By MIKE COURSON
Great Bend Post
Brit Spaugh Zoo Curator Ashley Burdick and staff have made many improvements to Great Bend's free zoo over the past five years: adding a second lion yard, tripling the size of the mountain lion enclosure, and adding outdoor housing for parrots and a building for alligators during the winter. But Burdick said one staple of the zoo for many years has been putting birds back into the wild.
"For quite a few years now, probably the last 15-20 years, the zoo has been a rehabilitation facility for birds of prey," she said. That's your owls, hawks, eagles, falcons, turkey vultures, thinks like that."
Birds of prey can be injured in a multitude of ways. If the public finds an injured bird, the animal can be dropped off at the zoo. Staff will do what it can to save the bird with the intent of releasing it back into the wild, but not all stories have happy endings.
"Usually, we have a 50 percent or so success rate, which is a little bit above the national average," Burdick said. "The other thing about birds is, if they have broken wings, their bones are hollow, so it makes repairing some of those, especially the smaller birds, a little bit harder."
Late July is when Mississippi kites are most active in the area. Young birds in combination with summer storms can mean injury or getting knocked out of the nest. The zoo is currently rehabbing four kites, along with an American kestrel that is re-growing its feathers after surviving a fire in southern Kansas, and a hawk that may have been poisoned. The trick, Burdick said, is to help the birds but keep them as wild as possible.
"It's especially hard when we get the baby Mississippi kites," she said. "We were ghillie suits to conceal our bodies and faces as the ones who bring them food. It doesn't always work but its definitely hard to balance."