We're a non-profit sanctuary.
We started this about 20 years ago.
We turned it into a 501C3.
Hi Dudley.
Hello Dudley.
How are you doing?
Let me change your water.
Let me get your water.
Because the reality was there was no way I could financially support this on my own.
I would say we're somewhere in the area of about probably seven, eight hundred different
birds and various small animals that live here.
We have the eagles, the hawks, the owls.
We have the turtles and we have a lot of different small birds, parrots, parakeets.
And basically what they are are birds that have been brought here over the years to give
them a home.
Hi Lulu.
Hi Lulu.
Hi.
Hi.
Hi.
How are you?
How are we doing?
And this sanctuary serves as a permanent home for them.
Oh my goodness.
Food.
Peanuts.
There you go.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
When I first started with the eagles, I sort of had doubts, you know, will I ever be able
to successfully breed them.
So many people kept saying it's impossible, you can't do it, you can't be done.
What we're looking for is for the baby eagle to return and come back for his food.
There he is.
Don't move.
If you would have told me say 40 years ago that this would turn into a sanctuary of its
size, I would have laughed at you.
And the reality is, as I pointed out, this was something that took place on its own.
And I basically just like a wild horse, I just got on and just never got off.
It's just taken off.
Here he is.
What I was looking for was to see the strength in those wings.
And I noticed that his wings were, you know, not bad, but they weren't the best.
So I knew that he's only got limited flight.
So as he takes off, he's going to probably land in a tree.
But the object is we want him to come back because he has to fledge here.
He's going to come back and visit his parents and come to eat.
And he's gradually going to get stronger and stronger.
And within a month's time, he'll be flying like that one we filmed this morning.
He'll be strong.
Right now it's critical.
See, this was perfect, perfect release.
Called the Green Arcari.
And they come from South America.
It's a toucannet, a small toucan.
And this weekend we have another one coming.
It's a female.
And her head is sort of a brownish color, not the black.
And we're going to try putting them together.
And hopefully though, yeah, are you going to, oh, how pretty, look at that, he's going
to say hello.
Yeah.
You know, if you believe that this is something worth expanding or on or whatever you want
to call it, help support it.
Or if you have any other people that might want to be interested in helping, have your
friends contribute.
You know, because actually what it comes down to is whenever you're making a contribution,
you're actually making a contribution to yourself.
That's the way I see it.
If you're a photographer and you come here and you say, hey Pete, can you cut a hole
here?
Can you cut a hole there?
And I do all of these things to help you do that.
In essence, I'm making your job that much easier so that you don't have to go out and
travel to...
Oh, I just spotted one, got him, spotted.
Oh, wow, he's a beauty.
He's like a little lobster.
Yeah, he certainly is.
He's a crayfish.
And these crayfish, let me tell you their story.
Susan, her name is Jenks, Susan Jenks, she's a professor over at Russell Sage College.
And she uses these, look at the little dots on his back.
See the little pink dots?
Yeah.
They do behavioral studies with them.
They study their behavior.
And at the end of the semester, when they're all done, you know, she has a choice of either
flushing them down the toilet, getting rid of them, or bringing them here.
So every year, she brings her crayfish that are left over from the behavioral studies
and we put them out here so people can watch them.
So this gives them a second.
These are all boys.
These are all males.
They're not, there's no females.
Let me get a face view of him.
Here's a facial.
Here, see.
Now he's going to bite me.
I don't want him to bite me.
Ouch.
Oh, he bites with the claws.
Yeah, they pinch you.
See, they pinch you with the claws.
Oh, that is so cool.
It's like a lobster.
Wow.
You've got, ooh, zoom in on inside the house.
Come here, come over here.
Come over here.
Come over here.
Come here.
Okay, I got to let it go down.
I would estimate that this bird is about, probably in her early to mid-thirties.
That's 30 years.
Okay, so she's an old-timer, but notice how healthy she is.
I mean, you can see her talons are turning white, which again is a sign of old age.
If you look closely, the eyes, you can see how they're fogged over from the cataract.
There's not much I can do about that.
But other than that, she's very, very healthy.
She's got nice color on her beak, nice orange color.
And that's from that glug lucamine.
She's just chowing away.
That line, and we'll let her go for that.
But other than that, you can see how nice, how healthy she is.
She's got good reflexes.
She just can't see.
And that's no excuse to put her down.
We're going to go all the way with her.
I don't care if she lives another 50 years.
My baby, right? You're a good girl.
That's right.
You got Birdie made off.
I have a George Bush, Dick Cheney.
I got all kinds of characters in here.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Animals are amazing.
You can actually see various characters in them.
So this is where you have your coffee in the morning?
Yeah, sometimes I'll come out here and I'll have a cup of coffee.
When I do my rounds, I'll sit down and I'll bring nuts over.
It's fun.
You just hang out.
I'm going to put a sign here, the nut house.
Here's one looking at us.
He's looking right out of the house.
Oh, he looks like a baby.
They are. These are babies.
There he goes.
Now, those two eagles that I was showing.
Now, believe it or not, I have two black ones in here.
Did you ever see a black squirrel?
No.
Oh, they're gorgeous.
Where are they from?
We're going to have a total of, let's see.
What did I say?
We're going to have 26 red tails here.
What it just shows you is they're very common
throughout this whole northeastern region.
In fact, they're common all across North America
and South America.
Unfortunately, a lot of their problems arise.
They're hit by cars, people shoot them.
It goes on and on.
So it's probably one of the biggest problems they have today
in humans.
Well, if we don't take care of nature,
nature is going to easily take care of us
and she's doing a very good job of it right now.
We're talking global warming and you see these horrible tornadoes
and the problem with that is it's going to get worse.
People like Jacques Cousteau
and some of these Roger Torrey Peterson,
a lot of these people, I'm going back 20, 30 years ago,
they were predicting these things.
They said we better do it.
But this lady, her name is Vicki.
She's very dedicated.
They rescue little...
Right down the little pups
where the mother would be killed.
And this is down in New York City,
Washington Park and so forth.
People will find an injured squirrel or whatever it is
and she'll rehabilitate them and take care of them
and then release them again.
The problem is down there,
they don't have very many places to release
because in the city, most of them get killed
by either falling on pavement.
They don't have soft ground,
they get run over by taxis and cars and trains
and it just goes on and on.
That's not a very good environment down there,
I mean, for anything.
Even humans.
That's a bad place.
I'm sure that if 99% of the people down there had a choice,
they wouldn't be there.
They'd be the hell out of there.
