Bird Hospital Moves Closer to the Battle

Sometimes tackling environmental problems is not as simple as rounding up volunteers and getting to work. Obstacles get in the way. In one big city, bird lovers face heavy traffic while getting injured birds to the vet. So, they’re bringing the vet a little closer to them. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee has the story:

Transcript

Sometimes tackling environmental problems is not as simple as rounding up volunteers
and getting to work. Obstacles get in the way. In one big city, bird lovers face heavy
traffic while getting injured birds to the vet, so they’re bringing the vet a little closer to
them. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee has the story:


It’s early morning and Annette Prince is scouring bushes beneath high rise office towers. She’s dodged downtown traffic for several hours now, hunting for birds; specifically,
ones that have flown into windows. Prince pulls her latest find out of a paper sack.


“This is a woodcock.”


“What do you see with the head trauma there?”


“He’s bleeding from his mouth. This bird impacted a building when we were
watching it a few minutes ago. He flew right into the glass and he died
instantaneously.”


There are survivors, though. Prince stowed some in her green mini van.

Paper sacks hold another woodcock and a tiny, grey-feathered bird called a junco.


“Both were found after they hit a building this morning. They’re resting in the bags
and they’re going to rehab where they’ll receive an evaluation by a wildlife
rehabilitator to decide what kind of treatment they need and what they’re potential
is to be released.”


Injuries such as skull fractures need quick treatment, but when Prince and others find injured birds, their options are limited. The nearest wildlife rehab center is twenty-five miles away from downtown Chicago. In heavy traffic, the drive takes a while.


“People have indicated a great desire to step up and help whenever they can. Up
until now, we’ve had to tell them there wasn’t any place they could take the birds
they found, short of having to drive for more than an hour. And many city residents
can’t. They either don’t have cars or that’s too far a distance.”

But if you can’t get birds to the vets at the rehab center maybe you can bring the vets
closer to the birds. A new bird hospital’s opening near downtown, where people can
reach it by bus or a short cab ride.


Dawn Keller runs a rehab center in a Chicago suburb, and soon she’ll oversee the new
downtown hospital. She says when she’s finished the city will have its own miniature avian ER for immediate
treatment.


“We’ll be moving in things such as scales, so we can weigh the birds when they come
in, so we can properly dose the medicine. We’ll be bringing in cages, refrigerator,
food supplies, all of the things that we’ll need to properly care for the birds.”


Keller says, birds with the most serious injuries will recover out in her suburban rehab
center. The bird urgent care center isn’t just good for birds, it’s good for volunteers. Keller says area bird watchers bring in about nine hundred birds a year, and sometimes
the volunteers are overwhelmed especially during peak migration times.


“Our peak day, I think was about 127 in one day. We put in a lot of hours on those
days; those are pretty much sleepless nights.”


Keller says, the sleepless nights and long drives through traffic out to the rehab center
add up to volunteer fatigue.

She hopes the convenience of a closer hospital will keep more volunteers on board. Wildlife rehab experts say the Chicago hospital’s part of a trend; professionals are getting
help closer to the problem and making it easier on volunteers. Elaine Thrune directs the National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. She says most wildlife care centers are small and heavily rely on volunteers.


“Even at a center you have some staff, but the actual hands-on care of feeding the
birds or assisting the veterinarian is done by volunteers.”


Thrune says rehab centers face a location conundrum. Volunteers rescue wildlife in cities or suburbs, but rehab centers and professional staff
are often in far away, rural areas. That’s because injured animals recover best when they’re away from noise and people,
but Thrune says rehab centers are experimenting. They’re opening intake centers in popular spots, like shopping malls.


“It’s a convenient place for people to bring things and to drop them off. And it’s a
good place for a veterinarian or a trained rehabilitator to examine them
immediately and then do what’s necessary.”


Thrune says the drop-off centers are like hospital triages; staff patch up the easy cases
quickly. Then, animals with more serious injuries recover out in the country. The
Chicago bird watchers and wildlife rehabbers are betting on this strategy. They say they’ll need to if they’re to keep the current stable of helpers, and they hope
with the convenience of the nearby downtown center more people will scour near
downtown Chicago for injured birds.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Rescuing Injured Raptors

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the Midwest take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has the story of a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:

Transcript

Owls, eagles, hawks, and other birds of prey have it rough in the modern world. They have to navigate electric wires, cars, and loss of habitat. A handful of volunteers in the (Great Lakes region/Midwest) take on the responsibility of nursing injured birds back to health… The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has this story on a wildlife rehabilitator in Pennsylvania:


(natural sound fading up)


Wendy Looker’s back yard serves as a temporary home for 120 birds, and a variety of other exotic animals. Walking into a sixteen foot cage, Looker opens a box and tries to convince the two small birds inside that it’s dinner time.


