Original subtitles

Oh, hey, my friends.

It's me, Ant -Man now.

I hope you're doing absolutely awesome today.

We're here volunteering at the Conservation Center for the Birds of

it'll be great. We get to check out some really cool birds, like maybe some

falcons. Maybe some owls. I really like owls.

And some hawks.

But we do got to put in some volunteer time. We got to help out.

Ant -Man has always got a plan.

And maybe...

We might even see how these birds are trained for the flight demonstration

It's going to be great.

Oh, look.

Look who it is.

This is Mr. Stephen Schabel.

He is the director of education here.

Look what he has. How are you, sir? I'm well, thank you. This is a peregrine

falcon.

That's really, really cool.

And look at those talons.

Oh, those are really cool.

I wonder how fast one of these things would fly. This is actually the fastest

animal on the planet.

243 miles an hour when they're diving. Whoa, 243 miles an hour?

That's really fast.

Absolutely. He's looking right at me.

I wonder what they eat. Well, you don't have to worry about them eating you.

They only eat other birds. This is a bird that would eat something like a

or a pigeon, and that speed helps them to knock those other birds out of the

sky. Wow, that's really, really, really awesome.

Oh, so what's their wingspan if they can fly really fast?

Well, so it's not really about the wingspan. He does have about a two -foot

wingspan, but it's about how sleek and aerodynamic he is. So he's built like a

rocket for diving out of the air.

He's got some really cool eyes. So I guess he's got some really cool

Absolutely. He can see things a lot better than we can. Probably sees color

we can't see and has really large eyes for his body size.

Oh, his body size. So how much does he weigh?

He weighs about a pound, believe it or not. Not much in there. And that's a

pretty big bird to weigh a pound.

He's got some really cool feathers.

Whoa, okay, okay, okay.

Oh, he's awesome.

Oh, so how old is this falcon? This guy is actually one of our older birds. He's

21 years old this year, so he's been doing this for a long time. He's been an

education ambassador for his entire life. So how long do they live?

So in the wild, he would have been lucky to make it just a few years. It's hard

to be a bird out there, but it's possible he might live 30 or 35 years

here taking care of him.

He's got a really cool beak on there.

He's got some holes.

Tell me about his beak.

Well, so the birds that prey like this peregrine falcon use their beak to rip

their food into smaller pieces. So when he catches another bird in his feet, he

uses that beak to tear it into manageable pieces.

He's also got nostrils there on his nose. You can see those two little

breathes through those, and they're really special. They allow him to keep

breathing even when he's diving at 200 miles an hour or even faster.

So do we have some more birds that we can check out? We do, absolutely.

Oh, cool. Let's check those out.

Oh, look.

I know what this is.

This. This is kind of an owl. It is.

What kind of an owl is this? This is called a barred owl because he has all

these bars on his feathers, all these lines going across his plumage. This is

the most common owl we have here in South Carolina.

Really awesome. He's got some really big eyes, so I bet he can see really well.

He does. Indeed, he can see very well in very low light. So he's nocturnal,

meaning that he's mostly active at night, so he's got to use his eyes a

differently than the falcon would.

Nocturnal. That means nighttime, right?

That's really, really, really cool.

So what does he eat?

So barred owls eat a lot of things, anything that's smaller than they are,

lots of things like mice and voles and insects.

We see them eating crayfish. That's something that they eat a lot. They live

the swamp usually in wet forests. So anything you might find in there that's

small enough, he'll catch it in his feet and eat it. Oh, sweet. So why does he

have this?

round thing around his eyes like that so those believe it or not are his ears

the things around his eyes are called facial discs those plates of feathers

they do the same thing that your ear flap does they catch sound and send it

the to the part of his body that helps him hear he can hear so well that he can

catch food he's never even seen before wow

An owl that has ears? That's really, really cool.

So why do you have this bird here? So this bird was actually found when he was

very young. Someone found him on the ground. He had fallen out of his nest.

instead of calling us, which is what they should have done, they took him

and they tried to take care of him. And they created some problems.

He's what we call a human imprint.

He basically thinks he's a person instead of thinking that he's an owl.

Oh, that's cool. So if we find a bird out in the wild, what should we do? So

best thing to do is take a step back and find someone that can... help you you

can always call us here at the center we're happy to help no matter where

are and get them in touch with the right folks but the the idea would be to to

make sure that there's a problem before you get involved in it awesome awesome

and if i can see right i don't know if you see it but like there's like another

another eyelash or he has a third eyelid it's called a nictitating membrane it

comes across his eye you can see it's kind of a blue color he can protect his

eye and still be able to see even um even though he's got a protective layer

over his eye that's pretty cool now i've heard i don't know how true it is can

an owl really turn their head all the way around can they really turn their

all the way around he can't turn his head 360 degrees in one direction but he

can turn it 270 degrees in each direction so you can completely turn

look right behind him absolutely that's really amazing

I really like owls.

