The C. Keith Birkenfeld Flight Cage

The C. Keith Birkenfeld Flight Cage, pictured below, is already in use, housing our area’s most seen and iconic birds: threatened bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, ospreys, ravens, great horned owls, endangered spotted owls, barred owls, sharp-shinned hawks, vultures, and all of the other raptors and large birds that grace our environment.





The flight cage is a fully-framed structure with a number of innovations. It’s basically 60 by 40 feet in area and 16 feet tall. Aside from a few limited areas, its “roof” is made entirely of vinyl-coated rigid wire and its “floor” is pea gravel. This will allow rain to pass right through the structure. The large “windows” (also made of vinyl-coated rigid wire) will allow wind to pass through the building. This design allows the patients in the enclosure to, as much as possible, fully experience the elements and feel as though they are back in nature.



Another innovative aspect of the flight cage design is the enclosure configuration. The center section of the flight cage has two moveable walls that allow it to be used as one large enclosure in which birds can fly in a continuous circular pattern or as two smaller enclosures (although at 10 x 30 feet, these two “small” enclosures are larger than any of the Shelter’s current enclosures).

Built around three sides of these center enclosures is the main enclosure, which is configured in a “u” shape. From one end of the “u” to the other end is a distance of 100 feet, which is the minimum distance that has been found to be needed in the rehabilitation of bald eagles. Like the center enclosure, this main enclosure has moveable walls so that it can be configured in one large “u” shape or partitioned into 2 or 3 smaller enclosures.



This innovative, flexible enclosure design allows the flight cage to be used for all different species of large birds (different species require different amounts of space to exercise) and to be used for many different species at one time. Most large flight cages are simply big nets hung over telephone poles that result in only one large enclosure space. This severely limits the use of the facility since most species cannot be mixed in an enclosure together. At the present time, the Flight Cage is home to three juvenile bald eagles, two adult bald eagles, a peregrine falcon (pictured below), and an osprey.

Next, learn about Phase II of the Take Flight Project: building a waterfowl enclosure that can also serve as a facility to care for oiled birds in the case of an oill spill.




The Waterfowl Enclosure