Category: Wildlife rescue
-
A screech owl got trapped in a chimney. Peering up with a flashlight, residents glimpsed the little owl, but when they got close, it hopped higher, onto the fire box, out of reach. I thought I heard a still, small voice in the grass, saying “Eat me! Eat me!” One resident called around for…
-
I volunteer at a wildlife rescue center, one which specializes in aquatic birds. Sometimes volunteers and staff apologize to the birds. What's that you have in your hand? Oh, a camera? Are you sure? It can't take temperatures, can it? A Red-throated Loon is brought in and has an intake exam, in…
-
Young and charming. A long time ago, I had some baby possums. Their mother had been killed by a car while crossing the road with her children on her back. A teacher who found them gave the survivors to me. (At the time there were no wildlife rescue centers in the area.) Fortunately, they were…
-
I had been trusted with the task of feeding the killdeer chicks at the wildlife center. I put trays of food in the shorebird pen. Elaborate trays of shorebird dainties: freshly-thawed tiny invertebrates, insects, duckweed. I was careful to make sure no killdeer got out. It didn't seem hard, since the appalling sight of…
-
Red-tailed tropicbirds are aces of tropical Pacific skies. They're big white birds with striking black eye markings. Each has two ridiculously long red tail feathers in the midst of its normal white tail feathers (thus Phaethon rubricauda). They catch fish by plunging into the sea from a height and grabbing them. Also squid. The tropicbird…
-
Bald Eagles are the specialty of the Alaska Raptor Center, in Sitka. It's an animal hospital in a forest. They treat 100-200 eagles a year, as well as other species. Many are treated and set free. Others have problems that mean they can't make it as wild birds any more. These generally go to zoos…
-
The story about the smelly babies isn't true. Birds don't reject their nestlings if people have handled them and gotten human scent all over them. Most birds can't smell much, anyway. (But don't say this around a vulture. Or a kiwi. Or a fulmar.) I don't know how this story got started, but I certainly…
-
I was reading Indian Summer, by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, an account of the years Mayfield was raised among the Choinumne Indians of California. It's an interesting account, which includes a description of an ingenious traditional method of pigeon hunting. This involved building a blind from which one could snare pigeons with thin nooses. It had…
-
Glue traps are nasty. Animals caught in them die slow horrible deaths. Some people don't mind that for the mice and rats they intend to trap, but are upset when some other creature falls victim. At a wildlife rescue center, someone recently brought in a glue trap with a mockingbird hopelessly plastered to it. The…
-
Earlier this year, a wildlife rescue center took in a mute swan (Cygnus olor). Mute swans aren't native birds. In North American we have tundra swans, whooper swans, and trumpeter swans. Some people buy mute swans, the lovely birds of classic European imagery, and place them on ornamental water to make it even more ornamental.…
Site Title 