VINS

We visited VINS last week. Our library has tickets to take out like books for some neat places within our area and we wanted to take advantage of going here. We saw lots of different kinds of raptors and went on a hike (before it started to rain..)
Here is the bald headed eagle! Isn't he fantastic??

A pretty snowy owl. Some of these guys were hit by cars etc and all of them were injured so they could no longer fly and fend for themselves.

We attended the live bird show. This girl (I can't remember which kind of raptor she was..) loved to get sprayed with a water bottle.

Our favorite during the live bird show was this little raptor. He's called an American Kestrel. (falcon family)This little guy was so noisy. He was chirping like crazy for food! We learned that someone found him as a little fledgling and then was placed in a cage and kept as a pet, so he never learned to hunt for himself (and never will at this point)and he begs like crazy when people are around. We all thought he was cute though!

A"barred" owl (for it's markings). The man was saying that their eyes are huge for it's body in order to find it's prey. The eyes and ears are essential for hunting. He had us make our hands into fists and said that if we were owls, our eyes would be that big.

We hiked on a trail around the property at VINS. We came across this tee pee

(which may be a class project or something, we weren't sure. It was pretty neat though!)Eric and the kids were running around inside of it.

Taking a break