So we got one more bird we're going to see? Absolutely, we do.

Let's go see it.

Oh, look at this one.

This one's really cool. Now, what is this? This is a red -tailed hawk because

has these sort of rusty red tail feathers that you can see there. Do you

that?

This is the most common daytime hunting bird we have here in North America.

A bird we see very often around the roads and fields here in South Carolina.

They eat during the day. They eat during the day. He is daytime active or

diurnal, we call it. Wow.

And he looks like he has some big wings. How far does his wings get?

So his wingspan is about three feet from side to side. He's got what we call a

soaring wing. So red -tailed hawks are built for traveling long distances.

a lot of ground in a day. Well, how fast can they fly?

Well, unlike the falcon, they're not really known for their speed. They're

really known more for power. So they hit with this big, heavy body. He weighs

three times as much as that falcon we saw. So this is a bird that's hunting

primarily things like squirrels and rats.

And so speed isn't really as important for him as it would be for the falcon. I

got you. He does have some really big old talons there. Absolutely. And thick

armor on them to protect them from the bites of squirrels. What if you look?

There's a bell on his foot. Yeah, so this is actually a bird that we use in

flight demonstrations. So we train him to fly to help teach people more about

birds of prey like this. And the bell is just a way we can keep track of him

when he's flying. So if he were to fly off into the woods, we could hear the

bell ringing and know where the bird is sitting.

I noticed that he doesn't have one eye. Why is that?

Yeah, so this bird was actually a patient in our medical facility after he

hit by a car.

So he was hunting, as many red -tailed hawks do, by the side of the road.

to grab his prey unfortunately he flew through the the driving path of a car

he had injuries to that eye and unfortunately lost that eye which is why

to stay here with us so you said you have a hospital here we do we have a

hospital here at the center where we take care of sick birds and injured

we take care of about a thousand birds every year after they run into problems

out there Oh, that's absolutely awesome. So, Mr. Stephen, can you tell us kind

of about the history about Birds of Prey? Sure. So the Center for Birds of

was founded back in 1991.

And in the beginning, our focus was entirely on dealing with birds like this

that ended up in trouble out there. We had that hospital from the very

beginning. And what we realized was that to fix the problems like car collisions

and entanglements, we really needed to teach people. And so that's where our

education program came from. We started teaching people more about birds, and

we've grown and changed ever since. since 1991.

So for the last 30 years, we've been doing a wide variety of things related

birds of prey. Wow. And so how many birds do you have here? So our education

collection, the birds that people can come and see when they come visit us, we

have about 120 birds, birds like these that live with us all the time. And then

in our hospital, we take care of about a thousand birds every year after they

get injured out there. And the goal there is always to put them back out in

wild whenever we can. So how many How many different species of birds did you

say you guys have here? So in our educational collection, we have about 50

different kinds of birds of prey from all around the world. Birds like red

-tailed hawks from here in South Carolina and birds from Africa and Asia

Europe and South America.

Only the raptors, the foot -grasping predatory birds are the ones that we

here. That's why it's called birds of prey.

Oh, that's great.

All right, my friends. Now we get to help out with training some birds for a

flight demo.

So what are these two birds that we're going to be using today? These are

Harris hawks. They're one of the only cooperative birds of prey in all of the

world. They work as a team, which is pretty cool. And they're found right

in the United States in the desert. So right now, Katie and Audrey are going to

call them in to this perch. Here it comes. Oh, wow.

Oh, wow.

Here it comes.

Wow, look at that.

Oh, and what did she put on? So she gave him a reward. She put a little piece of

beef on the perch. The other one didn't do exactly what he was supposed to do,

but he flew right past.

They get rewarded.

It's called positive reinforcement.

We give them a little bit of food.

We use beef in our training when they do what we ask them to do. So this guy got

a reward. The other one that didn't do exactly what he was asked didn't get a

reward. Oh, wow.

She's about to call him over there. Oh, wow.

That's really awesome.

And just us being here helps prepare them because usually birds don't like to

around people, and so they're a little nervous. So having us this close is

helpful. We'll see if we can bring them in from over here this time.

Let's see.

Oh, wow. Can you see the elephant in the tree over there? That's cool.

Oh, look. Here one comes now.

Oh, wow.

Check it out.

Oh, hey there, buddy.

That's awesome.

And he got his treat. He got his reward. That's absolutely awesome.

Oh, wow, there's the other one.

This is really cool.

Training birds must be really fun. It is a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, but

it's a lot of fun.

And, of course, they've got their little bells on them. They've got bells, and

they also have radio transmitters. So you can see attached to their tail a

little antenna there.

