Getting to Know Gillis, Episode 1- Gillis is an Educational Bird

My name is Julie Super. I am a volunteer with Audubon Naturalist Society and I am the permit holder of this young black vulture and I'm going to talk to you today about why she lives with me and not out in the wild. She is a young bird. Her hatch year was last year so she probably was hatched around by the end of this month, by the end of April 2019 and her parents had nested in a barn in Mount Airy that had an opening in the attic of the barn and it was a nice dry place so they went ahead and built a nest and had just one chick which was Gillis. The owners of the barn realized that adult vultures were going in and out and they were going to have an event so when the birds left they sealed the opening not realizing that there was a nest with a baby in it. She was there probably alone for about 10 days which is a really long time when you're a small bird. And when they did find her she was underweight and very dehydrated. They called the Department of Natural Resources who came and picked her up and took her to a rehabilitation center. There she was fed and the rehabber's intention was to find a nest that had vultures about the same age, a foster nest. Unfortunately in the time that they had Gillis they were not able to find a nest with birds nestlings that were the same age. It's important that the nestlings all be about the same age and in that time Gillis became imprinted on the caregivers at the rehabbers. Imprinting is something that's sort of a survival technique for little birds. The more precocial species like ducks and chickens and turkeys imprint the moment they're hatched. A bird like Gillis and some mammals take it takes longer. They imprint over a period of time. So probably she was starting to be imprinted on her parents and then that shifted when she was removed from the nest and became under the care of human beings. That's why it's really important when you find a baby bird to try to get it back into the nest. If it has no injuries it's pretty, it's actually critical that a parent raise it. Parent birds are much better at raising little birds than human beings. Come on, up, up, up. Good girl. So that is her story and I'm going to talk again next time about her training. My permits, both federal and state permits, require that I do programming with her and so I use a technique. It's a force-free technique called positive reinforcement and I'll show you how that works next time. So until then we'll say goodbye. Say goodbye Gillis. Thank you.