Cindy Alverson, Jackie Bray, and a Life-Changing Love of Raptors
Cindy Alverson with Hera the Great Horned Owl
Interview by Taylor Luken. Photography by Stacy Wegley.
At its various educational programs – be they presentations at schools or summer camps, booths at libraries or parks, or talks at any number of other Cincinnati events and locales – volunteers for the 501(c)(3) non-profit RAPTOR Inc. tend to describe their organization quite succinctly: we’re a hospital for birds of prey.
It’s something many of us may not think about, until suddenly, one day, we find ourselves in need of a hospital for a bird of prey; until a fateful day when we’ve stumbled upon an injured or sick eagle or owl in the woods, or had the misfortune of driving a car through the diving path of a hyperfocused hawk on the hunt.
Cincinnati and its surroundings, nestled in a fluvial crook of the Northern Bluegrass, are replete with peaceful woodlands, meadows, streams, and agricultural fields. This area is also full of determined people who are working to conserve and steward those wealthy ecosystems. We therefore greatly benefit from having a place as specialized as RAPTOR Inc. to serve our raptor populations. Raptors, after all, are essential to maintaining the ecological balance of our local lands. Without them – without hawks, owls, falcons, and eagles to keep mouse, squirrel, and other populations in check, without vultures to cleanse habitats of the bacteria that accompany death and decay – all of us would be much worse off.
It is to Cindy Alverson, RAPTOR Inc.’s Director of Avian Operations, and Jackie Bray, its Director of Education, that we owe much thanks for the health of Cincinnati’s raptor populations. Back in early March, on a temperamental day when spring was trying its best to begin blowing in, I spoke with them about what they do and about the thousands of birds that they’ve helped throughout RAPTOR Inc.'s more than 45-year history.
“I started working about 25 years ago as a volunteer on Saturdays,” Cindy begins. Having come to RAPTOR Inc. with a background in (human) healthcare, she says the transition to triaging, treating, and rehabilitating birds full-time was fairly natural. In her words:
“About 13 years ago, I became the first Executive Director for Raptor Incorporated. At that point, we were receiving 150 to 200 birds a year. Now we're getting about 400. So, my position transitioned from Executive Director to Director of Avian Operations, in which I now oversee the operations of the education ambassadors, as well as all the birds coming into rehab.”
Jackie, on the other hand, first began working with birds at the Cincinnati Zoo, where she worked as part of the zoo’s bird show:
“I was a paramedic and a 9-1-1 dispatcher in my earlier life, and after I retired as a dispatcher, I started working at the Cincinnati Zoo as an educator. Through the zoo, I had an opportunity to get my master's degree through [Miami University’s] Project Dragonfly program. The classes were given on-site at the zoo, so it was just a great opportunity.
As part of that program, I had to do an internship, and I chose the bird show at the zoo. From that internship, I ended up getting hired. So I worked at the bird show for about nine years and then from there I came to RAPTOR.
I was hired at RAPTOR as Associate Director with Cindy, and at that time, the two of us were responsible for everything. She primarily took care of all the rehab and I primarily took care of education, but we both crossed over and also did marketing and fundraising and everything. So like she said, the organization has grown exponentially and our roles were redefined. Now I'm Director of Education.”
These two branches of RAPTOR Inc. – rehabilitation and education – are aligned with its mission to conserve birds of prey through medical care and community education, in addition to field research and community service. What started in the 1970s as a backyard operation solely focused on the birds in its care has transformed into something much more robust and wide-reaching, with a beautiful facility in Milford. It’s a place that’s highly regarded within the raptor rehabilitation world.
Cindy says, “We went from home care with about four hard-working, overworked volunteers to a team of about 14 that spends about 70 hours a week in rehab.” She elaborates on how a ‘finder’ – a member of the public who finds and reaches out about an injured wild raptor – is also aided by having such an experienced team in their neighborhood:
“There are only five rehabilitation centers in Ohio. I look at us, every bird that we help, and know that we're actually helping finders.