That's so that if they decide really not to do what we ask and fly away, we can

find them again.

So what actually keeps them here and not flying away? The only thing that keeps

them here is the fact that they've been trained, that staying here gets them

everything they want. They get rewarded for being here.

And so they generally want to stay here with us. Well, that's amazing.

Yeah. That's absolutely awesome. So we've got some more training. We do. We

some training that you're going to help us with. These birds hunt rabbits, and

you're actually going to be the rabbit for us today.

I don't know.

All right, well, let's try it.

All right, so what actually are we going to be doing to train these with the

rabbit? Well, so, Handyman Hal, you're not actually going to be the rabbit.

You're just going to be the power for the rabbit. Oh, wow. Here in my bag, I

have what's called the dummy bunny. He's just a rolled -up ball of carpet. He

looks kind of like a rabbit.

You're going to take this stick, and when I tell you to, you're going to run

that the bunny follows behind you. The hawks are going to fly in, and when they

catch you, well, sorry, when they catch the rabbit, then you just let go of the

string, okay? Okay. Sound good?

That sounds great. All right.

Oh,

wow. Look, he got it.

Oh, he's got a little treat on there.

He's like, oh, it must taste really good.

Look at this one.

What is this? This is a kite.

So believe it or not, just like the toy at the beach, there's a bird called a

kite. And this one is called a yellow -billed kite because guess what color

beak is?

It's yellow.

Oh, and he has a really big wingspan. He does. The kites have very large wings

and especially long tails that help them to hang in the wind.

and catch their favorite food, which are insects, things like dragonflies and

grasshoppers. Oh, wow. And they actually catch that food in their feet, which is

pretty cool stuff.

How fast can they fly?

Well, fast enough to catch a dragonfly, but not quite as fast as the falcon.

They could probably dive at 80 or 90 miles an hour if they needed to. Wow.

Isn't it really awesome? So we're going to see it fly today, right? We're going

to see him fly, and we'll see him catching food to kind of imitate what he

be doing out there in the wild if he were hunting.

Oh, wow. There he goes.

Wow, that's awesome.

So what Audrey is going to do, she's going to toss little pieces of food into

the air, and he's going to catch them in his feet.

Wow, that's amazing.

So if those little pieces of food were insects, that's exactly how he would be

hunting them. He'd be catching that food in his feet and then bringing the food

up to his mouth and eating all while he stays in flight. Wow, that's awesome.

Most birds of prey stop to eat their meals. The red -tailed hawk and the

peregrine falcon and the barred owl, they all stop to eat the things that

catch. But the kites, they don't usually stop very often. They feed on their

prey while they're flying. Wow, here he comes. There's a tree.

He's really good at catching stuff.

How long will they fly?

before they actually stop. So in some cases, kites have to fly the entire day

just to catch enough food to survive.

So our Mississippi kites here in South Carolina, we know that they'll stay in

the air from sunrise to sunset looking for food. So one of the cool things that

kites do is they grab food right off of tree branches.

So if we imagine that Audrey's hand is a tree, he's going to come in and grab

that food like a snake or a lizard right off the branches.

Wow! He missed it.

That's all right, though. That was pretty cool.

handyman how this is one of my favorite birds of prey this is actually the only

bird of prey in all of north america that nests under the ground they live in

burrows kind of like the ones we've mimicked up here in our in our flying

this is a burrowing owl a burrowing owl oh this is gonna be really cool oh look

here it goes oh look

There she goes.

So usually they don't use burrows made out of plastic like these. Typically

nest in burrows made by other animals, things like prairie dogs and groundhogs,

which is one of the issues that burrowing owls face is that many of the

they depend on are treated as pests.

And so if we got rid of all those pest animals that these guys need, they

wouldn't have a nest or a hole in the ground to use.

Oh. It's really tiny.

Yeah, they're not very big. They only weigh about 100 grams, about as much as

stick of butter.

Really? Wow.

They eat a lot of insects and a lot of mice.

One of the coolest things about burrowing owls is they decorate their

They actually bring things to their nests to make them more attractive.

And the thing that they bring most often is coyote dung. Oh, wow. You heard that

right. They bring poop to their nests. And we think that it helps by attracting

insects to their nests for them to eat. We feel like teaching about them is very

important. We want people to understand that their populations are declining.

And again, it's probably because of the fact that...

Prairie dogs and groundhogs are declining as well.

So she was here, was brought here as a part of our breeding program to be an

educational ambassador.

Now, where are they originally from? So burrowing owls are found primarily in

the Great Plains here in the United States, so the area west of the

River and east of the Rocky Mountains, out in the big, wide -open prairies

there aren't many trees, which is one of the reasons we think they evolved this

really cool behavior of hanging out under the ground. If there's no trees to

hide in, you've got to hide somewhere, and under the ground is the next best

thing. Right, yeah.

