Education

Sky Hunters makes presentations for people of all ages at schools, campgrounds, interpretive centers, community programs, scout troops, churches and summer camps. We currently have a number of raptors of various species, sizes and ages that we use for our presentations.

Raptor Education Fun Facts* Owls can see just as well during the day as they do at night.

* Owls don't use their sight to track prey...they use their hearing.
* Owls appear to turn their heads around to see in order to compensate for their "fixed eyes" which cannot rotate left to right in their sockets. They actually just have very flexible necks, which rotate 270 degrees - not quite a full circle.
* Eagles can fly so high that they have been hit by air planes in mid-flight on occasion.
* Raptors can dive more than 150 miles an hour and can have a wing span of more than eight feet and weigh more than 10 pounds.
 


Rehabilitation

Sky Hunters not only educates the public on raptors but we also rehabilitate raptors that are injured. The raptors that are brought in for temporary rehabilitation are nourished, cared for, exercised and eventually released back to the wild. These rehab raptors are not given names because they will soon be released to the wild again. Although keepers may grow fond of these birds, they are never considered pets.

Daily nutrition for these creatures can be tricky and expensive. We have a red tailed hawk, who weighs four pounds, and has a wing span of four feet and he consumes about four mice a day. Another resident is a beautiful barn owl, who eats two mice every day. A Great Horned owl and a Harris Hawk each eat around three mice a day. The Screech owl and American Kestrol give their keepers a bit of a break, they only eat one mouse a day.

Recently, two rehab raptors, too handicapped to return to the wild, were successfully placed in outside educational facilities. One was a Great Horned owl that was shot by a boy with a BB-gun at Chollas Lake. The other was an American Kestrol that was rescued after it had been kept illegally by a senior citizen keeping it as a pet.