Winter flies with fun at Alligator Adventure, raptor center

One could say that two residents at Alligator Adventure might have generated laughs on national TV, from a youthful, spirited, fun visit on stage.

Thad Bowman, who handles public relations for the park, adjacent to Barefoot Landing in North Myrtle Beach, brought its two spotted hyena cubs – Chiku and Chicken – for a visit last autumn with naturalist Chris Packham on NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” taped in New York. The resident reptiles, and other animals such as Chilean flamingos, across the 15-acre park, have made room in the spotlight for the hyenas since their arrival in late summer 2015, each hand-raised from a young age, fed initially with “a bottle every four hours,” Bowman said.

Winter brings its own benefits for visiting Alligator Adventure and some outdoor attractions in this area. This park has begun its winter hours – 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and Dec. 26-29 – with winter rates in effect, also with poses for a 8-by-10-inch photo available with Santa and a juvenile alligator, 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Fridays-Sundays through Dec. 18, free with admission.

The name for Chiku, the girl and elder of the hyena cubs – who was born among triplets – is Swahili for “chattering one,” Bowman said, and the male, Chicken, solo at birth, earned his name for “sounding like a chicken when he was a baby.”

Also a full-time firefighter/paramedic, Bowman raised some special characteristics about spotted hyenas with their anatomy, such as the need for DNA tests to confirm their gender. Their front legs are taller than the rear ones, unlike a giraffe’s – with four legs equal in height – and they’re “built for long-distance running.” They’re born almost totally black fur, Bowman said, and their faces start getting gray at about two months old.

“It always starts in the face,” he said, “and works its way backward. ... When hyenas are born, their eyes are open, they have a mouthful of teeth, and they’re walking immediately.”

Citing hyenas’ daytime hunting nature and affinity to dine on bones in the wild, Bowman marvels at their jaw strength. He said he has seen Chiku haul with her mouth with ease, a meal in 5-gallon buckets of water and ice. Never mind their carnivorous nature, Chiku and Chicken also delight in playing with a rotation of toys such as watermelons.

“They toss them around and wrestle with them,” Bowman said of the hyenas’ innate active composure.

Bowman said the hyenas went on exhibit in spring, and they enjoy their quarters, especially plopping during warmer weather into the 2-foot-deep pool added just for them.

Although alligators’ appetites ebb for winter, bringing a halt to public feeding times for the season, visitors still have many activities to see, with special shows daily on lemurs at 10:30 a.m., then alligator handling at 11 a.m. and 1 and 3 p.m., and reptiles at noon and 2 p.m.

The Chilean flamingos on site add their own color to any gray day, with their lighter pink, “more salmon” plumage, as Bowman pointed out.

Half-a-day flies by at avian center

People aren’t the only visitors to The Center for Birds of Prey, an avian conservation center in Awendaw, about 35 miles south of Georgetown. The center’s open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays (but not Dec. 24), with a guided walking tour and outdoor flight demonstration at 10:30 a.m. daily, then repeating the sequence at 2 p.m..

During a morning flight demo on Thanksgiving weekend, as Stephen Schafel, director of education, let a lanner falcon flash its speed, a juvenile red-tailed hawk still with light plumage flew into the scene seemingly out of nowhere. That prompted the falcon, perched in Schafel’s gloved left hand, to voice discomfort a few times about the interloper’s perching in a tree behind the crowd while fellow staff lured the migrating hawk for temporary capture and planned re-release a short distance away.

Before this flight show, with flying mastery also flaunted by a pair of Harris hawks, a black vulture, and a very vocal Eurasian eagle owl, the large morning attendance of a few dozen folks chose one of two guided walking tours, one through the living quarters for a variety of birds that have nursed injuries or other conditions that prevent living in the wild, led by Shafel, and the other entourage taken through “Owl Wood” by Meghan Sparkman.

With her first stop by a barred owl, Sparkman let him sound his mating call, a resemblance to the phrase “Who cooks for you?” She pointed out owls’ supreme hunting skills at night, with wings that make no sound, letting owls take in prey’s slightest movements as the owls use their disc-shaped faces to enhance such acute hearing.

Pausing in front of a barn owl enclosure, Sparkman explained many owls’ survival through hunting by sound. A study elsewhere involved two barn owls in a totally dark room, where they caught prey released on the floor, but could not find their way back to their perches, she said. In front of the residence of a stately Ural owl, Sparkman said this white species native to mountainous, cold terrain in Europe and Asia,upon hearing rodents moving under snow, will pounce a foot deep for its catch.

For the demo, where both walking tour groups converged to rest on bench seating, Schafel and colleagues took turns letting each bird show its prowess and precision as a predator. A Mississippi kite displayed its dexterity in snatching food from Sparkman’s hand in an outstretched arm up, and consuming the catch almost immediately, without a skip of a wing in flight. A Eurasian eagle owl also wowed the crowd with its smooth flight path right along the ground. Way sky-high, a bald eagle – visible with its white head and tail – as well as sharp-skinned hawk, and other vultures, soared in their own symphony, of no danger to the center’s inhabitants.

In his welcome at the start of the morning tour-and-demo – for which 2 1/2 hours flew by – Schafel said the center, funded solely by donations and paid admissions, has treated more than 700 injured raptors and shorebirds this year.

Also, this week, Kara Bale, the center’s administrative and marketing communications manager, spoke of its need for more help with injured bird capture and transport from the Grand Strand. She said a small number of volunteers in Horry and northern Georgetown counties play a valuable role in shuttling such raptors to Georgetown for relay to another aide for the ride down to Awendaw. She said an orientation will be scheduled in early spring for anyone interested in assisting; call 843-971-7474, or email info@thecenterforbirdsofprey.org for details of what she called “a critical component of what we do here.”

Bale called citizens’ reports to the center, such as sightings of swallow-tailed kites – to which this writer has enjoyed multiple views in Socastee the past two summers – to stki.thecenterforbirdsofprey.org as another way to make a difference in helping fulfill the center’s mission, for which “birds are a wonderful tool” for research on coastal South Carolina’s ecological well-being.

The center also brought some birds for a “Live Raptors in Flight” program on Nov. 22 outside at Myrtle Beach State Park, during its “Predators of Land, Air, and Sea” day. Ann Malys Wilson, a longtime interpretive ranger, called the turnout “great,” exceeding 300 people, who collectively got into the giving spirit of the season, donating, through the equivalent of a nominal extra admission fee, more than 350 cans of food to help individuals in need, all for the thrill of seeing master winged warriors.

This story was originally published December 9, 2016 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Winter flies with fun at Alligator Adventure, raptor center."