Here at Fossil Ledges Animal Education Center we wish to increase the overall awareness of bird rescue efforts at the sanctuary and to provide additional educational programming in the community geared to our school age population. We wish to increase the number of community field trips to the center and foster additional volunteerism, educational classes, seminars and roundtables related to rescue efforts at the sanctuary. This project is open for anyone to join.
-Increase grass roots awareness of injured animal rehabilitation at Fossil -Ledges Animal Education Center. -Increase hands on volunteerism at the Aviary. -Increase community awareness of how the sanctuary's animals fit into the -local ecosystem.
The project was a success, both in creating new habitat and making the pond near the woods more inviting to traveling and visiting waterfowl, including wood ducks, geese and herons.
We learned that creating new habitat for the aviary required careful planning and lots of hard work.
We might adjust the number and location of the nesting boxes on the big pond to better suit waterfowl.
We learned that applying human logic to the bird behaviors of the aviary didn't always work. We needed to ba able to think more like the birds in response to their habitats. We made progress in this area through careful observation of the birds choices and how they responded to their environment.
The hours spent logging bird behaviors were as valuable as the work of habitat restoration. We especially learned how tenacious the EWTs, (Eastern Wild Turkeys), are with their territory and how much natural curiosity they have about the other creatures around them. We learned that the resident ducks of the sanctuary continued to prefer the security of their smaller pond even after habitat changes were made to the larger woodland pond.
