Finally got to make a return visit to the first owl rehab I visited. The Raptor Trust is a nice medical and rehab facility in northern NJ.
It’s a great facility to look around, but picture taking is absolutely terrible. They have very fine netting on all the enclosures. Most of my pics look like this, no matter how hard I tried.
I’ll share a few I got where you can actually see the birds. The post picture is of the most beautiful Barred Owl they had, Sonny.
You have no idea how sad I was that I couldn’t photograph Sonny! He spent almost the whole time sitting literally inches from me. He looked so beautiful in person, and seemed so gentle! Every now and then, he would ever so softly hoot at me. 🥰
A lady at the facility talked to me for a while as she worked on his crate training. She got him to follow food until he went in an animal crate. Even with food, owls still don’t like to cooperate. If they’re full enough, they won’t budge. After he’d finally hop inside, she’d carefully shut the door and tilt the box a little this way and that to get him used to being transported for his checkups.
She said owls generally don’t mind the crates since it’s like a tree hollow they would normally live in.
I believe they had 4 other Barred Owls.
This was literally the only spot in the park without netting! This one was tied for hottest owl along with the GHO. Those 2 were panting as much as I was!