Dullstroom Bird of Prey Rehab Centre
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The Dullstroom Bird Of Prey and Rehabilitation Centre was established in 1997 with the aim of educating the public in order to promote an awareness of the raptor species and their plight as a growing endangered species.
Annualy , hundreds of raptors are injured or killed by vehicles, fences, traps, powerlines poisons and other factors. Chicks are also removed illegally by people from nesting sites and taken home where these birds become "imprinted" on humans and can then never be reintroduced into the wild. Removing young chicks from the nests severly impacts with normal breeding patterns in the wild.
At the centre and with the help of a local vet, who has experience in handling raptors, we are privilaged to help dozens of these casualties each year.
We have a very good success rate with captive breeding involving many of the bird of prey species found here in South Africa. For many years people were led to believe that you could not breed birds of prey in captivity, this myth has been proved wrong time and again.
Captive breeding is invaluable to scientists and biologists around the world and is a fantastic back up for the wild population. The more we learn about captive breeding the better chance we have of saving some of the endangered species.
There are numerous cages displaying various raptor species. These captive birds fall into three categories :
1. Mechanically damaged due to some form of accident in the wild leaving them with permanent physical damage. They therefore cannot be returned to the wild to fend for themselves.
2. Mentally damaged (Imprinted) where they have been removed from the wild as chicks and think they are the same species as the individual who hand reared them. They cannot be returned to the wild as they would not recognise their own species and would be detrimental to the wild stocks of birds of prey.
3. Captive Bred birds who have become domesticated. We have imprinted and captive bred resident raptors throughout the centre sitting on perches and who are not caged. These birds make excellent subjects for photographers and are the birds we use in our flying and educational displays.
Over the years we have been quite successful in our rehabilitation programme and to get a bird back into the wild is our ultimate goal. This is not always as easy as it sounds and takes a great deal of time and patience.
To achieve this we use two methods :
1. Falconry, where we actively hunt with the bird and get it to hunt for us. Once the bird shows that it is fit by successfully hunting with us then it is usually ready to fend for itself in the wild and is released.
2. Hacking Back, is a method which involves leaving a healthy but unfit bird in a aviary for a few weeks to get used to its surroundings. The aviary is then left open to let the bird out in its own time to go and hunt. The bird being unfit usually does not catch anything on the first few attempts and returns to the aviary to get its daily food ration. The process is repeated until one day the bird is able to hunt and fend or itself and no longer returns.
Annualy , hundreds of raptors are injured or killed by vehicles, fences, traps, powerlines poisons and other factors. Chicks are also removed illegally by people from nesting sites and taken home where these birds become "imprinted" on humans and can then never be reintroduced into the wild. Removing young chicks from the nests severly impacts with normal breeding patterns in the wild.
At the centre and with the help of a local vet, who has experience in handling raptors, we are privilaged to help dozens of these casualties each year.
We have a very good success rate with captive breeding involving many of the bird of prey species found here in South Africa. For many years people were led to believe that you could not breed birds of prey in captivity, this myth has been proved wrong time and again.
Captive breeding is invaluable to scientists and biologists around the world and is a fantastic back up for the wild population. The more we learn about captive breeding the better chance we have of saving some of the endangered species.
There are numerous cages displaying various raptor species. These captive birds fall into three categories :
1. Mechanically damaged due to some form of accident in the wild leaving them with permanent physical damage. They therefore cannot be returned to the wild to fend for themselves.
2. Mentally damaged (Imprinted) where they have been removed from the wild as chicks and think they are the same species as the individual who hand reared them. They cannot be returned to the wild as they would not recognise their own species and would be detrimental to the wild stocks of birds of prey.
3. Captive Bred birds who have become domesticated. We have imprinted and captive bred resident raptors throughout the centre sitting on perches and who are not caged. These birds make excellent subjects for photographers and are the birds we use in our flying and educational displays.
Over the years we have been quite successful in our rehabilitation programme and to get a bird back into the wild is our ultimate goal. This is not always as easy as it sounds and takes a great deal of time and patience.
To achieve this we use two methods :
1. Falconry, where we actively hunt with the bird and get it to hunt for us. Once the bird shows that it is fit by successfully hunting with us then it is usually ready to fend for itself in the wild and is released.
2. Hacking Back, is a method which involves leaving a healthy but unfit bird in a aviary for a few weeks to get used to its surroundings. The aviary is then left open to let the bird out in its own time to go and hunt. The bird being unfit usually does not catch anything on the first few attempts and returns to the aviary to get its daily food ration. The process is repeated until one day the bird is able to hunt and fend or itself and no longer returns.
- Duration: 1 hour(s)
- Location: Dullstroom, Lydenburg-Belfast Road
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