Steel life: Florence woman expresses her devotion to raptors through metal art

Kate Davis has a thing for birds of prey.

For more than 30 years, the founder and director of Raptors of the Rockies has done about everything there is to do with the noble band of high-flying birds that includes hawks, falcons, ospreys, eagles, and owls.

As a child in Ohio she photographed them, and as a teenager she studied and dissected them at the Cincinnati Zoo. As a zoology student at the University of Montana Davis learned taxidermy and began mounting the majestic birds, and in 1988 she started housing injured raptors and taking them to area schools and giving educational programs.

While getting the non-profit Raptors of the Rockies http://www.raptorsoftherockies.org/ up and running throughout the 1990s, Davis started doing etchings and paintings of the birds and even landed an osprey piece in the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodsun Art Museum’s annual Birds in Art exhibit in Wausau, Wis., in 1993.

By ROD DANIEL Staff Reporter

Full Story: http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2005/03/28/bitterroot/42-outdoors.txt