>>The Wildlife Center of Virginia is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine.

Each year the center provides state of the art, veterinary and rehabilitative care for nearly 3000 wild animals with one goal in mind, returning the animal to its natural habitat.

(upbeat music) >>Raptors are certainly among the most interesting and compelling groups of birds that we have.

Now the nocturnal raptors, the owls, let's face it, they're out at night, they're hard to see, and even though they're fascinating and diverse, it's really hard to get excited about watching them.

The diurnal raptors, well, that's another story.

They're active during the daylight, and they're found throughout all of North America.

Now the diurnal raptors share one thing in common, they all hunt with their feet during the daytime.

But beyond that, the diversity is incredible.

They range in size from the tiny little Kestrel that just weighs a few ounces, and has a wingspan of about 12 inches, all the way up to the Bald and Golden Eagle that can weigh close to 15 pounds and have a wingspan approaching eight feet.

And between those two extremes, there is every shape, size, description and color of bird you can imagine.

Now their habitat extremes range all the way from the Arctic circle to the tropics, and every single habitat in between has diurnal birds of prey that have specifically adapted to that particular habitat.

Diurnal raptors have also developed specialized and unique hunting strategies that are specific to the type of prey they consume.

But oftentimes it is that very specialty that enables them to survive that puts them into harm's way.

Take for example, the soaring hawks.

Soaring above a clear opening, and they will spot their prey and swoop down from behind to grab it.

Now these same birds also use a purchasing strategy where they'll pick a high vantage point and instead of soaring, they just sit up above and watch until something moves they can grab.

Well, unfortunately for many of these birds of prey, especially young Red-tailed Hawks, they will sit along our highways because the area is clear, they can see, and prey is abundant.

Well, why is it abundant?

It's because people throw out so much human food waste.

small mammals are attracted to the side of the road, and it's easy pickings for a young Red-tailed Hawk.

Unfortunately, they aren't always very good at looking both ways before flying across the road, and many of them are struck by automobiles.

The ambush hunters like the Cooper's Hawk or the Sharpshooter Hawk in the family of raptors we call accipters.

They are the ones that like to sneak in and get their prey, typically other birds, while those birds are doing something else like eating, which means that your bird feeder could be a magnet for this type of bird of prey.

They'll wait until the birds are on the ground or at the feeder and then from the bushes or shrubs around your yard they'll zoom in at high speed, swooping back and forth as fastest 60 miles an hour right through the branches of the tree and hit their prey.

Well, if they see the prey reflected in your picture window, what they may it is the glass and one of the most common injuries we see in that type of bird is a window strike.

Here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia because we are a state of the art veterinary hospital specifically for wildlife we're receiving hundreds of diurnal birds of prey a year.

That may include 50 or 60, Red-tailed Hawks, a very common species, as many as 55 Bald Eagles, once an endangered species, we'll get 20 to 30 Red-shoulder Hawks, maybe 20 Cooper's Hawks, mostly hitting windows, and then a sprinkling of diurnal birds of prey of every other species that we have native to this part of the country.

And with each one of those, we have to be ready to figure out what's wrong with them, why did it happen, and what can we do about it?

(phone rings) >>Wildlife Center of Virginia, this is Caroline, how can I help you?

>>Hi, the car in front of me just hit a hawk of some kind.

I turned around and pulled over.

I see the hawk is on the side of the road.

It's standing up but not flying away, I'm pretty sure it's injured.

>>Okay, are you in a safe spot pulled over right now?

>>Yes, it's a back road.

Great, we definitely want that hawk to come in, it can have some severe injuries from hitting the car.

Are you willing to rescue the hawk yourself?

>>I can try, I've never handled a hawk like this before.

>>Okay, I can walk you through it.

Do you have a boxer create to contain the Hawks for the drive and a blanket that you can use to rescue it?

>>Yes, I have a cardboard box I can empty out and a comforter in my trunk.

>>Perfect, you can use the comforter to pin the hawk down and grab its body through the comforter.

Watch out for the talons and beak, these are the main forms of defense.

Once you have the hawk in your hands gently placed the hawk in the box.

Make sure the top is secure so that it cannot fly out during the drive.

Do you have any questions?

>>No, I think I can do all of that.

>>Great, if you have any difficulties, you can always give us a call back, thank you.

>>Thank you, see you soon.

>>Bye.

>>Being hit by car is a very common cause of admissions for hawks and falcons to the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

Whenever a hawk or a falcon is admitted, there's a series of events that occurs upon admission.

That first starts with a physical exam, and we usually start looking at the eyes first.

Hawks and falcons are prone to sustaining injuries to the eyes whenever they experience a traumatic event.

That's because the eyes of hawks and falcons don't have that much protection surrounding them, making them key organs for sustaining trauma.

