Raptor Free Flight at Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum

We saw the morning and afternoon Raptor Free Flights at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum when we were there in January. The museum brings out birds that are trained to swoop for bait providing great views of the birds in flight and out in the open area of the desert museum’s land. The views of the birds during the free flight would be very time-consuming to duplicate in the wild and lots of people – including me – were taking pictures.

We saw two different kinds of owls: A Barn Owl

and a Great Horned Owl. I couldn’t resist taking several perspectives of this bird. The wings are more complex structures.

The Prairie Falcon was probably my favorite...swift and beutiful.

There was a ferruginous hawk at the end of the morning program - quite a size contrast to the praire falcon!

All of these are solitary hunters. The Harris’s Hawks, the last birds in the afternoon Free Flight, live and hunt as a group so their free flight is as a group. Their acrobatic interactions were too fast for me to photograph!

Learning Log – January 2016

January was a month of varied learning opportunities.

Udemy. I finished one course: Unearthing the Trojan War: The Life of Heinrich Schliemann

And started another (Photography Masterclass: Your Complete Guide to Photography).

I prefer the Coursera type courses over Udemy. The Udemy courses have less depth and the range of materials is limited to videos (often voice over charts)…without a robust list to references outside the course.

Lecture. I went to a one-hour lecture about Black Bears in Maryland and enjoyed it thoroughly. The presenter had a trunk of materials to pass around. One was a pelt of a largish black bear (obtained from a road kill); it took two people to hold and examine. I realized that I fall back into my long standing habits as a student in the classroom very easily: taking notes to pay attention – it works for me and always has. Now I’m prepared to trivia questions about black bears. Did you know that in the fall bears need to eat at least 20,000 calories per day to prepare for hibernations?

Coursera. I’ve finished 2 weeks of the Soul Beliefs course. This is the first in a series of courses which I will make my way through over the next few months. This is a good time of year to take courses since the weather encourages indoors activities.

Raptor Free Flight. My favorite experiential learning in January was the Raptor Free Flight at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. We saw Harris’s Hawks, a Barn Owl, Chihuahuan Ravens, a Great Horned Owl, and a Prairie Falcon. The Harris’s Hawks live and hunt in small groups; their coordinated efforts while hunting are quite different than the solitary owls and falcon.