What Did Rockford Middle School Learn at The Raptor Center?

TRC Interpretive Naturalist Dan Hnilicka
took guesses as to how much weight the egg
could hold.

Students at Rockford Middle School Center for Environmental Studies recently visited The Raptor Center.



They took part in an experiment as part their curriculum learning about food webs, trophic levels, and bioaccumulation. 

A piece was used to help balance the weights that would
be put on the egg.

Healthy peregrine falcon eggshells can support much more than the less-than-two-pound female who sits on them.  However, if the shells are thinner, as an indirect result of chemical ingestion by the bird, the eggs cannot support the weight and are crushed. 

Chicken eggs, very similar in size to peregrine falcon eggs, were used in the demonstration.  This visit is the culmination of a year-long program where The Raptor Center staff brings live raptors into the classroom to give students up-close experiences as they learn about important scientific concepts.

 

 



 

Learning About Red-tailed Hawks

Tucker shows off his diorama.  It has
pictures of hawk adaptations.

We had to share a creative and well-researched project by Tucker C.  His first grade class from Burroughs Elementary School created dioramas.  Tucker came to The Raptor Center to do some research on red-tailed hawks. 

Tucker's work shows a healthy habitat for hawks.

Tucker did some more reading on his topic.

 He also featured two of TRC's winged ambassadors on his project; Casper, and one of our new red-tails who does not have a name yet

You can see from the answers to the questions (a part of his project) that he learned a lot about hawks.

Thank you to Tucker and his family for sharing this.  We hope it sparked a lifetime of learning about raptors and the world we share together. 

. . . and More Molting at The Raptor Center

We introduced one of our new education winged ambassadors, a red-tailed hawk, to you recently.  She has now started molting in some of her adult tail feathers!

With rare exception, raptors have 12 tail feathers.  You can see that the middle two feathers are the ones that have dropped, and are now molting in the new, adult, red feathers.

This is one of the feathers that dropped!

This is a photo, taken with a macro lens, of the detail
in the feather.

Molting at The Raptor Center

Casper the red-tailed hawk.

Gladdie the bald eagle.

There are three main activities in which raptors (and all birds) spend large amounts of energy in an annual cycle; migration (or some type of seasonal movement), raising families, and molting. 

Molting, which is replacing old feathers with new, is an activity that is well underway at The Raptor Center.  Here are a few pics of some of our education birds. 

Samantha the great horned owl