Eye injuries can be extremely detrimental to hawks and falcons as these are diurnal species, which means that they need perfect vision to be able to hunt prey during the daytime.

The next step in an admission of a hawk or a falcon patient is to perform radiographs.

Radiographs tend to tell us things that are going on on the inside of the bird that we can't necessarily detect on a physical exam.

A radiographs may reveal broken bones, dislocated joints or internal trauma.

Performing blood work on our hawk and falcon patients is an important diagnostic tool that we can use to check their white blood cell count, their red blood cell count, we can also look for things such as pesticide poisoning or different toxicities, lead poisoning, et cetera.

Occasionally, we get in a hawker or falcon patient that has lost so much blood due to whatever traumatic event it's sustained before admission to the Wildlife Center then that patient then requires a blood transfusion.

Raptor patients admitted to the Wildlife Center often come in with wounds from some undetermined reasons.

Those reasons might be because raptors of the same species will sometimes fight over territories or mates.

Oftentimes those animals will come in with talon marks on their legs or their body wall.

Substantial injuries that hawks and falcons may face may require them to be in captivity for a long period of time.

In those instances us as the veterinarians have to be very diligent and monitoring these patients so that they don't develop feat or feather problems.

>>The most common species of hawks and falcons that we have met here at the Wildlife Center Virginia are the Red-tailed Hawk and the Red-shouldered Hawk, the American Kestrel and the Peregrine Falcon.

However, there are other species as well that are either year round residents of Virginia or migrators who are just coming through at either the tail end of the year or the beginning of the year and sometimes we admit those as well.

Each raptor species that we admit here at the Center has really specific care requirements in regards to their housing, their food, and even what type of exercise they required to get ready for release.

So we rely really heavily on their natural history to figure out all of these things.

Raptors are obligate carnivores, so they eat all different types of meat.

So we offer different types of needs.

We have rats, we have mice, chicks, quail, and even fish.

Some species of raptors will gain or lose weight really quickly, such as the American Kestrel so it's important that we offer them food all throughout the day and that means fresh food at all hours, even those winter months when it can freeze easily overnight.

In the wild, these Kestrels will catch their food, so they always have a store and there's always a plentiful supply for them to eat.

So we need to make sure that we mimic that requirement in captivity.

When determining where to house our raptor patients, we kind of have to figure out what part in the rehab process they're in.

So if they're injured, or they're ill, we keep them in a restricted cage so they have restricted movement.

So just like a small pet carrier, for example.

And then once they've healed from those fractures or wounds, or whatever they had, we'll move them to an intermediate sized cage so they can start to stretch and hop around and flap their wings.

And once they're fully healed, they get moved to one of our flight pens for conditioning.

And some species do really well in just our 40 foot flight pens as a pre released conditioning.

But other species require a larger space, such as one of our 100 foot flight pens.

Other specific requirements that raptors might have in captivity include caring for their feet, so what type of purchasing they stand on.

In the wild, they have various sizes of trees, maybe a roof or something that they can land on.

So their feet are constantly exposed to different types of substrates and different diameters of those substrates.

So in captivity, we have a lot less of variety and options to provide for them.

So we need to make sure that whatever perch they're standing on is appropriate for their feet, it's not too big, it's not too small, and then also that they have different substrates.

So maybe a soft piece of AstroTurf, or maybe a little more of a rough piece, and then also just a natural branching.

If we don't do this and if we don't alternate the perches regularly, they can develop a condition called proto dermatitis, also known as Bumble Foot, which could potentially be a life threatening condition.

>>Exercising the birds is a very important step in their road to recovery and to be released back into the wild.

They have to be able to fly to hunt, to see and be on their own.

So for exercising, the way we do it is the birds are in flight pens, and they are long wooden structures that have perches at each end.

So when I go into the flight pen, I stand by the door and just assess where the bird is, then I start walking towards the bird.

Because I'm a human, they're not pleased to have a human in their flight pen.

So usually, they fly off and go to the other end.

If they're just starting exercise they may not really know what I'm doing there and what I'm wanting them to do so they may only fly halfway or try to get out and go to a wall and land on the ground.

But eventually they get used to it and fly back and forth.

And the goal is to get them to fly consistently back and forth between the perches.

We start out slowly, one to five passes if they can successfully do that.

As the days go bye and the exercise continues we up the number of passes to five to 10, then up to 10 to 15.

And then finally when they've got good stamina, good flight, then they are almost ready to be released.

>>Once our raptors are completely healed, we just have to exercise them before release.

And we also do some live prey testing to make sure that they can hunt on their own.

As far as exercising goes.

Sometimes we have species that don't do well just exercising and one of our individual flight pens, they require a lot more of a specific type of exercise.

So we'll do what we call creoncing.

So creoncing is where we apply a type of anklet, little bracelet you can think of to the bird's leg and we attach a rope to those that is on a line and a fishing reel.

