Meet Our Raptors

Swainson’s Hawk Rousing

At the core of everything we do, of course, are the beautiful and dramatic raptors for which we care. Our current facilities keep our population of non-releasable birds hovering right around thirty individuals.  This is one of the largest collection of indigenous working raptors in North America.

We thought you might like to meet some of the birds presently at our facility, and to learn a bit about how they come to be part of our programs.  If you would like to visit our facility to meet the birds in person, please use our Visitor Reservation form.

As you peruse these pages, you might wonder why we don’t list our birds’ names like most other groups do?  Animals with names tend to convey the image of pets, and raptors are not pets, nor toys. We prefer that people know the common and/or scientific names of the birds in our care. For children, this is critical in developing good thinking habits, because one of the first steps in good science is to name or classify an object properly. This is also the act of definition, which is imperative to clear communication and the appropriate understanding of the challenges faced by our wildlife resources.

Our Eagles   Our Hawks   Our Falcons   Our Owls  Our Kite

Visiting our birds is restricted by advance reservations to REF members (Free) or non-members ($10 each).