Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Kempton hosted a four day Raptor Day Camp June 29 to July 2.
Daniel Boone senior Caitlin Shellhamer, 17, of Birdsboro, developed and implemented the pilot program for her Girl Scout Gold Award Project with the help of volunteers she recruited. Her mother, Erin Brown is the Director of Education at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary. Shellhamer volunteers at the Sanctuary.
“I like their (Sanctuary) mission statement about preserving and protecting. I think it’s really important for people to get out here and learn that there’s so much more that we’re part of,” she said. “The world isn’t just your town or your city or your street. It’s so much bigger and they’re is so much more in it that is really interesting to learn about.”
A total of 80 youth, age 10, from the Olivet Boys and Girls Club of Reading and Berks attended the camp from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Each day about 20 children attended the camp which featured a different topic and activities, including live birds each day. The first day featured owls; the second day hawks and falcons; third day eagles and the fourth day vultures.
“I hope they learn to appreciate the great outdoors and all the things that it offers to them, and that they learned a little bit about raptors and their importance,” said Shellhamer. “What makes this fun is seeing all the smiles on their faces and how much fun they’re having.”
Activities included food chain and web games, owl pellet dissections, journaling and drawing, lesson about types of migration, silhouette identification, presentations, Kettling mobile, silhouette id games, raptor twister, Kestrel nest box building, giant migration floor map in Visitor Center Gallery, Power Points, videos, Eagle nest building, Vulture Survival Dilemmas board game, Radio Telemetry activity, and a lesson on binocular use.
“I really want them to get that these birds are important; they’re not just things that are pretty to look at. They’re important to our ecosystem and how we live and they’re helping us and how we’re helping them,” said Shellhamer.
The games and activities demonstrated that lesson. For example, one of the activities was the habitat game. Cones blocked off an area to serve as the habitat and the children jumped into five hula hoops within that area when they wanted food, water or shelter. Then they were told that people were moving into their area, their forest.
“At first, they were really excited,” said Shellhamer, explaining that the children made plans for stores, homes and a school. “Every time they said something we moved the cones in closer and closer to them and they started to get really squished. Then we started taking out hula hoops and they were getting out of the game.”
“They realized that whenever we get something that is great, maybe we get a new shopping mall, it seems great to us but we’re actually hurting other organisms and it needs to be a balance,” said Shellhamer.
Each day also included a hike to South Look Out and North Look Out.
While sitting on the rocks at the top of North Look Out, her mother, Erin Brown, Director of Education at the Sanctuary, smiled as she watched the children look for vultures through binoculars, donated by Cabela’s to the Sanctuary. The children had learned how to use the binoculars that day at the camp.
“You can read about a place and you can see pictures about a place but when the kids get up here and they’re actually a part of the experience of Hawk Mountain, that’s what they take back with them,” said Brown. “Just to see them up here, it makes it all worth while.”
She explained that this was not the first time the Sanctuary has hosted Raptor Camp.
“There was a break and we decided to bring Raptor Camp back. We decided to pilot the program with the Reading Boys and Girls Club, make sure it works, see if it’s effective or not and make any tweaks needed,” said Brown.
Raptor Camp will be offered in July and if it fills up, it will be offered again in August. This would be the camp the Sanctuary would offer next year.
Brown hopes her daughter gains leadership, time management and organization skills during the process of completing her Girl Scout Gold Award Project.
“She’s learned that you have to be able to be flexible with a schedule. She’s learned that you have to be able to adapt your activities and programs. It’s a lot of real world skills. She had to create the entire thing so there’s this is how I think it’s going to happen but this is reality how it does happen.”
Shellhamer plans to study biology and Spanish in college and go to medical school. She hopes to continue to volunteer at the Sanctuary.
Brown explained that Hawk Mountain tries to be global in its reach. For example, the Sanctuary has an international training program.
“We’re trying to do the same thing with education to have more of a global reach because our birds are safe here but they might not be safe somewhere else.”
Hawk Mountain Sanctuary educators have been invited to go to the River of Raptors watch site in Mexico and do some of their education programs for their children. The goal is that the educators at the Mexico watch site would watch Hawk Mountain educators conduct the programs and try to replicate the programs. Their hope is to co-write a grant to hold a workshop for raptor educators of Central and South America to all come together and learn how to do programming for different age groups and do some training, and also offer one at Hawk Mountain for raptor educators, said Brown.
“Exchanging of ideas and trying to do training. We’re hoping that’s going to happen,” said Brown. “The ultimate goal is that Caitlin would also go so she would be extending her program there. It would be Hawk Mountain’s program. That’s the ultimate thing, to help people replicate the program there and to get the word out about raptor conservation in general.”
For more information about Raptor Camp and to view camp videos, visit http://www.hawkmountain.org/ and click on the Education tab.
