In combined efforts between The Avian Conservation Center of Appalachia and Americorps, volunteers braved the brisk winter cold to build an enclosure for a barred owl looking to move into educational programming with the nonprofit.
Katie Fallon, one of the Board of Directors from ACCA said the owl, named Jeff, came to the program unable to be returned to the wild. In order to be transferred from a rehab permit to an educational permit through the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, he must have a permanent home of his own.
Fallon said Jeff is from Jefferson County, thus the name Jeff.
“He’s an owl who was raised by a person who found him when he was a very small baby,” Fallon said.
Jeff was found with two other small baby barred owls and raised by a human. This is illegal to do in West Virginia, and the birds were surrendered. However, they were all too accustomed to people to fly back into the wild.
“One of the siblings lives in Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland, and one sibling lives in Turtle Bay Exploration Park in Sacramento, Calif., so we had to ship him all the way to Sacramento,” Fallon said.
That owl is named Chef because barred owls hooting sound like someone asking “who cooks for you” according to Fallon.
Abigail McElwee, a WVU student who volunteers for ACCA, said Jeff is very social. She spends her time feeding and taking care of him where he lives at ACCA by Cheat Lake Animal Hospital.
“I like working with the birds. I want to be an exotic veterinarian or work with animals and animal behavior, so it’s cool to see the birds, work with them hands on,” McElwee said.
One of ACCA’s volunteers Ian Gray, who also volunteers with Americorps, thought a great Martin Luther King service project would be to enlist other Americorp volunteers to participate in the National Day of Service. The project was postponed a week due to the snow expected last weekend.
“We’re really grateful to have the help of the Americorps volunteers,” Fallon said.
Most of the volunteers with ACCA are animal people and don’t have the building experience to put together an enclosure. Fallon said it was nice to have people with building experience helping out.
Once the enclosure is built, the ACCA will need to send a photo of it alongside some paperwork to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service explaining why Jeff can’t go back to the wild and a letter from a vet (who luckily is Fallon’s husband, Dr. Jesse Fallon.)
“Hopefully, they’ll say, ‘sure,’ and they’ll sign to transfer him from the rehab permit to the education permit,” she said.
Jeff will need to be trained to stand on a glove before he’s able to travel to schools for educational programs. Fallon said all of the birds are trained using positive reinforcement, which is often the same way dogs are trained.
“We’ll start using little bits of food, and we’ll put a glove in front of him and hold up a piece of food and hopefully he’ll lean over the glove to get the food, and then eventually he’ll be hopping onto the glove to get a piece of food,” Fallon said.
“So it’s all positive. We don’t force our birds to do stuff. We ask them, and hopefully they will, and they usually do.”
