“I get so in my head about it,” she says. Still, it’s her least favorite part of the job. Each time a bird successfully takes flight, she knows she’s done the right thing. There are approximately 40 species of raptors in Texas throughout the year, and LeBaron says she’s released thousands of birds during her time as a rehabber. LeBaron “fell in love with birds of prey” when she volunteered at a raptor rehab facility in California as a teenager. Three staff members work with about 50 volunteers. On the day I visit, LeBaron tells me they have 32 patients, and they’ve seen 625 in the first 10 months of 2021. The center’s focus is North Texas, but it takes in birds from around the state. These were birds whose injuries prevented them from surviving in the wild or who were deemed a “human imprint”-a bird that has been cared for by a human and becomes unable to hunt for itself. The center began with eight non-releasable raptors. Army Corps of Engineers in 2007 and moved the organization to its current location in Brockdale Park. (Neupert was retiring the day following my visit.) After operating as a small group with good intentions but no permanent facility, the center partnered with the U.S. In 2005, they invited master naturalist Erich Neupert-his grandmother, Dorothy McIlroy, was considered “the First Lady of Birding” in upstate New York-to serve as executive director. In 2004, a group of nine North Texas bird lovers started the Blackland Prairie Raptor Center-a nonprofit fully reliant on donations-to help the injured animals and create a place where Texans could learn about and appreciate birds of prey, vultures included. When I tell Cole, who happens to be desperately in need of a pet, we’re meeting hawks and owls, he asks, “Can we bring them home?” Since my visit promised a special, up-close view of red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, Eastern screech-owls, Peregrine falcons, and more, I invited my sister Amy and her 8-year-old son, Jake, to join me and my 4-year-old son, Cole. Going semirural and living among the wildlife in Central Texas had me wondering about the creatures surrounding me, like the four hawks-so large I mistook them for deer-I spotted one day on our lawn. I was curious about the raptor center because of the hawks I saw soaring above Brushy Creek in Hutto, where I live. The flurry of activity makes me wonder just how many birds of prey are injured each day in the state. The Blackland Prairie Raptor Center is a small but rapidly growing operation on 66 acres at the western edge of Lavon Lake, a tributary of the Trinity River, in Lucas. “They’re doing their thing out there, and we’re just being lucky to be there at that moment to see it, you know, and to be able to bring it home and do it again,” Tamara Kordowski said.“We will not turn one down,” says Hailey LeBaron, the center’s rehabilitation manager, after the phone rings again and a volunteer rushes out to pick up yet another injured raptor in North Texas.
After a few years, they are often released back into the wild as healthy adult birds, Hurley added.įor the Kordowskis, there’s nothing quite like watching the birds they trained in action. Falconers sometimes take young birds from the wild, raise them in captivity, provide them medical care and eventually hunt with them, he said. “He went back to the wild the same way he came into my life, but now with more experience to survive,” Alyssa said.īirds of prey have up to 80% chance of dying in the wild before they reach their first birthday, Dennis Hurley said. Hatchlings face a hostile environment due to pesticides, moving vehicles and high-powered electric cables. Watch: Family reunited with dog 10 months after he went missing “He’s a very pretty bird, and I want him to make more babies,” Alyssa said. Alyssa was moving to Tarleton State University in Stephenville, for school. Fish and Wildlife Service.Īlyssa and her father, Dennis Hurley, a retired political science professor at the University of Texas at Tyler and a master falconer, released Yuki, Alyssa’s red-tailed hawk, back into the wild in the spring. The success of repopulation programs led by falconers were responsible for the peregrine falcon being taken off the endangered species list in 1998, according to the U.S. They can leave at any moment,” said Alyssa Hurley, 18, a general falconer from Tyler. “They could look, sit on a tree, turn around, look at me and say, ‘See ya!’ and fly off, and we never see that bird again.”įalconers also argue that breeding falcons has saved some species from extinction. “When we are hunting with the (hawks) they’re completely untethered. Falconers say the sport is an act of nature that will happen with or without them.
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