“These are fledgling kestrels and they’re just learning to catch food. So we’re tossing baby mice in there just to mimic movement, they’re eating mealworms and crickets, and other things they’re learning to catch.”


By working primarily to rehabilitate birds of prey, or raptors, Wendy Looker has become something of an expert in the region. With a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and some graduate work in animal behavior, Looker has spent most of her life working with animals.


“I worked in zoos for a number of years, and I particularly developed an affinity for owls. I guess I, for whatever reason identify with cranky animal that seem to be misunderstood by people. And I just figured at some point in time, maybe I’d dabble with research, and dabbling became 24-7.”


Ten years later, Rehabitat – a 40-thousand dollar a year non-profit organization, run out of Looker’s back yard – is going strong. Each year Looker and a handful of local volunteers help hundreds of birds recover from injury. It’s often dirty and difficult work for no pay, but Looker says she feels a responsibility to the birds.


“Very few of these animals come in as a result of a failure to thrive, a natural selection sort of a thing. It’s almost always human related, so I feel very strongly that they deserve the opportunity to be given a chance to get back out there.”


Looker says many of the birds brought to her have been hit by cars, have flown into glass windows, or have been caught up in discarded fishing line. But the number one cause of injury for birds is what she calls CBC, or caught by cat.


Even a minor cat bite can be lethal as bacteria infect the wound. Looker says keeping house cats in the house would eliminate countless bird injuries each year.


Feeding the birds at Rehabitat takes 6-thousand dead rodents every week, donated from a local research facility. Looker says in nature, or living in the back of a barn, birds of prey are effective mouse hunters. A single barn owl could save farmers thousands of dollars in crop damage.


“The average owl out in the wild eats about a thousand rodents a year himself, so they’re incredibly efficient and valuable in controlling the rodent population. Eating a thousand rodents, and a single rodent can do about 28 dollars worth of damage to agricultural crops, so that’s a 28-thousand dollar bird, and that’s without him having a family.”


Looker says using rat poison to deal with rodents might not be as effective as having a few raptors around. And if there are birds of prey in the area, it’s likely that they could be susceptible to poison as well.


“Most rat and mouse poisons accumulate in the body of the rodent it takes several days for the rodent to die, and he’s wandering out in the open and it’s very easy pickings for the birds. So we get birds that come in here with what we call secondary poisoning, and they’re seizuring and sometimes we can turn them around and sometimes we can’t.”


“We must have had babies hatching… and let’s go check those babies out….”


While inspecting the newborn barn owls, Looker says some animals spend just a few months at Rehabitat, while others have become lifelong residents due to permanent wing or eyesight damage.


“Our standards for release are extremely high. These birds have a tremendously difficult life out in the wild and they need to be 100% perfect. Because just to have one feather missing compromises the feather next to it, throws them off balance, and may be the difference between life and death for them.”


Not every bird can make it in the wild. A few birds with disabilities such as amputated wings or partial blindness can be used for educational programs. But a number of birds have to be put down every year. Looker says it wouldn’t be difficult to find people willing to adopt injured birds, but Raptors are wild animals that don’t make good pets – and there are few locations with the proper facilities to care for non-releasable animals.


Birds of Prey are federally protected migratory birds, but rehabilitation is a private endeavor. With licenses from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pennsylvania Game Commission, Rehabitat and similar facilities in the state do all the work of nursing injured wildlife back to health for release in the wild


“There are some restrictions in what rehabbers can and can’t do. Obviously we don’t do surgery, but pretty much everything else medically is done on site. It’s pretty grungy work and it’s pretty labor intensive, but it’s also extremely rewarding.”


(natural sound up)


Looker says she’d love to put herself out of business by convincing people to avoid activities which put birds at risk, such as using rodent poisons or letting housecats roam the neighborhood. But as long as there are birds in need of help, there will be people like Wendy Looker to take them in.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.


(natural sound out)