Gabriele Drozdowski will present a program about our interaction with owls, using personal anecdotes from her decades of experience. Max, Santa Barbara’s famous Great Horned Owl who is 13 years old, has lived with Gabriele since he was six months old. Gabriele will also share stories and pictures of wild owl rehabilitation, ranging from tiny Pygmy Owls to a rare local Spotted Owl. The birds suffered from a variety of maladies such as broken bones, poisonings, abandonment and oil spill complications.

Max, will accompany Gabriele for this lecture.

Gabriele began working with injured, sick, oiled and orphaned seabirds in 1991, when an El Nino warm-water current caused starvation and illness in thousands of seabirds along our coast. Gabriele and her husband Jim Walker built the first seabird pond for S.B. Wildlife Care network at their residence and cared for over 2,000 seabirds before beginning to rehabilitate birds of prey through the Ojai Raptor Center in 1998. In 1999 they acquired their first two educational birds: Max and Ivan, a Red-tailed Hawk, two rehabilitated birds no longer able to survive in the wild.

In 2000 Gabriele and Jim, in partnership with the Santa Barbara Audubon Society, created the Eyes in the Sky raptor education program. During her 20 years of working with wildlife, Gabriele has cared for over 3,000 birds from over 100 species from tiny Storm Petrels to Eagles.

Formerly a professional family entertainer and storyteller, Gabriele weaves the presence of the live birds with scientific information and real-life stories, and has presented countless educational programs —at schools, afterschool programs, senior centers, libraries, and other non-profit and community events in our area.

In 2004, Santa Barbara Audubon Society/Eyes in the Sky was offered space to build an aviary at the S.B. Museum of Natural History. In March 2011, Eyes in the Sky relocated to a new, beautiful and permanent home.