Page 17 - FF USA Exchange Diary September 2016

DATE: Wednesday 27 July FROM: Ron Wild Wings Bird Recovery Centre and Lunch

This morning we went to Wild Wings Bird Recovery Centre just outside Kalispell. The centre receives damaged
raptors and must release every bird that successfully recovers. It can keep permanently damaged birds as long as
they are used at least 12 times in educational talks. We sat in chairs in the sun as the volunteer handlers brought
around a variety of raptors so that we could see and photograph them close up. We saw the following raptors;

Arthur - ground nesting hawk Harley - Harland hawk Tica - snowy owl

We also saw - Duncan - red tail hawk, Katniss - Harris hawk, Sweeney - Swanson hawk, Homer - great grey owl,
Bentley - great horned owl, Spencer - barred owl, Igor - barn owl, Frank - northern Pygmy owl, Lacey - osprey
As you can see there was a great variety of raptors and everyone enjoyed the presentation.

We then went to lunch at Brenda and Jerry's country home. The grounds were lovely although no one would want
the lawn mowing job. We had a traditional 4th of July lunch - sausage in a bun, watermelon, beans and potato
salad. Desert was chocolate cake with ice cream.

We performed our skit and sang the friendship force song. Our hosts had nothing organised but did seem to enjoy
our performance. We left straight after eating as we were going out for tea.

For dinner our hosts took us to a friend’s house on a lake. We enjoyed a ride on the lake in a speed boat before
dinner. Some other neighbours joined us for dinner and we held a FF recruiting evening. We had just finished
dinner when a storm broke to give us a light and noise display. The power went out about 9.00pm and we were
told that this is not unusual - and that it would probably be off for 5 hours as that was usually the case. We were
done for the evening and so said our goodbyes and headed home. There was no shortage of deer sightings on
the trip home. We had a great day to finish off the exchange.