Birds of Prey Enrichment Ideas

[Amelia Kennett]

The IAATE enrichment committee would love to see your favourite BOP enrichment ideas! Please share below, also a great place to ask for suggestions if you are in need of some inspiration!

[Ana Costa]

One thing that has worked super well with our birds of prey is simply a card roll (the ones you can find when you finish a big kitchen paper roll), filled with food and with both ends tucked in such a way that the food can’t get out from there. The idea is to stimulate natural feeding behaviours by simulating a prey. Usually these rolls have soft and strong parts which mimic what happens with prey and we have found that it stimulates in a great way those behaviours! Our black kytes started by the “soft” areas as a way to get inside. I highly recommend it!

[Mary Ewers Joyner]

One of my favorite, easy enrichment items I give our birds are small pine branches that come off one of our white pines. Nothing too big, just a foot or two with some pine needles on it. One of our red-tailed hawks LOVES pine branches, and will pounce on it within seconds of it being in her enclosure, no matter what time of the year. She loves to shred the needles. None of our birds use the pine for nesting – I think the wood is too soft and flimsy to promote that kind of behavior. It’s quick, easy, and free!

[Amelia Kennett]

OOOH Mary, I love the idea of the pine needles! We don’t get too many in Australia where I am but I will be sure to find some and give it a go!

[Amelia Kennett]

I love a simple scrunched up newspaper ball with food – I’m seeing a trend here that many love shredding!

We have also started using a ‘ferret ball’ under supervision. My utmost favourite with our 21 year old Barn Owl (RIP) was using an app on my phone intended for cats with bugs etc scurrying across the screen! I loved this specifically because it didn’t incorporate food and was super easy to access.

[mccravy]

We have a few birds that really get into the paper/shreddable enrichment! I will take a piece of paper, lay it flat on the table, put two fingers in the middle, and then kind of spiral the paper around those fingers so it makes a nice little nook to put a tidbit inside. I’ll then take a paper egg carton and put the spiraled paper in an egg carton cup and then repeat that until each egg cup is filled! Before I close it up, I’ll add the food tidbits into the little spiraled paper nooks for them to find. Sometimes I’ll even tie a long piece of paper towel around the carton so they have to rip through that first. Our crested caracara absolutely loves to shred paper enrichment, so I try to come up with different things for him to figure out! For him, I like to put some of the enrichment items I make inside a large paper bag that I’ll roll up just to give him an additional layer to tear through.

Another personal favorite is simply giving them a nice chunk of a rabbit pelt for them to pick at! A lot of our birds really enjoy that, and I also enjoy watching them go to town on it!

[Mary Ewers Joyner]

These ideas are all so great! Mccravy I never thought of giving the rabbit pelt as enrichment, we always just toss them. I will give it a try! You all have awesome twists (see what I did there) on paper enrichment. I think there are 1000+ ways to reinvent shred-able enrichment. And Amelia we have done something similar with a battery operated cat toy in the past – I need to pull that out again!

[Valerie Wolfrey]

We have several enrichments we use! For our Fish Crows, Cara Cara, other raptors and shorebirds too! Shorebirds: A kiddie pool with live feeder fish or minnows. With a few artificial lily pads on top. They LOVE it! We have used most of the above for our Cara Cara, she is so intelligent, we are constantly looking for new ideas. Along with the Fish Crows. We actually have used a dog treat board game, where they move the pieces for food, or a muffin pan with food under tennis balls works great too! Lettuce heads with super worms tucked in the leaves is a fav too! Going to try the egg carton spirals next!!

[Stephanie Joe]

Dust or sand baths were a favorite for our burrowing owls and some of our small falcons! Our birds also liked ice treats, especially in the summer. We would save the blood drippings or organs from our meet and add a bit of water before freezing. It was great sensory enrichment, especially for our vultures, and our birds would interact even more with it when it was hotter in the summers.

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