And that's very unique. They find an injured bird of prey on the road. They don't know what to do. They start looking at their phone and then realize they can get care, they can find someone to help them. So I think it's a very special niche that we fulfill. So we’re not only helping the birds, but we are also helping the people find a resource.”
Jackie adds:
“What we do applies to education as well. When we're doing education programs, we're going out into the community and we're bringing birds with us that people can have an up-close and personal experience with. And just like finders, a lot of times [people] don't see these birds up close until then. And when they do, it is usually a very cathartic experience – it's a memory that they carry for their life. It can be life-changing.”
RAPTOR Inc. does about 350 education programs a year, each one an opportunity to show people how miraculous our native raptors are. Jackie notes, “Our educators are very well trained. Most of our educators have education degrees or they're certified naturalists, so the work that they do has really benefited the growth of the organization.”
Jackie also speaks more on how RAPTOR Inc.’s trained educators may have once themselves been in a situation, like as an audience member at an educational program, that sparked a passion for raptors – and how that intrinsically demonstrates the impact of teaching people about these birds.
“When the educators come on board, I always like to ask them, ‘What was your ‘WOW’ moment?’ What experience touched them to the point that it motivated them to seek out the organization, take the time to apply, go through all the training, and devote all these hours to delivering education programs and handling these birds? It's an extensive amount of training they have to go through. Something happened initially that motivated them.
You never know who's in your audience, and you don't know how you're affecting them. So, our educators at every program are creating these ‘WOW’ moments, you know, and it goes so much further than just caring about these birds. It's environmental conservation.”
And raptor conservation is also about human culture. Not only is the Bald Eagle our national emblem, but raptors imbue Americans’ art and writing, contemporary and historical, with meaning and beauty, and their imagery is symbolic of some of our national parks. They have been integral to our connection with our place on planet Earth from the beginning. “When the birds molt,” Jackie mentions, “we collect all those feathers and we send them to a feather repository in Denver where Native Americans can apply to get those feathers to use in their religious ceremonies. That way, there's never a need to take these birds out of the wild.”
Because of its specific role in the community, RAPTOR Inc. has also become a repository of information and data about local birds of prey. This means it is well-positioned to collaborate with scientists and participate in scientific efforts locally and nationally:
Jackie Bray is holding Spencer the blind Barred Owl.
“One of our volunteers, he's a bird-banding tree climber,” Jackie explains. “So one of the things we do before we release any birds is we band them in Ohio and Northern Kentucky.” By placing a lightweight band around a bird’s leg, they monitor its movements and survival long-term. Jackie also mentions two other studies they’re involved with, one of which got a little help from one of RAPTOR’s ambassador birds. Ambassador birds are the raptors housed for the remainder of their lives at RAPTOR due to a permanent injury or circumstance that makes them unreleasable. These are the birds that people will see on an educator’s gloved hand at a public program.
“Right now, there is the ongoing American Kestrel Project. They're putting little backpacks on [American Kestrels]. They had to get the sizing right, and so they wanted to use our Ambassador Kestrel so they could make sure that [the backpacks] fit properly.
But the Red-shouldered Hawk Project that we facilitate is huge. It's been going on for at least 25 years, and from that, we get a lot of data, and we can actually talk to people about that data. For example, the nests of Red-Shouldered Hawks – we know where they're going to start nesting, and they might start two different nests, but only one will add greenery, so we know that that is the location where the nest will start. We learn a lot of things, like: they choose different greenery because there are toxins in certain plants that will kill parasites, so the babies will be safer. So we get a lot of information from some of the research projects that we help with.”
Cindy’s background as a lab tech means that RAPTOR Inc. is also able to do certain testing in-house, such as testing birds’ lead levels (lead that ends up in the environment from bullets, fishing sinkers, and other sources can accumulate in birds’ bodies and cause lead poisoning). Moreover, Dr. Bob Dahlhausen, a local avian and exotic animal veterinarian on RAPTOR Inc.’s Board of Trustees, has granted the organization access to his molecular lab. Through that partnership, Cindy and Jackie have been able to arrange to screen birds admitted to RAPTOR for illnesses such as West Nile virus and Avian bornavirus, as well as participate in bird genetics and phylogenetics studies.