You can see the little tracker on her. Right. You can see her radio

She wears a little backpack that holds the radio transmitter, and that's that

antenna you can see on her back.

So is this one of the birds you actually get to see at the show? This is one of

the birds we use in our flight demo. She's in just about every demonstration

do, and people sure do love her. So you can come and see her.

Oh, okay.

Wow.

Hey, there.

You get all kinds of treats.

Oh, Mr. Stephen, thank you so much for letting us come have some fun today,

right? It was a lot of fun.

Yes, it was.

I hear that there's a lot of tools for avian educators like yourself.

So what are some of the tools that you use? We do use a lot of different tools.

Some of them are pretty obvious. We wear gloves.

These birds have sharp claws on their fists, so we wear these gloves,

called gauntlets, to help protect our hands from their claws. Also make for a

nice, comfortable perch for the bird to stand on, so we use gloves.

We use a bag. These are special bags that we use to keep the rewards in, the

things like the dummy bunny and some of the other equipment.

We talked about the... bell. But just in case a bird decides not to do what it's

supposed to do, we use these little things. This is a radio transmitter.

This little thing makes a signal that we can hear with this special piece of

equipment. This is the radio receiver.

So this antenna, look out.

Wow. This would help us to track a bird if they were to fly away. We can use

this to listen for the sound that this little guy makes, and it tells us which

direction we need to go in to find the bird. Wow, that's really cool.

Pretty cool stuff.

This.

is a scale so we use positive reinforcement to train these birds which

give them a reward of food when they do what we ask them to do if a bird's not

the right weight they might not be interested in food so every day the

get weighed so we know how much they weigh so we know how much food to give

so they get an appropriate diet every day really cool and it's a scale with a

little perch on the top that's awesome

And then finally, the most important tools in our trade, we do a lot of

cleaning. And these are some of the cleaning supplies that we use to clean

after these birds. We've got scrub brushes of a variety of kinds.

We've got soap.

We've got disinfectants.

And I'm going to give this to you because we want to thank you for

with us today to go and clean some enclosures.

Well, I guess we're going to have to.

Come on, let's go.

Well, my friends, we've got to do our volunteer duty.

We're in.

The burrowing house enclosure.

We've got to do some cleaning.

Let's see. Got to brush you.

Let's get some soap on here.

We've had such an awesome day today here at the Birds of Prey.

We've met some really cool birds.

Oh, we even helped train some for the show. It was great.

We even got to watch some really cool birds fly in the air right over our

And we learned what we need to do if we ever find one out in the wild.

Totally awesome.

Wow.

It's such an awesome day today here at Birds of Prey.

Thanks for watching Andy Manow. We'll see you later.

How's a handyman? A handyman that's got a fan.

How, how's a handyman? He can't sit, no one can.

Handyman, how I got a job for you. Can you help me?

Handyman Hal, I've got a job for you We're gonna need all of your handy tools

Handyman Hal, I've got a job for you Can you help me?

Handyman Hal, I've got a job for you You're gonna fix it, cause that's what

do Looks like my car broke down, nowhere to go I'm stuck out

here on the right side of the road What? Will I do? Wait a second. Oh,

yes, I know.

Handyman Howl's got a truck. Gonna give me a tow.

In the tow truck, in the tow truck.

Handyman Howl, I got a job for you. Can you help me?

Handyman Howl, I got a job for you. We're gonna need all our...

Yes,

I know.

The handyman convicted with the drill and away we go.

Woo!

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. Can you help? Can you help me, handyman?

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. We're gonna need all of your handy too.

Handyman Hal.

I've got a job for you. Can you help me? Oh, can you help me, please? Andy Van

Hal, I've got a job for you. You're going to fix it because I'm what you do.

What are we going to do with this big old pile of brain? Big old pile, yes,

old pile. So many of them lost count after number six. One, two, three, four,

five, six, oh, no. Will I do it in a second? Oh, yes, I know.

Oh, yes, I know.

Hal's got a forklift. He can shift them like a pro.

I got a job for you. Can you help me?

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. We're gonna need all of your handy tools.

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. Can you help me?

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. You're gonna fix it cause that's what

My car is so dirty, it needs a clean.

But the water won't go through the car wash machine.

What will I do? Wait a second. Oh, yes, I know.

Hal's got a wrench and he's going to make the water flow.

So awesome.

Candyman Hal.

I got a job for you. Can you help? Can you help me? Can you help me, please?

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. We're gonna need all of your handy tools.

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. Can you help bring all those handy tools?

Handyman Hal, I got a job for you. You're gonna fix it, cause that's what

do. You're gonna fix it, cause that's what you do. You're gonna fix it,

cause that's what you do.