Dr. Scott Weldy clasped his hand around the long yellow legs of a Cooper’s hawk and gave it one final look. He examined its wings and long tail and looked at its head.
The bird, a few months old, was found three weeks ago in the Saddleback Valley area, injured by flying into a plate of Plexiglas. Now that its blunt trauma injuries have healed, the brown-and-white “shark with wings” was ready to take off again on its own.
With everything looking perfect, Weldy lowered his hand and then in an upward swoop, he threw the juvenile raptor high into the sky. Without skipping a beat, the bird soared into the sunset heading toward the Cleveland National Forest.
The bird’s release was one of three done recently in one day at the new 1.7-acre home of the Orange County Bird of Prey Center.
The center, known for its treatment and rehabilitation of a variety of raptor birds, has to move this month from its former location in Santiago Canyon.
Its new home, a former nursery, is only a few miles away in Lake Forest and borders the Cleveland National Forest. Located with the help of officials from the county, it has taken the center two years to secure permits for what is expected to be a bigger facility for rehabbing injured birds.
Securing a permanent location has been a longtime dream for Weldy, a Lake Forest veterinarian, who since 1990 has cared for the injured and sick birds. The goal is to create an opportunity for the public to visit and see birds being rehabilitated – a gift shop and an amphitheater for educational programs are planned.
The center had raised more than $300,000 of an expected $400,000 price tag for the new, bigger location.
But, just as final plans and fundraising were falling into place for a move originally not expected to happen until Dec. 31, center officials learned in April they needed to vacate their old spot by the end of July – and do it in the middle of a pandemic that had already taken the wind out of revenues.
“Our big push for donations was starting in mid-March, but that’s when everything shut down,” said Peggy Chase, the center’s executive director. “We realized we couldn’t go to our usual venues and a major donor in the auto industry let us know they would have to postpone their donation.”
Not only did donation sources dry up, but so did opportunities to showcase the birds at schools, community events and youth programs.
The center’s funding for day-to-day operations comes from these educational outreach events where volunteers use ambassador birds to teach the public. The ambassadors are once-injured raptors that can no longer live in the wild and are trained to interact in public. There are six birds now, including female red-tailed hawks, a great horned owl, a western screech owl and an American kestrel.
Raptors are identified by their grasping feet with sharp talons, their hooked upper beaks and eyes with binocular vision. These birds help maintain the balance in nature by feeding on rodents, reptiles, insects and other prey. State and federal laws protect them.
“The whole food budget is lost without the education program,” said Weldy. “It’s a huge disaster for us because of COVID. Now, we’re digging into operational funds and that’s terrible.”
Caring for birds isn’t cheap. The raptors consume about 3,000 to 5,000 dead, frozen mice and chicks in three weeks. It costs about $1,000 to rehabilitate each bird, he said.
And, the loss of income comes right during the center’s busiest season in March, April and May. Typically, the center cares for about 150 birds a year.
The ill and injured birds first are triaged for care at Weldy’s Serrano Animal & Bird Hospital. Animal control officers find them in neighboring communities and drop them off.
About 95% come in with trauma injuries, the others are fledglings often found on the ground by people who think they are saving them.
They spend between one to three weeks in the hospital and then are moved to the center for rehabilitation.
“The hardest thing about treating wildlife is that those animals are not accustomed to being in captivity,” Weldy said. “They don’t adapt well to that. Some birds don’t survive the rehabilitation process.”
At the center’s new location, Weldy pointed out cages already in place for the ambassador birds. An old shed once planned for a renovation will have to suffice as makeshift storage and office for the volunteers. Still needed are new rehabilitation cages, a large flight cage and about $60,000.
The center has gotten some help from a local biologist who is lending his field enclosures to house the approximate 50 birds currently in rehabilitation.
“We’re getting the animals into the appropriate housing, but it will be a lot harder on the volunteers,” Chase said, adding that 36 more raptors were released on July 18. “The birds are going to be just fine. It will just be rough on the people donating their time and energy.”
Still, Chase has received word that one source for educational outreach has opened back up. The Ranch at Laguna Beach, a resort nestled in Aliso and Wood Canyons, announced it is moving its popular Harvest Restaurant outside onto a large patio next to its golf course.
“I got a call and they said, ‘The birds can come back,’” she said.
It’s good news for the center, but it’s also a win for The Ranch.
“It’s a very cool thing,” Mark Christy, who operates the resort, said about having the birds visit. “I can’t stop but be mesmerized by these little guys. The kids are completely transfixed and so are their parents. It’s one of the most popular things we do.”
The birds and the volunteers who escort them have been a constant at The Ranch for about three years. They have been the subject of selfies for celebrities and others who come to see them live on Saturdays. Christy said he regularly sees their tips jars stuffed full as the center’s volunteers show off the birds.
“The people that come, their passion is so contagious and their love is genuine,” he said. “You can’t help but help. It’s a real gift for us to have them. We put them front and center.”
Find out more about the Orange County Bird of Prey Center at ocbpc.org.
