In honor of Haddonfield’s annual Green Week, a slate of events aimed at engaging the local community in environmental issues and raising awareness of solutions, the borough recently hosted a demonstration on birds of prey outside its library.
The demonstration was put together in collaboration with the Freedom Center for Wildlife. Three avian ambassadors and three volunteer handlers educated those in attendance on the importance of raptors and birds of prey to the ecosystem.
At the moment, all of the wildlife ambassadors are birds: Rogue, a red-tailed hawk; Phantom, a barn owl; and Red, a red phase screech owl. Each of their handlers told the birds’ stories to the crowd. Rogue was hit by a car before being found and taken to the Freedom Center. She had to have part of her wing amputated, so she can no longer fly and has been deemed unreleasable.
Denise Hassinger was Rogue’s handler for the day.
“Instead of having her put down, she could live a great life in captivity, which she has been for a very long time, and she serves as an animal ambassador now,” Hassinger explained.
Denise Hassinger handles and shows off Rogue, a red-tailed hawk, at the borough birds of prey demonstration.
Hassinger also noted that the life expectancy of the birds in captivity is significantly higher than that of their wild counterparts, because they don’t experience predation, human activity or any other dangers to their safety.
Rogue is currently in her mid-teens. Red, the screech owl, had a similar story. She came to Freedom Center injured and unreleasable, due to an eye injury that left her with only partial vision on her right side and a missing talon caused by infection. Red would not be able to hunt on her own if released into the wild.
Phantom, the barn owl, did not suffer an injury, but is not releasable due to being imprinted – which means creating a strong bond and connection with a human – while he was part of a breeding program in upstate New York.
As children, their parents and other passersby who took interest in the demonstration learned about the animals, the volunteers talked about some of the things that most put the birds at risk. One is secondary poisoning from pesticides. If a bird eats a rodent that’s been poisoned, they will see the same or similar health effects.
The volunteers cautioned against the use of pesticides and emphasized the raptors’ role as “natural pesticides.”