And then we take those birds out into a field, a large open space, and we let them fly freely in the air, but they're still attached to that line so we're still able to safely make sure that they land and secure them.

(calm music) >>Maggie is our education Peregrine Falcon at the center.

She came to us in 2014 after she hatched in downtown Richmond.

And as she was learning to fly she crashed face first into a building and unfortunately she severely damaged her left eye.

When she came to the center our veterinarians examined her and decided that they needed to remove that eye to prevent future issues.

And that's what made her non releasable.

In the wild Peregrine Falcons really need to have perfect eyesight to be able to successfully hunt.

So when Maggie joined the team, or when we had the option to have Maggie join the team, we were extremely excited, Peregrine Falcons are amazing and it had been a few years since we had one as a part of our education ambassador roster.

But we knew we had to think through and plan a bit more carefully.

Peregrine Falcons can be prone to foot issues in captivity.

In the wild, they are very much on the wing quite often.

And in captivity when they're more sedentary.

They just may developed some issues if they have improper perching.

So we knew we would have to take the time to set up correct perches that were designed really just for her and also implement some weekly foot checks just to make sure we're on top of any issues that may bubble up.

Peregrine Falcons are really fun to talk about.

They have so much fun natural history stuff.

It's really fun to talk to people, particularly kids who know about Peregrine Falcons already.

A lot of kids come to us and they know the really cool fact that Peregrine Falcons are the fastest animal on earth.

They can hit speeds of more than 200 miles an hour when they're in their hunting swoop or dive.

Peregrine Falcons also have a really great conservation story too.

They were once pretty widespread throughout North America.

But like many other raptor species in the mid 20th century they suffered some pretty big population declines.

With increased and unregulated pesticide use, most notably DDT, their population took a huge hit.

And by the 60s, they were pretty much extirpated in the state of Virginia as a breeding species.

But in the 70s, there was a ban on DDT and the Endangered Species Act was put in place, which was an incredibly important piece of legislation.

And with a lot of efforts, we started to see some recovery of that species, so they started to make a bit of a comeback.

So today in Virginia Peregrine Falcons are once again doing well, though, we still I don't have a ton of these birds.

There are about two dozen breeding pairs of Falcons in Virginia.

And Maggie's parents were a well known pair of Falcons, they mated in the early 2000s and set up their nesting location in downtown Richmond.

And they were together for something like 16 or 17 years.

So they were incredibly significant at contributing to that recovery of the Peregrine Falcons in Virginia.

So when I had the opportunity to name Maggie, as she joined our team, I really wanted to pick a name that reflected on her Richmond roots, since that was such an important part of her story, and of Peregrine Falcons.

So I named her after Maggie Walker, who was a famous Richmonder, she was the first female president of a bank, and a teacher and an advocate for people with disabilities.

So it seems very fitting for our Maggie to share that name.

Maggie's story and history are a great reminder that wildlife exists all around us in some very unexpected places.

Typically, Peregrine Falcons would nest on very high cliffs.

But as life's changed around them very rapidly, they adapted to human activity.

So these days, their nesting sites can be found on very tall bridges, or really high rise buildings in some pretty urban environments.

Maggie has been very fun to work with over the years.

She's a very smart and inquisitive bird.

She's also a bit of a star.

We worked with a an author a couple years ago to put together a children's book about Maggie, and it's called Maggie the One-Eyed Peregrine Falcon.

And it's her true story of how she came to be here and the special role that she has in teaching other people about wildlife and conservation.

>>Today, we're lucky, most of the diurnal Raptors and other birds of prey are widely appreciated by the public.

And a lot of efforts have gone into conserving them.

But that wasn't all always the case.

For a long time in this country, every hawk was a chicken hawk.

And the only good chicken Hawk was I dead one and people would shoot them, trap them, poison them, and just about anything else you can think of, to rid themselves of those predatory birds.

But there's been a lot of conservation work that has brought us to where we are today.

Laws have been passed like the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act that make it illegal, with some pretty stiff penalties, if you deliberately harm the diurnal birds of prey or any bird of prey, and especially the Eagles.

Education though has really been what has turned the tide.

People are now learning about ecosystems and food chains and why predators are important.

And the truth is, that's where I started my conservation career here at the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

One of the first five birds we admitted at our hospital was a Red-tailed Hawk.

Unfortunately, she had been in captivity before we started our care center at a local animal shelter so when we got her she was non releasable.

But she did make an awfully good education ambassador.

I taught her to sit on the gloves and travel with me to the public, and she taught me to love birds of prey.

With that bird as an ambassador, we changed the minds of hundreds of thousands of people during the 10 years we work together.

And still today, all of these years later, Red-tailed Hawks are critically important ambassadors for the Wildlife Center of Virginia and for wildlife in general.

>>This is Rosalie, one of our Red-tailed Hawk ambassadors.

