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🦉 Training School for Feathered Hunters

These young Great Horned Owls might have looked like fully grown adults, but they were not yet ready to be sent out into the world. Like human teenagers, they appeared more mature than they were.
The owls had come to PWC for different reasons. Two had been entangled in the same soccer net. Three came from a nest whose tree had fallen. One had been stuck in a fence and one fledgling had been kidnapped from the nest.
At the PWC clinic, all ate, gained weight, and grew. The injured owls received treatment and healed. The owl who appeared most mature was sent for creance — flight conditioning on a 150- foot line —where she thrilled her creancers by soaring high with amazing form, despite the absence of wind.
However, appearances can be deceiving. It was determined that she was born this year, therefore without experience hunting for prey. So she – with the others – were sent to spend time maturing in the offsite aviaries of longtime PWC volunteer and Education Team member Jeri Roberts. There, the owls would exercise their wings, gain strength, and learn to live-hunt prey – a skill essential for life in the wild.
Roberts housed and fed them and put into motion her system, honed through many years of working with raptors, to hunting live prey to be prepared to hunt on their own when released to the wild.
When the owls were able to sustain themselves on only live prey, Roberts took them to the clinic to be checked and cleared for release to the wild. For several nights before “graduation day,” she increased their food so they could go into the wild well fed. She explains, “This is to ease the pressure of them needing to immediately successfully hunt in unfamiliar surroundings.”
A few of the more mature owls were released elsewhere in the county so as not to crowd any one territory, and others on her property. This was a soft release, meaning Roberts would still be able to offer food outside the aviary if the owls wanted to return for it.

📸 Jeri Roberts

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