Ruby

Ruby is our Red-tailed Hawk.  She is the sweetest, most easy going of our education birds.  She loves to be out in the public and is even known to relax and preen (rearrange and oil her feathers) while at a program.   What caused her original injuries we will never know.  She came from another wildlife rehabber, Ken Groves, in Warren, Indiana.  She had a crop injury that required several surgeries and it quickly became apparent that she had very poor vision.  Ken thought she would make a great education bird for someone, so he patiently hand fed her as she recovered.  She is non-releasable due to her persistent poor vision.  She easily finds her food in her pen, but still has very poor vision.  You may notice her moving her head around differently from the other education birds as she tries to focus on everything!   Ruby is one of the few that we know her age.  Red-tailed hawks don’t get their red tail until they are two years old and Ruby came to us with the characteristic brown juvenile tail. So her estimated date of birth is the spring of 2006.  Ruby also is rare in that she has a couple white tail feathers instead of the typical red. Ruby is one of our three original education birds and was added to our permits in 2008.  We do believe Ruby is a female due to her large size:  female raptors are larger than males.