She came to us from another facility in 2016, where she had been deemed non releasable because of arthritis in her hip.

Rosalie came to us with a different name, but we wanted to name her after a woman who is pretty underappreciated, but very important in world of wildlife conservation and that is Rosalie Barrow Edge.

She was a suffragist and a wildlife conservationist, and she was known for having a very fierce personality.

In the 1930s Rosalie Edge founded the very first preserve for birds of prey.

That's Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, which still exists today.

Introducing people to Rosalie up close helps us to talk about some of those special adaptations that raptors have by comparing our own physical features to Rosalie's.

So when we're introducing her to people we'll talk about what she would hunt in the wild and how she would hunt where she would live and all of that helps people to form a connection with these common birds of prey.

Meeting Rosalie helps to remind people that our actions have an impact on all aspects of our habitat.

(phone rings) >>Wildlife Center in Virginia, this is Marley.

>>Hi, I live on the Chesapeake Bay, and I've been watching an osprey nest on my boat dock over time.

I just noticed that today two of the babies fledged but there's one left hanging from the nest.

>>Okay, is the Osprey moving at all or is it still and can you tell what it might be caught on?

>>Yes, the bird is flapping its wings and acting really distressed.

It looks like string from a balloon is wrapped around its talon, what should I do?

>>It's likely that the parents included the balloon string when they were building the nest.

Raptors often accidentally bring discarded lines and netting back to the nest, which almost always results in situations like this.

Do you have any protective gloves or goggles?

>>Yeah, I do and I think I can reach the osprey, Should I try untangling the string from its foot?

>>No, but I do have some volunteer transporters located in the Chesapeake area.

Give me a few minutes to get in touch with one so they can come out and help you cut it loose.

Our transporters can help bring the osprey to us and we can remove the string and treat any wounds that it may have caused.

>>Thanks for your help.

I'll gather some tools in a box while I wait to hear back.

>>You're welcome, talk to you soon.

>>We've seen several hawk and falcon patients admitted to the Wildlife Center entangled in some string or netting material, caught up in fishing lines or even balloon strings.

Oftentimes, whenever the public releases a balloon, they don't think about it being caught it in a tree and then whenever that bird is out foraging for nesting materials, they may end up picking up parts of that balloon or parts of that string or fishing line or netting material in order to make a nest.

Those types of materials in a nest end up causing detrimental problems to the nest young.

Things like constriction, wounds, and even traumatic amputations can result whenever strings or foreign materials are present.

(calm music) >>Hawks, falcons, ospreys, eagles, and the other diurnal birds of prey are captivating, they're fascinating, they're beautiful, but some of them are still in trouble.

We brought the Bald Eagle back from the brink of extinction, the same with the Peregrine Falcon, but we can't stop being vigilant.

We have to protect these species and we have to be aware of what's happening, and there are things you can do.

One of the things is pretty simple, and we talk about it a lot, but littering actually kills wildlife and especially the birds of prey.

Simply throwing out food waste from your car attracts their prey, it attracts the hunters, and being hit by cars is one of the most frequent injuries that brings the diurnal bird of prey into the Wildlife Center of Virginia.

That is 100% preventable.

The other things you can think about when you're out and about, especially in aquatic habitats, if you find fishing line or fishing tackle, those things are deadly to birds like ospreys and eagles that eat fish and find food and aquatic environments.

And it's really heartbreaking to find a young osprey or a young eagle that has been entangled in fishing because its parents brought back a fish that had been discarded, or left unclaimed.

There are other things, reduce your use of pesticides in your yard, around your home, on your farm.

And that's especially true with rodenticides.

Birds of prey are eating their normal food, but their normal food isn't normal anymore, it's contaminated.

And if you've got the option between using a mouse trap, and poison, go for that trap.

Now, one of the things people really love doing, especially in the fall, is going to a raptor count.

If you happen to live along one of the migratory corridors in the east or west United States or in the middle of the country, along the Mississippi flyway, you can go to places where there can be literally thousands of birds of prey crossing a single point in a single day.

Places like Hawk Mountain in Pennsylvania, Aston Mountain here in Virginia and various other places across the United States have birding groups, taking a census.

By going there, they love to teach you to recognize the different species flying over by the shape or the silhouette of the bird and you can learn a lot and have a really good time in just a few hours.

And if you have people in your family or you yourself are a hunter, one of the things you can do to make a major difference is to switch to non lead ammunition.

The Bald Eagle, our national symbol, was brought back from the brink of extinction due to the pesticide DDT.

Now the population has recovered, but it's in trouble again from lead poisoning as a result of ingesting fragments of lead bullets.

This is a complicated and controversial issue.

But you can find a lot of information on this topic on our website, wildlifecenter.org.

We encourage you to go there.

Mainly we encourage you to get outside and look up because the diurnal birds of prey are there to brighten your world.

(upbeat music)