This Week at Liberty
September 9, 2025
Hoots, Howls, and Hollers
Megan Mosby
Executive Director
Inspiring Youth to Explore Nature
Introducing a new program this fall for young people at Liberty Wildlife. The Nature Explorers program will be led by Gail Cochrane, author, Master Gardener, and Conservationist. Gail will conduct the workshops on the Liberty Wildlife campus beginning October 26th.
As a parent, grandparent, teacher or friend, have you been looking for something to enrich the children in your life with out-of-doors and nature-oriented activities? Are you looking for an opportunity to have the children in your life fall in love with nature and the outdoors? Well then here’s what you have been looking for, and it is safely on the campus of Liberty Wildlife.
Liberty Wildlife is thrilled to add to our youth programs by introducing Nature Explorers, a program for students in grades 4-6. Three, four-week workshops will be offered over the course of the year. The October-November workshop will focus on Habitats.
Hands on activities will include journaling, sit spots (a favorite space to tune into nature), and discovering habitats on the Liberty Wildlife campus. The necessities of food, water, shelter and space will be explored through projects such as making bird feeders, solitary bee homes, nests, and puddle patches.
Later workshops (planned for winter and spring) will cover adaptations, pollinator gardens, migration and spring activities, breeding and baby birds, as well as the importance of insects. Each of these month-long workshops will have a general flow of activity including an introduction, water/snacks and a quick recap of what happened in the last meeting. Each youth Explorer is invited to share nature experiences since the last meeting. Every meeting will feature a visit from one of Liberty Wildlife’s Ambassador animals, have adventures in observation around the campus, followed by a hands-on craft activity designed to reflect the current topic and provide help to the natural environment. A wrap up will be an invitation of “Story of the Day” or “My Favorite Part” and the participation in the “What I learned today, and how will I use it?” activity.
These workshops will be held on Sundays from 1:30-3:30 for four weeks. Dates for the first workshop will be October 26, Nov. 9th, 16th, and 23rd. The perfect workshop size is around 10 young folks and parents are welcome to stay or not. Most of the activities will center around the Liberty Wildlife animal ambassadors, the Interactive (reptile) Room, the pollinator and butterfly garden, the wetlands, the Non-Eagle Feather Repository, and the larger campus including our new mammal exhibit.
The price is only $50.00 per student for the 4 session workshop. If you are interested or know someone that you think might be interested, please have them e-mail Carol Suits at carols@libertywildlife.org for any questions regarding this wonderful new opportunity.
We look forward to seeing the young nature sleuths starting October 26 at Liberty Wildlife.
Other Upcoming Activities:
Earth Gives 2025
This month Liberty Wildlife will be participating with other conservation organizations around the country in a promotion called Earth Gives 2025. There are many challenge grants available, if enough of our supporters step up. You can support our efforts at: https://www.earthgives.org/organization/Liberty_Wildlife.
Teacher Night
Liberty Wildlife will partner with Act One to offer a Teacher Night open house at our campus on Wednesday September 17th, from 4 to 7pm. Teachers will get a sneak peak at what tours to our campus typically include. To join us, RSVP at www.tfaforms.com/5192150.
Wishes for Wildlife presents Mammals in the Moonlight
We once again will host our biggest fundraising dinner and auction at our campus on November 1st at 5:30pm. Tickets are $300 for this fun affair, which will feature the opening of our new mammal enclosures for the coatimundi, bobcat, raccoon, and more. Get your tickets at www.Wishes2025.givesmart.com.
This Week @ Liberty
The intake total for the year is now up to 8215.
September is here, and with it, public visiting hours are back from 9am-11am on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays (and they will be changing again when we hit October, so keep an eye out for that!). This also means cooler weather is right around the corner, along with a bunch of amazing events you’ll want to make sure you’re here for! To make sure you can plan your calendar:
Wishes for Wildlife: Saturday, November 1st, our annual auction is here at Liberty Wildlife, as well as our silent auction! Get tickets here for this momentous night!
Native American and Wildlife Celebration: Sunday, November 16th offers a day of native American vendors and dancers here on-site. You can check out the timeline here!
El Rio Vivo Art & Music Festival: March 7, 2026 has our third annual river walk happening; lots of fun vendors, food, and music on-site to keep you and the family busy for a few hours that day! Check out all the information here.
International Vulture Awareness Day
Technically, international vulture awareness day has come and gone (it’s the first Saturday of September). Despite that, I’m going to go ahead and celebrate now anyway, mostly because vultures are an extremely underrated—and misunderstood—bird of prey. And if you’ve ever had the opportunity to get up close and personal with them (ahem, public hours, anyone) you’d know they are gorgeous to boot.
So, to celebrate their big day, here are some super fun facts about vultures:
- Even though vultures eat carrion (dead things) they are considered a bird of prey because they are part of the “same taxonomic order as other raptors”; they also play a vital role in cleaning up our world and helping to prevent the spread of disease.
- The turkey vulture lacks a syrinx (vocal organ); they instead vocalize with grunts or low hisses.
- These vultures will conserve energy by reducing their body temperature as much as 11 – 93 degrees F. They will warm up in the morning by sunbathing; this process is called thermoregulation.
- At night, turkey vultures will roost in the same tree.
- Turkey vultures are considered to have one of the best senses of smell of any bird of prey; this is how they find carrion (and why they have a “hole” in their beak; this is their “nare” or “nose”).
- Black vultures are found in the southeastern and eastern US and south into central America and south America. They can be differentiated from a turkey vulture in flight by their short, square tail, all black wings with white wingtips, black featherless head, and quick, labored wingbeats.
- Unlike the turkey vulture, they do not have a keen sense of smell and rely on their eyesight to find carrion.
- Black vultures, like other vultures, cannot pick food up with their talons; their main power is in their beaks.
- Black vultures rarely travel alone and will eat communally when food is found.
- The California condor has a wingspan of 9.5 feet and can weigh up to 25 pounds, making this the largest bird of prey in North America.
- Carrion for these large birds can be as small as a rabbit or as large as a sea lion or whale; they can swallow bone chips and marine shells if needed.
- Condors don’t reach maturity until they are 6-8 years old; they also only produce one egg every other year.
- These birds of prey are critically endangered; as of 2023, there were 561 condors alive, with 347 living in the wild in Arizona, California, Utah, and Baja California, Mexico and 214 captive through breeding programs (The Peregrine Fund, LA Zoo and San Diego Zoo). That number has declined since the avian flu hit the Arizona flock in 2023.
- To test for lead levels to assist in keeping these birds of prey healthy, each animal is tagged and tracked by the Peregrine Fund, where they are caught twice a year to test for lead levels in their blood, and treated as needed.
Notable Mentions
Oh hey, it’s that time again! Our hospital might be slowing down, but that means our education season is about to be BUSY. Field trips, off-site and on-site events; we’ve got the works happening here at Liberty Wildlife. Don’t worry, we’ll keep you up-to-date, but for now, let’s enjoy some photos of the happenings here.
Without further ado, here are this week’s notable mentions:
- The world’s smallest raptor, aka the elf owl, makes an appearance in ICU. (2 pictures)
- A rock pigeon found with hair glued around his toes is healing nicely and sent outside to the aviary for the rest of his recovery! (3 pictures)
- A black-headed grosbeak drops in and look at that color beneath those wings! (2 pictures)
As always, to those who’ve brought animals to our facility, thanks for getting them here. We appreciate your hard work looking out for Arizona’s wildlife and all you do to care for them!
Until next time!
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