Reptiles and Raptors

This morning we were off bright and early again to the turtle hospital.  Leaving the house at 7:15 am has been getting easier, but no one seems all that excited to be up early.  However, we've been able to see the sunrise each morning during breakfast. 

Carolyn, a volunteer at the raptor center, holds a Missippi Kite
who had a broken wing that did not heal properly.

Greg, a volunteer holds an adult screech owl.  This owl imprinted
on humans as a fledgling and cannot be released into the wild.

We again split into two teams--four people worked with the turtles in Sick Bay and the rest of the group worked with the turtles in Turtle Bay.  We got to work again with the volunteer team leader, Gail who was excited to see us and get us to work.  We fed the turtles their food and medicine at 8am, going making sure that none of the food got sucked up by the filtration system.  The green turtles had special filters we attached to their take intake pipes to prevent their vegetables from being sucked up by the filtration system.  As before, we then left the turtles to digest and dirty their tanks while we worked to sweep and mop the turtle center. 

After the turtles had time to digest their food, we came back to clean and scrub the tanks.  One of my and many of the volunteers favorite activity is rubbing the backs of the turtles with the tank brush, and today, I got to brush Flower.  She is well known for having a distinctive butt wiggle when she is being brushed.  It was extremely gratifying to see her wiggle happily.

A little from Lilli - today I got to work in Turtle Bay again, which is the big warehouse-like portion of the facility. My first day volunteering at the Sea Turtle Hospital, I had the opportunity to work in sick bay - everything in there goes like clockwork! We all have a wonderful time scrubbing the turtles, giving them treatments, and being their "maids for the day". We seem to really be getting the hang of the flow of this work; each day it seems like we complete our tasks more quickly! Our group of 8 volunteers flows through the morning workload, systematically scooping, brushing, and cleaning tanks. The opportunity to work so closely with the turtles is something truly special, and we have a slightly different experience each day, despite similar tasks. 

In the afternoon, we went to the Cape Fear Raptor Center were volunteers showed us their many raptors that are there to rehabilitate and hopefully be released someday.  Some of the most disheartening stories were from birds that were brought in for lead poisoning from bullets--especially for the stories of the birds that didn't make it.

A merlin is held by one of the volunteers.  She
was recovering from hitting a window.

A rainbow over the ocean, seen from the front of our house.  

The volunteers demonstrated how several of the different species fly and their different calls.  We also went outside to see the outside enclosures of many of the larger raptors including several bald eagles and both red-tailed and red-shouldered hawks.

After the visit with the raptor center, we returned to our house and thankfully, the sun came out after the weather being rainy and cold all day. There was both a beautiful rainbow and later sunset.  We all went out to take pictures of the sunset at the beach and enjoy seeing the ocean.


During our reflection, we began to prepare for the impending mass of schoolkids coming our way on Thursday - the big day, Teaching Day, is fast approaching! Over the past few years, we have been fortunate enough to have a "Teaching Day", where hundreds of schoolkids come and tour the facility, free of charge. They do this each year in anticipation of our visit. Shining, freshly-swabbed floors (done by yours truly, help in tow!) await our arrival at the sea turtle hospital tomorrow, and we cannot wait to teach some children about the sea turtles, working to flex our mental muscles and demonstrate all of the tactical knowledge we've gained over the past week. Tonight, we practiced short presentations, as we will be (wo)manning stations tomorrow to teach kids about different subjects. Some of these stations include sea turtle anatomy, surgery, cold-stunning, plastic pollution, nesting, and a sick bay demonstration. It's great to know that Jean and the rest of the Karen Beasley center staff have such trust in us to plan these types of outreach events in advance, and that they would love for us to be ambassadors for the sea turtles. All of our participants are pumped to get kids excited about conservation, and had wonderful ways to make the information and material accessible to younger children. We can't wait to see how it goes!