dullstroom bird of prey and rehabilitation centre

photographic days

Join us for a photograhic day to take that dream pic of a raptor...

experience days

Get up close and personal with our raptors...

flight displays

Come and visit our centre and watch raptors in action...

adopt a raptor

Help us in our drive to save our raptors...

raptor fact files

All the facts you need to know about raptors...

[owners and staff]

[location]

click on these images for larger pics

[our e-mail]

our adopters

The adopters who have made it possible to realise our vision...

[click here to report an injured raptor]

[other activities]

owl boxes

Making and locating your own owl box...

raptor care hints

What to do if you come across an injured raptor...

[SASOL contribution]

[gold adopters]

[public adopters]

[our wish list]

website updated April 2009

[featured articles]

visitors since July 2001

"articles about new arrivals, releases,public submissions and news in the raptor world"

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Dullstroom Bird Of Prey and Rehabilitation Centre
was established in 1997 with the aim of educating the public in order to promote an awareness of the raptor species and their plight as a growing endangered species.
We are extensively involved in promoting the well being of this incredible species.
Public support to maintain our efforts is something we rely heavily on and we therefore appreciate with gratitude any form of assistance we can get.
We hope to promote the Dullstroom Bird Of Prey and Rehabilitation Centre by establishing this website and thereby creating the desired awareness in an effort to lure visitors to our centre.
Enjoy your stay and we look forward to a visit from you so you can personally meet our raptors.
Read on below to find out more about what we do.

The main purpose of the centre is to educate the public as to the plight of raptors.
We target schools in this educational drive and have many schools attending the centre for that purpose.
We also visit schools to display and teach children about raptors in South Africa and thereby hope to create an awareness of the species.
By creating this awareness we hope to stop the persecution of these birds which is a world wide problem.

Annualy , hundreds of raptors are injured or killed by vehicles, fences, traps, powerlines poisons and other factors.
Chicks are also removed illegally by people from nesting sites and taken home where these birds become "imprinted" on humans and can then never be reintroduced into the wild.
Removing young chicks from the nests severly impacts with normal breeding patterns in the wild.
At the centre and with the help of a local vet, who has experience inhandling raptors, we are privilaged to help dozens of these casualties each year.
This takes dedication, time and money.

We have a very good success rate with captive breeding involving many of the bird of prey species found here in South Africa.
For many years people were led to believe that you could not breed birds ofprey in captivity, this myth has been proved wrong time and again.
Captive breeding is invaluable to scientists and biologists around the world and is a fantastic back up for the wild population.
The more we learn about captive breeding the better chance we have of saving some of the endangered species.
Over the years captive breeding programmes world wide have proved valuable in release schemes.
In the USA for instance, the pesticide DDT virtually wiped out the Peregrine Falcon population.
Once the chemical was banned the Peregrine Fund in the USA reintroduced them back into the wild through breeding schemes.

There are numerous cages displaying various raptor species.
These captive birds fall into three categories :
1. Mechanically damaged due to some form of accident in the wild leaving them with permanent physical damage. They therefore cannot be returned to the wild to fend for themselves.
2. Mentally damaged (Imprinted) where they have been removed from the wild as chicks and think they are the same species as the individual who hand reared them. They cannot be returned to the wild as they would not recognise their own species and would be detrimental to the wild stocks of birds of prey.
3. Captive Bred birds who have become domesticated. We have imprinted and captive bred resident raptors throughout the centre sitting on perches and who are not caged. These birds make excellent subjects for photographers and are the birds we use in our flying and educational displays.

Over the years we have been quite successful in our rehabilitation programme and to get a bird back into the wild is our ultimate goal.
This is not always as easy as it sounds and takes a great deal of time and patience.
To achieve this we use two methods :
1. Falconry, where we actively hunt with the bird and get it to hunt for us. Once the bird shows that it is fit by successfully hunting with us then it is usually ready to fend for itself in the wild and is released.
2. Hacking Back, is a method which involves leaving a healthy but unfit bird in a aviary for a few weeks to get used to its surroundings.
The aviary is then left open to let the bird out in its own time to go and hunt.
The bird being unfit usually does not catch anything on the first few attempts and returns to the aviary to get its daily food ration.
The process is repeated until one day the bird is able to hunt and fend or itself and no longer returns.