Ultimately, all of the work they do stems from a genuine love of birds. We talked for some time about all the memorable stories they have from their careers saving birds’ lives. From a Bald Eagle that was rescued from the Ohio River after getting caught in a three-pronged fish hook, to a Cooper’s Hawk trapped in a barn full of dangerous, burning lime powder, to rare or non-native species like a Mississippi Kite, Rough-legged Hawk, and Snowy Owl – all these birds are rescued and cared for assiduously because of leadership that is determined and passionate in equal measure.
Jackie also tells one story about an ambassador named Athena:
“So Athena was one of our Eastern screech-owls and she was a great foster. We get a lot of orphans during the spring [and] you could take healthy, orphaned Eastern screech-owl babies and put them with Athena; she would raise them. And that, I mean, you can't get any better than that.
No matter how good we are, we'll never be as good as a bird. And so with Athena raising those chicks, they had the best outcome for release. She would raise them, then we would also put them through live prey testing to make sure that they knew how to hunt before release. But I mean, she is a tremendous loss. You get so attached to these animals, they're like family and their life expectancy is not nearly as long as we want them to be. So it's really hard when we lose them.”
As for the future, Cindy recognizes a lot of potential for their organization to continue developing. “I think [RAPTOR] is growing exponentially. I think what we do now is very impactful and very important, but I think our impact will just multiply the larger we get and the more people that we bring on that are incredibly skilled.”
Cindy and Jackie have been helped along the way by many dedicated individuals to achieve all the incredible things that RAPTOR has so far. They have been motivated to continue the work that they do by some of the wonderful people also working in their field. As our conversation drew to an end, I asked each woman about women in their lives who have been influential to them.
Cindy:
“I'll tell you, the first one that came to mind was Marilyn Arn. She was a great teacher, a nature-lover, and a wonderful rehabilitator. She would take huge, powerful Great Horned Owls and help them. She just gave all birds love, you know? Even the tiniest little hummingbirds. But she was a great teacher. My first experience with a raptor, she asked for help. She wanted help with this Barred Owl to feed it. And later I realized she didn't need help. She just wanted me to get involved, and once you do that first thing, you are hooked.
She was just a great rehabilitator, and she knew how to inspire others. She certainly inspired me.”
Jackie:
“I have a couple that are from the zoo. The first one I would say is Kimberly Klosterman, who is one of my closest friends, and she is a senior aviculture keeper at the zoo. I did a lot of work with her when I was at the zoo, and I was working on my Master's program. I focused all my work on the Kea parrot, and she was their keeper. And so she and I would work together to do all types of conservation projects involving these parrots. We figured out that we were the only ones in the country who knew how to breed them. When we learned they all have Avian bornavirus, we figured out, with the help of Dr. Dahlhausen, how to treat that. We could get the disease into remission. So she's very influential in the field of aviculture, but also she's just amazing because she's about 5’2”, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet.
And the other one is Bernadette Plair, who is a researcher at The Lindner Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) at the Cincinnati Zoo. She was responsible for reintroducing the Blue-and-Gold Macaw back to its native habitat, Trinidad and Tobago. It had been extirpated, and she headed up the program to reintroduce it into its natural habitat. That one woman moved mountains. And so that told me that one person can make a difference.”
RAPTOR Inc. opens up its facility to the public on the last Sunday of every month from March through November. These Open Houses give members of the community of all ages a chance to see and hear about birds and learn how they can help raptors.
For instance, even simple actions such as not throwing biodegradable material, like apple cores or banana peels, from car windows can do a world of good, because it reduces the chance that prey animals like mice will be attracted to roadsides, which in turn reduces the chance of raptors coming into perilous proximity with moving vehicles.
Visitors also get the chance to listen to experts and special guests, participate in fun activities, and, above all, celebrate our amazing local raptors.