Jade attended the Home Education Fair in Bury St Edmunds to help raise our profile.
Here at Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, we like to give young people an opportunity to learn about our work through our Trainee scheme. Every year, we hire a trainee and give them a paid role where they receive on the job training, learning about the varied roles we have here.
General Manager Maz says: “During the course of the year and when space and finances allow, we will seek to add young trainees to the staff on a temporary secondment as it gives them an insight into the realities of working with wildlife. This helps clarify their ambitions as to which area they would like to work in - zoos, veterinary, research, education etc…”
Earlier this year, we interviewed several potential candidates, all of whom were existing volunteers or work experience students. Each had their own merits and the final decision was very hard. In the end, we decided to offer the role part time to two of the candidates.
Dolly had finished her degree in Zoo Biology at Nottingham Trent University and become a volunteer with us while looking for a job. Jade was just finishing her Animal Care course at West Suffolk College Otley campus and had been a work experience student with us for a few months.
Although the girls already knew our routine here from their voluntary work, it was a big step up in their learning and level of responsibility. After guidance from the falconers, they took the lead on working with some of our birds who had not had much socialisation previously. Fred, one of our Crested Caracaras has particularly come out of his shell and loves his enrichment days provided by Dolly, Jade and the volunteers.
They’ve helped with putting together our feed rounds, making sure enough food was taken out the day before to defrost. They also worked out food quantities for each bird, based on their weight in the morning, which the girls took the lead on monitoring.
Jade learning about training young falcons
Starting in June, Dolly and Jade embraced working with all our baby birds, and as the birds grew their flight feathers and began their training to join our flying team, the girls were a big part of getting the babies used to different people flying them. They have worked with our Great Grey Owls Smokey and Bandit, MacKinders Eagle Owls Kali and Kruger, Twiglet the Long-eared Owl, Plop the Barn Owl and Ember the Black Barn Owl.
The girls enjoyed working with the birds during the displays, and helped by releasing birds from their aviaries or boxes and flying the birds amongst the crowds. However, we waited until after the summer holidays to ask them to take on a presenting role, both for the flying displays and our popular Meerkat talks. With support from staff, the girls did their homework and have now delivered several talks about a variety of our birds.
Dolly introducing Boris to young audience members
Quote from Dolly
Dolly presenting part of our flying display with Cecil
I applied for the role to expand my experience & knowledge of bird handling, training, behaviour and health, and have really enjoyed starting to deliver talks in the shows - even though it was scary to begin with! My highlight so far is the work we’ve achieved with Fred the Crested Caracara; he’s sitting on the glove now and loves his training routine & enrichment, whereas he was nervous of us just going in his aviary to begin with. I find it really special that we’ve been able to build relationships with the birds, and see them trusting us. It enables us to share them and engage with guests in displays which I find really rewarding. I’m learning more every day from the falconers and love every minute working with the birds.
Quote from Jade
Jade with Dereck the Harris Hawk
I applied for the position to extend my knowledge of falconry and how to train birds of prey. I have learnt that when it comes to training these amazing creatures it's nowhere near as easy as some people think. The amount of time, patience and dedication that is needed to have these birds respect you is crazy. It's a very delicate process which can help the birds choose their path. It is very rewarding when it all falls into place after all the hard work and the long hours of relationship building. The best part is something that me and Dolly have achieved which is that we have turned around Fred the Crested Caracara’s life completely. He seems so much happier and more confident to be around people and will progress so much more as time goes on for him.
Working with Fred our Crested Caracara has been a highlight for Dolly and Jade.