ConocoPhillips is a good supporter of Bird TLC and the Anchorage community. A lot of our owls and corvids went to Owl-O-Ween at the CP building on Thursday. There were many witches, super heroes, princesses, and so many caracters, it's hard to list them all.
We're down to one bald eagle at the flight center. Captain Hook is waiting for placement. Cindy says it's tough with him. He has a partial wing amputation and the feathers don't grow well on the right side of his face. He's not pretty. Hook has seen eagles come and go. Some were released, some were placed at other organizations, and he lost his friend Rollie. 
Britt and I disagree. He has birdality and an interesting history. He's also a survivor. Any organization that accepts this bird will be getting an awesome representative of bald eagles. I wish he cold stay with Bird TLC, but our permits only allow 4 bald eagles and our Education Program is full. He's Hook!
We have 2 great horned owls that will be releasable. They're gaining their flight strength back and getting plenty of flight time. One came to Bird TLC with a broken wing and the other was pretty bruised up from being tangled in fishing line. Both are coming along well and we'll keep you updated
Long time volunteer Gina, checked off on Gus the great Horned Owl last Wednesday. They're now a complete team now that Gus has moved to her home and she has checked off. Now she can do education programs with Gus.
kids. I look forward to seeing both Gina and Gus doing more programs.
The talons and beak of wild birds in captivity grow and they aren't naturally trimmed as well as in the wild. In the wild they would chew more on bones and such things more than they have the opportunity to do in captivity. Ghost the Snowy Owl's diet is mainly mice and he eats them whole. I vary his diet from time to time with rabbit, chicks, rats and pheasant. He also chews on the astro turf that I have on his perches. But his beak still grows and needs a little help being trimmed or coped.
Ghost has never needed his beak coped before. His talons get trimmed several times a year though. He maintains his beak pretty good. A few weeks ago, I asked Cindy to check out his beak while we were at a presentation. She said he was borderline needing it coped. So I made an appointment for it to be done today. It's not something you can do by yourself and I know of no one in Bird TLC who has more experience performing them or is there anyone I trust more with Ghost than Cindy.
For something that's not natural to him, having a Dremmel run around his beak, he handled himself well. The whole procedure with talon trimming and all took less than five minutes. Ghost is still molting even though it's getting below freezing at night. When he was let up and got back on fist, feathers went everywhere.
Robin Smith & Eric McCallum opened their home and held a release party helping to raise some much needed funds for Bird TLC today. Some of those who attended were able to release two birds back to the wild.
