Carolina Raptor Center: Saving sick and injured birds of prey
When hiking near my home in Charlotte I often see redtail hawks circling high overhead, their reddish-brown bodies casting shadows in the blue sky. I also see turkey vultures with their bright red heads both strange and fascinating as they approach roadkill near the jogging path. These birds are large and majestic. They are also endangered. So what happens to them when they become injured or sick? Enter Carolina Raptor Center.
A rescued adult barred owl (wings out) is fostering a baby barred owl. Photo by Carrie Dow.
For 40 years Carolina Raptor Center has provided medical help to Carolina’s birds of prey and educating people about the birds around them. Located on Latta Plantation Nature Preserve northwest of metropolitan Charlotte, the county-owned land is a historic preservation site, public park, and outdoor recreation area bordered by Mountain Island Reservoir. The Carolina Raptor Center found a home here when the organization was “kicked out” of its original home on the campus of the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
“We started in the university,” explains Michell Houck, who holds title of Chief Wonder Maker. The center unofficially began when someone brought an injured broad-winged hawk to UNCC biology professor Dr. Richard Brown in 1975. Brown helped the hawk and then someone brought another bird, and another, and another. Soon a tiny clinic spouted in the building’s basement. By 1981, Dr. Brown incorporated the Carolina Raptor Rehabilitation and Research Center and 88 birds – including one bald eagle – were rescued. Things abruptly changed in 1984.
“So the story is that an administrator came into the biology building and caught a vulture riding in the elevator,” laughs Houck, “and said, ‘now is the time for you to find your own site’.”
Mecklenburg County provided land on the nature preserve and a small building was erected. Today the center has numerous buildings, including a bird hospital, visitor’s center, and bird enclosures with a nature trail connecting everything together.
“It started out as just a rehabilitation center and now it’s moved into a significant environmental mission,” Houck explains as we walk along the nature trail. As the organization grew, its education mission became more important because not all the birds rescued could be returned to the wild. No longer able to fend for themselves, these birds need a safe space to live and care for the rest of their lives. Today, CRC has rescued some 24,000 birds with a 70% return rate. While the public gets to visit the resident birds, they don’t often get to see the rescue side of things.
Renee Brewton, a raptor tech, shows me around the hospital where veterinary professionals and volunteers work together to care for patients. During my spring visit the hospital had 30 patients, but they can hold up to a hundred.
Renee Brewton (left) and volunteer Maggie look for a transport volunteer to bring in an injured bird after receiving a rescue phone call. Photo by Carrie Dow.
“When a bird comes in,” Brewton begins, “transport volunteers will pick up the bird and bring it here. Sometimes it’s a relay.” The center has a volunteer network all over North and South Carolina using a special computer program that displays where volunteers are located on a map so they can quicky handle calls as they come in, although sometimes she says the good Samaritan who called will bring the bird in themselves.
We start in the large kitchen area of the hospital where volunteers like Maggie, a 20-year raptor veteran, put together different meals for patients.
“Maggie is prepping our mid-day feeding,” Brewton points out. “We have three feedings a day. The food we have, most of it is fish donated from people that do tournaments. The mice and rats come from a distributor.”
Next Brewton shows me an exam room.
“A bird will come in and we’ll check it from beak to tail,” describes Brewton. “The eyes are very important; that is one of the first things we check. We see a lot of eye damage because of impact from cars or windows.” She then mentions hawks cannot fly or hunt with one eye because they rely on eyesight while owls can handle life with one eye because they hunt by sound, relying on their ears. Brewton says that an important part of bird rescue is making sure they can hunt on their own. How do they teach birds to hunt, I ask.
“We call it mouse school,” laughs Brewton. “We give them live mice for about a week and if their weight maintains or goes up, we know they can catch prey. If [their weight] doesn’t go up, then we have a problem.” From here we walk down the hall where there are two rooms, a kennel room and an isolation room with incubators.
“We’ll usually put them in here the first night,” Brewton says pointing at the kennels. “Any bird that is emaciated or babies who are really small will go into an incubator to maintain their body temperature.” She pulls something from behind the door.
