Is It a Raptor or a Bird of Prey?

When it comes to questions about birds in Door County, Rob Hults and his colleagues at the Open Door Bird Sanctuary on County I near Jacksonport have the answers.

The sanctuary is a private nonprofit organization, started in 2011, whose mission is giving a forever home to injured raptors that cannot return to life in the wild. Open Door Bird Sanctuary is also about education.

So, what

is a raptor?

“A raptor is a type of bird of prey,” said Hults, the sanctuary’s executive director. “Some people think that those two terms are synonymous: that a bird of prey is a raptor, and a raptor is a bird of prey.”

Not exactly. A bird of prey is a bird that hunts for other animals, kills them and eats them to survive. In the technical sense, pelicans – and even robins – are birds of prey in that they eat other animals to survive.

Chuck Sindelar survey Door County eagle nests back in 1966.

“The last place to have adults at a nest was at Toft’s Point in the early 1960s,” Erdman said. “I can remember a nice, old nest near Cana Island, long deserted.”

DDT did what it was designed to do: kill insects. But it was also killing birds large and small.

Maybe they didn’t know it at the time, but when Wisconsin legislators banned the use of DDT on March 11, 1970, they started the bald eagle’s comeback story.

Two years later, DDT was banned nationwide as part of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). “FIFRA requires all pesticides to be registered,” said Paul Kent, a Madison attorney and author of Wisconsin Water Law in the 21st Century.

Hults said a typical bird of prey uses its beak as a hunting tool.

“Raptors use their feet,” he said. “That is the distinction between any bird of prey and a raptor.”

Then there are raptors that are classified as hunters and others that are classified more as scavengers. In the case of the bald eagles, about 80% of their diet comes from scavenging.

“Their lifestyle is much more similar to a vulture than to a golden eagle,” Hults said. “Golden eagles are phenomenal hunters.”

Other things you can learn at the sanctuary:

• Most raptors can carry about 40% of their own weight.

• A mature bald eagle can weigh up to 12 pounds.

• Bald eagle nests have been found weighing 4,000 pounds.

To learn more about raptors, visit the Open Door Bird Sanctuary. Check its event schedule at opendoorbirdsanctuary.org for details about public tours.

On June 12, 1972, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revoked registration for DDT. Also in 1972, the federal government passed the Clean Water Act (CWA). Kent said that although the CWA was not the driver for controlling DDT, it did result in substantial improvements to water quality by controlling other pollutants, which further benefited birds and other wildlife.

The CWA made money available to states for clean-water projects and established a regulatory framework to control pollution from point sources.

“The regulatory program was designed to be administered by states with EPA oversight,” Kent said. “Along with the promise of authority came some federal funding. Almost all states, including Wisconsin, adopted programs that allowed them to be the primary permitting authority.”