First, we need to make sure our reptiles stay warm. We have quite a few reptiles: 5 species of snakes, 5 box turtles, a diamondback terrapin, and a crested gecko. Since these guys are cold-blooded, they need external heat sources to stay warm. Without power, their heating pads and heat lamps don’t work. In addition, our diamondback terrapin is aquatic and needs electricity for her aquarium filters.
Our second main concern is power to our refrigerator and chest freezers. We keep all of our raptor food in chest freezers. The food for our raptors is donated on a bi-annual basis, but if we lost that food we would have to buy more. This could be a loss of $500-1000 per freezer. Our amazing volunteers showed up on a Saturday morning with coolers and ice, to make sure we didn’t lose all that food. One volunteer even went out of their way to find dry ice for us!
Piedmont Wildlife Center has been looking to buy a generator for emergencies like these. Fortunately during this outage, the weather wasn’t freezing, so our cabin stayed fairly warm while we were out of power for 4 days. Unfortunately, we’ve also had power outages during the winter. The winter makes it easier for our freezers to stay cold, but makes it very hard to keep our reptiles and our Mississippi Kite (who would normally migrate to South America) stay warm.
How can you help? We need a generator to be able to run our freezers and to keep the reptiles’ heat sources on during power outages. The generator we need is $650 + tax and warranty. This comes out to around $850. Your donation today will help us purchase the generator we need so that we can be prepared for the next power outage. Thank you for your support in keeping our wildlife ambassadors safe and warm!
Links:
I’m standing in front of 25 children and 15 adults holding easily the biggest snake I have ever seen. Correction, I am standing in front of everyone holding a five-foot-long, greenish-rat snake, named Jade--the first snake I have ever held confidently in front of a public audience in my entire life.
The kids’ eyes get large with each bit of Jade I pull out of the snake bag. “This is Jade everyone!” Noelle says as I finally get her entire body resting comfortably between both my arms. Some of the kids move to the back saying they don’t like snakes. As they sit down though, they lean forward to see just a little bit better.
“Does anyone know what Jade might eat if she lived in the wild?” Noelle asks everyone. Hands shoot up. Voices begin to shout answers ranging from rats to deer to frogs! Acknowledging each answer, no matter what, she lets everyone know that Jade gets a healthy diet of mice every two weeks. As she talks, giving facts about where greenish rat snakes come from, why they’re important, and how they smell with their tongues, I stand next to her focusing on Jade, but also the audience.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous holding Jade, but watching the fascination spread out over the crowd gave me the encouragement to keep standing there. As I moved my hands for Jade, I’d see some of the kids who ran to the back, slowly bench hop back to the front. I watched the adults leaning forward, not wanting to also be bench hoppers, but still wanting to get a better look. Question after question was given to Noelle. I’ve never seen such a positive and wholesome reaction to someone bringing out a five-foot-long snake!
“Do you guys want to know what a snake feels like?” Noelle proposes. The first two rows of kids shout yes at us, their excitement barely containable. I see a few faces grimace at the thought. I then hand Jade over to Noelle so that she can walk through the aisles. “Remember everyone, just a two-finger touch in the direction of her scales.” Noelle reminds them.
I love doing ambassador outreach programs for this moment. Everyone’s mouth drops into a permanent “oh” shape as they feel what a snake is like for maybe for the first time. Kids who looked ready to run for the woods, bravely stick out their two fingers and feel Jade’s scales. Instead of running for the woods, the children beg Noelle to keep Jade out for a few more seconds, just to watch her.
Watching the brave children learn and appreciate the animals at outreach programs makes me love being a part of them! Whether it’s a snake, an opossum, or a box turtle, the audience always seems to walk away with a better understanding and a better love for the wildlife that surrounds us.
Links:
Welcome our newest ambassador, Ash, the Eastern Screech Owl!
Ash came to us from the Carolina Raptor Center. He was found in South Carolina with an injured eye, which had to be removed at the rehab center. If birds can hunt well with only one eye, they can sometimes be released. Unfortunately, Ash was no longer able to hunt live prey and therefore was deemed nonreleasable.
In our care, Ash will work with our raptor volunteers until he gets comfortable stepping up onto the glove and being around people. We have to work slowly to get to this point. The first step, which is where we’re at, is to simply hang out with him in his enclosure. We want to give him time to get comfortable being around humans before we start handling him. This is an important time to practice patience in order to build up trust between human caregivers and the ambassador. If all goes well, Ash will eventually attend events like our other raptor ambassadors. They attend community festivals, visit schools, churches, and more.
Screech owls come in two color phases. Ash is a gray-phased eastern screech owl. They are typically found on the western side of their range, whereas the red-phased screech owls are usually found closer to the coast. Ash has great camouflage (see photo) and its one of the many things we can discuss during programs. How many of you have seen a screech owl in the wild? I haven’t! Due to their size and their coloration, they are incredible at camouflage, and so difficult to find. In addition to the camouflage, they hide in tree cavities which makes it even harder to spot one! Occasionally you’ll hear call out its notable trill in the middle of the night, after the bigger owls (predators) go to bed.
Screech owls are one of the smallest owls in North America. They are opportunistic feeders, which means they’ll eat any meat item that they can grab. This includes insects, small rodents, snakes, and more.
We’re very excited to have a new addition to our raptor ambassadors that will be able to teach all about how amazing owls are! Donate today to help support the care of our ambassadors! Stay tuned to see how Ash progresses in training!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
