So what's it all about?

Well many thanks for taking the time to visit the Raptor Aid website! My name is Jimmi Hill the creator and main driving force behind Raptor Aid and an absolute bird of prey geek, I don't mean that in an arrogant expert way I'm far from it just that they are my number one passion in life and that is why I have created this site and venture because I want to share my passion and the stories about birds of prey conservation.  There is hopefully so much more to this web site as the plan is for it also to be a resource for people who maybe don't know about the pressures on birds of prey both in the wild and in captivity. These of course are based on the views of myself and Raptor Aid but I have tried to pool knowledge and information from other organisations and authorities and highlight the work of others, if you feel you can offer something to this site based on birds of prey or spot something you want to query you only have to get in touch.I have split the conservation pages into UK and Worldwide, of course some of these overlap and are titled the same but as you might imagine a bird of prey might be poisoned in the UK for a completely different reason to poisoning is Africa. Conservation and education are the main driving forces behind the work of Raptor Aid, you may have read this on other websites relating to birds of prey and their are many very good bird of prey conservation and educational efforts here in the UK but sadly there is also a lot of organisations that claim to do this sort of thing but I feel its more for commercial purposes. Raptor Aid isn't a charity at the moment and we do have overheads but these are only small and we hope to put at least 50% of earnings directly into bird of prey conservation. You can also find out about some of the conservation work we are involved in currently and our plans for the future but the best place to keep up to date is to follow this blog and our Facebook page.Raptor Aid also has extensive experience with captive birds of prey and over the years have seen a big rise in people owning birds of prey in captivity within the UK and what people do with the birds of prey can be varied from falconry, rescue centres, educational visits and public collections. As you can imagine the standards can vary and the law is a little bit difficult to understand if you are new to it or a member of the general public. Hopefully the section of the website covering birds of prey in captivity will help people understand a bit more about this topic and what Raptor Aid feels is appropriate and more importantly not appropriate.Every year wild birds of prey are found by members of the public injured and hurt and understandably not many know exactly what to do and where to take the bird. One of the biggest killers of any injured wild animal is shock so what you do first is the most important thing so getting the right advice and then the correct care for the injured bird is very important. Sadly there are a lot of people out there offering to help with injured birds of prey with poor facilities and knowledge even some veterinary practices are reluctant to take in wild injured birds of prey. We have created two pages on what to do if you find an injured bird of prey and then where you can get advice and take an injured bird of prey.A large part of Raptor Aids conservation work in the UK includes nest box schemes and over the years we have been asked what type of boxes people should use and where to site them and encourage birds of prey to their area. You can find we have shared information in our nest box section on what Raptor Aid find works for the four species that readily use nest boxes in the UK. You can also buy nest boxes from Raptor Aid to help birds of prey in your area, you may find a range of nest box styles and prices on the internet all we can say is the boxes we use do work well.Within our media section you can soon find videos we hope to create on conservation work among other things that we feel you might find interesting, picture galleries of what were doing in the field, how you can contact us and an extensive list of website links which have been collected over a number of years. If you should find any of the links don't work or have expired please contact us, also if you have a website relating to birds of prey we have missed again just let us know.In order for us to carry out and support the conservation work of ourselves and others we need to raise funds, its a sad thing but conservation work can be quite costly and every bit can help. To help with this we offer talks and workshops relating to birds of prey to raise vital funds but also educate and excite people about these birds, you can find out in more detail about these and more in our What we offer pages and also by donating or visiting our shop.Finally I would like to end this first post by thanking everyone who has helped and encouraged with the idea of Raptor Aid, there are to many of you to mention and I hope those of you visiting this site for the first time find it interesting and enlightening. The future has lots of interesting things on the horizon for Raptor Aid with the aim of raising awareness of birds of prey around the world, hopefully you can join us for the ride.Yours with the birds,JimmiRaptor Aid