Our Avian Friends

We encountered this fine bird Saturday at the Carolina Raptor Center, which is just north of the city. The Raptor Center rehabilitates owls, hawks and eagles and keeps the ones that can no longer fly or hunt on their own. We saw everything from screech owls to bald eagles, and Josh seemed pretty interested in them all, especially when he realized they all had names written on plaques outside the aviaries. This is Maddie, a horned owl, that was part of a presentation we attended.

We were actually a little hesitant to attend the afternoon show, which was called something like "Courtship and Mating Habits in Birds," but we felt OK after the speaker assured the large crowd of families we would be spared the gory details. We learned a lot about a few of their birds, and Josh amazingly paid attention the whole time. Molly, on the other hand, played in the dirt and squealed occasionally. We joked (sort of) that the screech owl had nothing on her.
Here's the standard picture of Molly in the backpack that comes with any outdoor trip these days.
This is the eagle aviary, which had three bald eagles. You can see two of them in the upper right hand corner of the picture.
I'm including this picture because I was surprised to find a bald eagle sitting like a chicken. It never occurred to me that these regal birds too much rest and aren't always soaring through the air or sitting upright. I think this one was a little annoyed that I kept taking its picture.