Animal Diaries Archive

New Arrivals

29 July 2005

This week we were lucky enough to receive a new raptor. 'Raptor' is another name for a more specific group of birds of prey. This one belongs to the kite family and is the Whistling Kite, probably one of the most common raptors in Australia. This particular individual (who is yet to receive a name) has unfortunately come into captive care as a very young bird from last year's breeding season and, due to being hand-raised in captivity, unfortunately cannot be released back into the wild.

However, this gives us a great opportunity to use this bird as an excellent educational tool for our daily bird shows in the crocoseum. The crocoseum is certainly an interesting place to have our shows each day. It provides excellent viewing for the crowds, particularly with the birds flying up into the stands, but makes our jobs a little more difficult when it comes to manoeuvring around a full stadium. There are certainly many things for the flier of the birds to be thinking about whilst out in the arena. You need to think about where you are positioned in comparison to other handlers, what and where each individual bird is, who you are going to call, where you are going to cast, importantly not to trip over anyone, and how much time you have left. These are only a couple of the thoughts running through your head whilst working in the crocoseum.

Sometimes the birds can sneak up on you, as can be seen in this week's photo, and when the bird doing the sneaking is a 1.2kg Macaw, it can certainly give you a start. All of this just makes for interesting shows in which the birds are given plenty of freedom of choice as to where they fly, and it also creates plenty of action and funny moments like this one for the crowd to enjoy.