New Tenant

Well as of 10 pm last night, it is official. A new (hopefully temporary) tenant has moved in to aviary number one of the NY Wildlife Rescue Center. My good friends and volunteers Chris and Michele helped me move in a ton of stone dust to level off the floor. Then we put in chain link to prevent anything from being able to dig in and added another foot of stone dust on top of that. It was a backbreaking project. The perching was designed with "U" shaped brackets on the walls where custom cut trees can be inserted without any metal hardware. Replacement will be very easy and quick. I still need to wrap some of the trees with rope and tweak things a bit but our first tenant, the Redtailed Hawk that I picked up on sat night is settling in nicely.

This Redtailed Hawk was picked up in a yard in Troy, NY. Latham Emergency Vet Clinic x-rayed him and he didnt have any visible breaks. He is thin and in poor condition, he is eating everything that I give him--I will keep you updated on his progress.

"Not quite finished" enclosure

This Saturday I am hoping to get the other 6 enclosures framed in. We will be starting around 8 am. I have several guys that have already volunteered to help out for a day and get the other aviaries up. We can always use more help and even if you are not a carpenter (I'm not) we will have something that you can do to finish the first half of the Raptor Facilities. The second half will not be started unless the donations keep coming in. Even with volunteer labor, the materials for the 175 foot long flight addition will cost around $10,ooo . Not a lot of money, but enough that I don't have it without your help. A $5,000 donation will get the largest raptor conditioning/exercise flight named in your honor.

This Sunday I have a local girl scout troop coming to volunteer at shearing day. They will be catching the sheep for shearing. I will need bigger bodies to wrangle the llamas (many of whom are not halter broke yet) into the chute for shearing. Many hands make light work. I usually dread shearing day. With over 40 sheep and over 30 llamas to shear in one day, our shearer Ray Baitsholts will have his work cut out for him. We start at 8 am. If you want to volunteer to get dirty ... see you then.

I am very pleased with the progress and support of NY Wildlife Rescue Center. The word is getting out that we are making a difference. The donations are slowly trickling in--but are coming. People are volunteering to keep expanding the facilities to accommodate the ever increasing numbers of animals. There is so much that I want to do and the "good weather" is so short for construction. My wife asked me last night "Why are you killing yourself to get things done so fast?" I told her ..."It isn't a choice, it is a necessity".

With your continued support, we will continue to expand to help the hundreds of animals that we save every year.

All my best, Wes