MOORE — There was some squawking and ruffled feathers Friday at Moore Central Junior High school.
But it was all in the name of education as researchers from the University of Oklahoma’s George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center introduced students to a variety of birds through its “All About Birds” program.
Representing the Tulsa research center were Ryan VanZant, Jennifer Reeder and Joseph Hanks.
The All About Birds program allows the children to see the birds up close with a few of them also flying over the crowd.
During this program the Harris’s hawk, Zephyr, en route from the back of the auditorium to the stage, decided to make a stop on a student’s back.
VanZant and his team showed some beautiful specimen of mainly Oklahoma native birds, but also a few foreigners.
Among the birds presented by the research team were a sandhill crane, African grey parrot, a barn owl, a black vulture, a Harris’s hawk, a roadrunner, American crow, an Abyssinian ground hornbill and the showstopper, a bald eagle.
Part of the Sutton Reasearch Center’s conservation success came with helping save bald eagles from extinction.
In 1990 in Oklahoma alone, there were no pairs of eagles nesting. In 2011, with the help of the Research Center, there were 27 pairs of nesting bald eagles in Oklahoma. Their goal was to have 10, VanZant said during the presentation.
There are bald eagle nests in every state, except Hawaii, and the bird is no longer on the endangered species list.
The research center also has helped farmers protect species such as the lesser prairie chicken which is native to Oklahoma. The solution, they found, was for farmers to mark their barbed wire fences, VanZant said.
During the presentation, students learned the center tracked the chickens and found that they fly away from predators at a speed of 50 to 60 mph and end up running into barbed wire fences because they can’t see them.
The research showed that 7 out of 10 prairie chickens were killed or fatally injured because they couldn’t see the fences.
The center has helped to mark 250 miles of fence and have no reported incidences of prairie chicken deaths caused by these fences.
The Center also encouraged students to take part in helping conserve environments for the birds around us by recycling.
VanZant’s words of wisdom to his junior high crowd, “Recycling one can, can save tucans.”
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On the Net
· suttoncenter.org
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FYI
Each year birds contribute to the revenue generated across the country.
Bird hunting: $1.4 billion
Bird eating: $29 billion
Bird watching: $85 billion