Staff use this owl puppet to keep baby owls from imprinting to humans during feeding and handling. Photo by Carrie Dow.
“He’s a little freaky looking!” Brewton laughs showing me a giant owl puppet with intense fabric eyes. “We have to be careful when handling babies. Babies can imprint really quick, so we wear camouflage and these mitts to make sure we are breaking up our line. He’s kind of scary looking, but it gives the feeling of looking at their parent.” Babies who imprint, or identify humans as their parents, cannot go back to the wild, so the rescue does everything they can to avoid handling or feeding baby birds directly.
Also on the first floor is a digital x-ray room and walk-in freezer for food storage. The second floor contains offices, a large surgery room, and a necropsy room used to find out how rescued birds died. The organization keeps track of what Carolina birds die from so they can perform mitigation where they can. Most deaths are human caused.
“[The most common injuries we see are] definitely wing,” notes Brewton. “Our biggest [threat] is hit by cars and the next is gunshot. At the beginning of every year, we see a huge jump in gunshot victims and not many can be saved because it’s so severe.” I ask whether the birds are shot on purpose or accidently.
“We think on purpose,” says Brewton gravely. “What I think – we don’t know for certain – but my theory is it’s Christmas presents because of the timing. Once we get past January and into February it slows down. This year we almost tripled the number [of gunshot victims] we saw the last five years. One day we got three or four, which is crazy. We may see that number the whole summer.
“I wish there was a way that every time you have a gunshot [bird] case, a report is filed with Fish and Wildlife,” muses Brewton, “but there’s hardly ever any evidence to do anything about it. It’s a federal offense and you can do jail time.” Under federal law it is illegal to hunt/shoot migratory birds of prey including vultures, hawks, eagles, and owls, as well as other endangered birds.
With the hospital tour concluded Breton takes me outside to see the outdoor enclosures and meet some patients. Brewton explains that moving a bird from inside the hospital to an outside enclosure is a positive step in the bird’s healing process.
“Once they are to the point where they’re eating on their own and getting restless, they need to come outside,” Brewton describes. “Sometimes they go to a condo, which is a smaller box where they can’t really fly around. Those are the one who’ve had surgery and eating on their own and need the fresh air.”
We stop at what looks like a small wooden shed with a double entry. Once inside an owl on a branch puffs out its wings. A smaller owl in the corner makes hissing noises.
“It’s baby season and we have some older babies right now. In here we have a barred owl adult with a wing injury. While she’s recovering, she’s fostering this little guy over here. She’s done a great job of fostering this baby. He’s hissing at us. That’s what we want; we want them not happy to see us.”
Surgery room at Carolina Raptor Center. Photo by Carrie Dow.
Seeing they’re upset, we don’t stay long. As we walk along the path, Brewton explains that they have small, medium, and large outdoor enclosures to fit different healing stages. The small condos are for birds who haven’t healed enough to fly, but benefit from being outdoors. Medium enclosures are for birds on the mend and able to go from perch to perch, however, staff don’t want them reinjuring themselves. After a long walk we arrive at a large building.
“This is our massive flight cage,” she says, as we approach a giant wood and metal enclosure covered with netting on the top. “It was built for eagles,” notes Brewton, “but mostly red-tailed hawks end up in there because we don’t get many eagles.”
While walking through the trees back to the hospital I ask about the new facility the raptor center is building and expected to open in 2022.
“The new facility is for RBC (Resident Bird Care) for the resident birds. The plan – the hope – is that the visitor service center will be transformed over to the new hospital. Then [the current hospital] will become office space. As you noticed surgery is on one floor and x-ray is on another, which is problematic. It’s not necessarily bigger, but everything will be on ground level.”
Those wishing to volunteer either at the hospital or in resident bird care can begin on the CRC website. Due to COVID-19, the organization is hosting smaller training groups so the process may take a little longer. If you can’t volunteer, be sure to visit the nature center to learn about these amazing creatures and support the rescue of Carolina’s birds of prey.
6000 Sample Rd. Huntersville, NC 28078. 704.875.6521 x125 to report injured birds.
A staff members walks the trail leading to the outdoor enclosures at Carolina Raptor Center. Photo by Carrie Dow.
