THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604050600
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
The Virginia Zoo in Norfolk is featuring a new attraction of free-flying predators, ``Birds in Flight,'' just in time to entertain free-flying company that may drop by during the Easter season.
The sight of the majestic Eurasian eagle owl will set your visitors at ease, whether they be long-lost cousins or new friends from last year's guided tour of Pungo.
Why, I may be there, for all you know, and we can compare this show with the one last year featuring free-flying birds. As before, the show is included without charge in the regular admission fee, $2 for adults, $1 for children ages 2 to 11. Children under 2 are admitted free.
As a child, I'd have traded my agate taw for a look at such birds.
The eagle owl, at 5 to 7 pounds, is the largest of its family. Our great horned owl, tiger of the air, weighs 3 to 4 pounds. In the show, too, is a barn owl, whose facial markings are the most owlish of the lot, as if it is wearing horn-rimmed spectacles.
Drawing from a fund of information, Jeff Mesach, one of the show's four-member team, remarked Thursday that there is no such thing as a chicken hawk, which will come as a surprise to some old-timers whose families kept chickens.
He insists that ``chicken hawk'' is a nickname misapplied to the red-tailed hawk, largest of our hawks, also in the show.
A red-tailed hawk would resort to snatching a chicken only if the hawk's habitat had shrunk to the point that other prey was unavailable.
As you drive interstate highways, keep an eye on tall trees in the median strips in which, often, you may spot red-tailed hawks perched on the lookout for rodents in the grass.
Among others to be seen in the show are the Harris hawk from the Southwest United States; a black vulture; the American kestrel or sparrow hawk, a small species brightly colored, as if designed by a child with crayons; a peregrine falcon, a wedge-tailed eagle from Australia, and an African augur buzzard, the name applied in other countries to hawks.
Hatched at Walter Crawford's World Bird Sanctuary in St. Louis, the birds are trained through rewards of bits of meat.
In free-launch flights since 1988 which, at the end of this year will number 40,000, only three birds have failed to return, Mesach said.
Since its founding in 1977, the sanctuary has released in St. Louis hundreds of barn owls, peregrine falcons and bald eagles.
Pleading for conservation, the show urges us to recycle trash to reduce expanding landfills that are taking over wildlife habitats, and to save water so precious to all species, including ourselves.
Shows will occur daily at 10:30 and 11:30 a.m., and 1:30 and 2:30 p.m., through May 15. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by JIM WALKER, The Virginian-Pilot
Chester, a Harris hawk, makes a picture-perfect landing on the
gloved hand of Wendy Henricks, a handler.
by CNB