A friend of mine first introduced me to the World Bird Sanctuary in December of 2009.
Until he told me about volunteering there, I had never heard of this organization. I like to volunteer and I like animals so I decided to give it a shot.
When we first tried to sign up for the mandatory orientation it was January, and January in Missouri, as we all know, is snowy and icy. It seemed that we had one snow or ice storm after another in January, and icy road conditions forced the site to be closed for an unprecedented number of days. It took until February for us to actually get into the orientation, but it seemed to take forever. That was probably due to my impatience interfering with my memory. It was without a doubt worth the wait, because come to find out--I love it here!
Learning to handle birds on the glove was the first big step. This is Flip, a Red-shouldered Hawk.
When you become a volunteer you have to be there for 40 hours before you get to handle any of the birds, so I devoted almost every day after school to going to the sanctuary and getting in as many hours as I could as fast as I could. After about a month I was able to handle birds and I was very excited.
The first bird I got to handle was Acorn, an Eastern Screech owl with a staff member to supervise me. It didn’t take too long and I was approved to handle on my own. The next step after that is learning to fly the trained birds. The first bird I was able to fly was Jet, an American Kestrel.
Actually learning to fly a bird was amazing! This is Jack, a Harris' Hawk.
I caught on pretty quickly, and started doing programs with staff members, traveling to venues throughout the entire Midwest. My first program was at a summer camp with Mike Zeloski. After that I went to Michigan, Kansas City and many more local places. I had been a volunteer for over a year in the Education Department when just a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be offered a full time, seasonal position as a member of the Department. Of course I jumped right on it. Since then I have been learning how to present “Birdday” parties and badge programs for scouts. Speaking in font of people, I think, is going to be my biggest challenge of the summer, but public speaking is a good skill to have.
In the fall I will be attending college at Prescott College in Arizona where I will be majoring in Environmental Studies and minoring in adventure education and possibly equine studies. “Equine” is another word for horse or a member of the horse family. I will be going on a month long backpacking trip for orientation and, I’m sure, many other super cool things, but I’ll be back to the World Bird Sanctuary.
For more information on volunteering click here.
Submitted by Jaimie Sansoucie, World Bird Sanctuary Seasonal Staff Member
No comments:
Post a Comment