Find Me
SKILLS & INTERESTS
My Work
Accomplishments
Gallery I
Gallery II
Rehabilitation of Birds of Prey: Chloe Harvey ’26 at the Glen Helen Raptor Center in Yellow Springs, OH
Feb 25, 2025The Glen Helen Raptor Center’s mission is to improve the welfare of raptors across Ohio through educating the public about birds of prey, wildlife, and conservation, and through the rehabilitation of injured raptors across Southwestern Ohio. Link
While there, I have helped with rehabilitation, clinic, releases, cleaning, feeding both education ambassadors and rehab birds, as well as educational programs. I have helped with the rehabilitation of many different birds, from little American Kestrels to a Barred Owl and Red-Tailed Hawks. I have learned how to interact with Bald Eagles, they are much more skittish than you realize or would think, and how to properly hold a bird to keep them and myself safe as well as a co-worker who is helping aid the bird. I have learned how to hold birds who are trained to sit on glove for educational purposes and how to get them back on glove when they try to fly away (even the birds that know they can’t fly still try sometimes).
I have gotten the chance to get to know birds that have huge personalities with their own likes and dislikes. Such as one of our education ambassadors, Daisy Duck, who is a Barn Owl who has a condition that makes her bones weaker and too easy to break for her to live in the wild. She also loves to explore inside when we let her. I have also helped attempt to catch a reportedly injured Black Vulture, which we determined to be doing alright because when we were trying to catch them, the vulture was running, and flying alright just not soaring. While on the way there, the volunteer that I was going with told me that vultures, both turkey and black vultures, tend to still run from you even when you get a towel over its eyes despite it not being able to see, so I should be ready for that.
Above is Daisy Duck (Ducky) who is a new addition to the Raptor Center’s ambassador team.
The day after Valentine’s Day, we had an event where visitors could make crafts both for themselves and enrichment for our crow ambassador, take photos with some of our educational birds, as well as buy animal hearts to feed to some of our educational birds. Then we got into the center in the morning to sheets of ice and a rainstorm. We decided that we should cancel that day’s event and move it to another weekend, we posted that it was moved and that people could still buy hearts online and we can video the birds eating them and send them out, but around 1pm a bunch of people still showed up for the event. We condensed what we could inside and still held some things that needed to be outside. The weather lightened up and I think it was a success.
Above is Will, who is an educational ambassador and is in retirement, meaning that he no longer goes out to programs. This is due to him having sever hip pain while being held on glove because of an old injury. He is currently being trained to use a scale and get into his box on his own so that we can monitor his health with out causing too much stress.
Serving Rural Athens County: Chloe Harvey 26′ with Habitat for Humanity and Rural Action
May 22, 2024The summer before the start of my first year of college, I served at Rural Action through AmeriCorps in their Environmental Education branch. I felt like it was a great experience and it was very meaningful work to me. Teaching the next generation the same love and care for the environment that I had instilled in myself growing up. From the start of the service term I knew that I wanted to come back and serve again, but I was committed to going to Antioch for college, we are still on quarters and this service position is set up to align with Ohio University’s semester terms. As a result of this, it is a little more work to get this to line up for my co-op. I had to find another position to take between the end of term at Antioch and the beginning of the service term with AmeriCorps. In this time I have found work with a local branch of Habitat for Humanity.
Habitat for Humanity is a organization that is committed to building affordable housing for those disadvantaged in the community. Here is a link to their mission statement and history on the organization https://habitatseo.org/about/mission.html. The work that I am doing directly impacts the community in Glouster, Ohio were I am assisting in the building of a house for a woman who is also helping on this house. I have volunteered on two different weeks. The first shift that I worked, I was the only volunteer there, the only other person there was in charge of the build. His name is RJ and he was newly hired for Habitat for Humanity to help finish this build. For the first shift we were scheduled to work from 9am to 4pm, during this time it was planned that we were putting up all of the external walls, but when I was the only one scheduled they figured it would not be all completed in one day. We started a little slow, we accidentally put two walls up in the wrong spot because the house was set up in a way that RJ never saw before and expected it to be the same as all the others he had built before. Once we figured out the set up of this house and got our mistake fixed, we hit a stride and were able to get all of the walls up before 2:30pm.
On another shift that I was there, we worked on the front deck of the same house I was working on during the first shift. It had been about two weeks since I was last at that house and work there kept going. When I was there last the basement/foundation was done and we set up the exterior walls. When I was back the walls were fully built up, not just the studs anymore, as well as interior walls were up and built. The foundation was no longer surrounded by a moat and the entrances for the basement from the outside were built. It is very impressive what can be done in such a short amount of time. Another part of Habitat for Humanity is that anyone can volunteer no matter if you have experience in the field or not. I have some experience in this work but not on the same scale as a whole house. My father was a carpenter for a while and he kept using those skills as well as teaching his kids the basics of building and repairing. As a result it was easier for me to catch on to the work we are doing.
Looking forward, the position with Rural Action is about to start and since I have been with this organization before I know what to expect to some degree. I have been told that this summer we are doing more summer camps than last, which I am excited to see as we did a good few before. I am also excited to expand my knowledge and connections in the local communities here, both in nature and in the intricate social dynamics of the area I owe so much to.