I'm not gone!

So, I thought Blogger had deleted my blogs, because a few times when I had tried to pull them up, they were not found.

I was very glad to see they are still here!

I may be posting more again, not sure when, but stay tuned to this page!  You can set a Google alert and it will notify you when I have a new post (Google alerts are awesome, you can set one for just about anything, and don't have to have a Google account!).

Thanks for sticking around, folks :)

Delphia

Sparrowpalooza at Fallen Feathers!

"Baby bird season" here in southern Arizona is March through September. It's a long breeding season, due to the warm climate. During the year, Fallen Feathers will take in over 1200 birds; the majority of them come in during these months.

Today I picked up a passel of passerines. House sparrows, to be specific. Six feathered, not-yet-fledglings, and 12 naked hatchlings. Eighteen mouths to feed!

House sparrows are not native to Arizona (or to North America, actually), and therefore are not covered under the International Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 (and amendments). Because of this, I am able to show you pictures of the birds actively being raised and/or rehabilitated.

Picture 1 is of nine naked nestlings, sorted vaguely by size and strength. All photos by Delphia Strickland.

Picture 2 is a closer look at the hatchlings, where you can see where their feathers will be coming in (see the tiny little "pins" on the edges of the wing on the one on the bottom left? And the black dots down the back.). The yellow sides to their mouths indicate they are a gaping bird, which means they open their mouths and beg for food to be dropped into the mouth, which they then swallow; this is opposed to the "beak-in-throat" method of, say, doves. The yellow coloring eventually disappears as the bird matures.

Picture 3 is of older chicks, nearing fledging, with most of their feathers having grown in. They were so eager to get fed that it was hard to get a good, clear shot.

Sparrow chicks can be quite loud, with their high-pitched "cheep! cheep! cheep!" being easily heard several houses away. They are also very insistent: when they are hungry, the want to be fed nownownowrightnowrightthisminutenow. Stuff them full of food, they stop cheeping and fall asleep, like you flipped a switch and they just turned off.


House sparrows need to eat every 15-30 minutes, from sunrise to sunset, depending on what they are eating and how old they are. No, I'm not kidding. Sparrow parents are very busy birds!

Sparrows eat insects, worms, grains, fruits and berries. Picture 4 is of the foods we are feeding our sparrows: omnivore diet (top); insectivore diet (right); and baby bird formula (left). The hand-rearing formula I'm using for the smallest birds, as they have trouble swallowing the more solid pieces of food. In a few days, they will be able to eat the insectivore and omnivore diets.

A sad truth about wild birds is that on average, only 50% of all hatchlings survive to adulthood. Some of the reasons why a chick might not survive are:

• failure to thrive


• birth defect


• hatching injury


• weather


• predation


• disease


• siblicide


• starvation


• falls

A hatchling will be in our care for as long as 3 months, depending on how well the chick fares, if it has an injury that needs to heal, and if it will be healthy enough/physically able to be released. We normally like to release birds in the area from which they came, but it's very difficult to keep sparrows segregated and identifiable without banding them, which we don't do and is not needed for any scientific or record-keeping reason. Plus, sparrows are flock birds, and so we rear them in age groups and release them all at the same time.

I hope to post update pictures of these guys, to show you the progression of their growth and, with any luck, their release -- even if they don't really belong here, they do belong in the wild.

-- Bird Girl

Addendum: As of this edit, the three tiniest sparrows, sadly, did not survive.

04-15-10 Edit: The sparrows are getting bigger!

SAYING GOODBYE TO AN OLD FRIEND

I was living in La Jolla, CA, when I turned 18. Shortly after my birthday, I was walking home from work when I heard the distressed cries of a kitten. I tracked the sounds to a Dumpster™, and discovered the terrified kitten inside. The collection truck was down the street, so I knew I had to get the kitten out quickly; luckily, she wasn’t too far in, and I was able to scoop her out without getting too yucky myself.

It was clear she was not well. Her fur was greasy and matted, her eyes and nostrils caked with mucus from an upper respiratory infection, and infested with fleas. She had a few scrapes and worn down claws from trying to dig out of the trash bin. I wrapped her up in my jacket and took her home, where I gave her a bath to rid her of the fleas and gunk; turned out that she was a shorthaired dark tortoiseshell variety, not all of the dirt-coloring was dirt!

I took her to the vet, where it was determined that she did not have worms or any major disease, and she was given her first shots and medication for the respiratory infection. She was determined to be 6 weeks old, and was dubbed Miss Kitty.

Miss Kitty was much better very quickly, and I was very happy to have her company. When my mom visited me that Thanksgiving, MK loved to go out on her harness and leash and be walked to the beach, where she loved being dragged in the sand, watching animals in the tide pools, and snoozing in the sun in the grass.

From the beginning, MK was a chatty cat. She loved to comment on things going on around her, and loved chatting with people, having a conversation about nothing in particular. When I moved back to Denver a few months later, Miss Kitty flew back with me in a carrier under my seat; the whole way, even though she was mildly sedated, she talked about everything.

Upon returning to Denver, and moving back in with my mother, MK decided that Mom was her person, not me. All of you who have cats know what I mean; even though I had rescued her, and raised her, once MK was living in Mom’s house, she was Mom’s cat. And so she remained.

I went to college, got married, got divorced, and moved to Phoenix. Mom followed a few years later, driving herself and her cats down in a minivan while her friends drove her stuff in a U-Haul™. She said that MK kept her company by chatting with her, MK commenting on things she saw or heard, or responding to Mom. Yes, my mother is The Crazy Cat Lady.

Miss Kitty’s name had morphed over time with Mom, and she was called Teeters now. And Teeters loved to talk on the phone. Anytime I called Mom, Teeters had to talk too. I’d ask her questions, and she would respond with different meows and chirps, and it really seemed like she was talking with me. One time, I was visiting with Mom and her cell phone was on the table; Teeters was sitting next to it, and when I spoke to Teeters, she leaned over and meowed into the phone!

Teeters loved to sit in the cabinet over the fridge and sing to herself at night. It was her own private opera house, and if she realized you were listening, she would stop. She loved to lie in the sun in the yard, toasting her big belly. She never really seemed interested in chasing lizards or birds; she just wanted to be out in the air and sunshine.

Over the past couple of years, Teeters has become thinner and thinner. She went from dry kibble to wet food as her teeth aged along with the rest of her body. She was still able to get up and down off the counter for her food, and above the fridge to her Singing Closet. Always, she chattered away to anyone who would listen.

A few days ago, Teeters and I had a conversation on the phone. I told her that I loved her, but that it was okay if she wanted to go, she didn’t have to stay her for Mom and me. I asked her if she was happy, and she meowed her “yes”. I asked her if she loved me, and she meowed warmly back.

Yesterday morning, Teeters began her process of crossing the Rainbow Bridge. She is comfortable, on a bed of pillows and covered in blankets. She has a guardian, Red, who is keeping her company by sitting near her.

She has had such an interesting life in her 19 ½ years; she lived in three states, flew on a plane, drove state to state in a minivan, helped raise foster kittens, and generally made life fun and funny for Mom and me. I will miss talking with Teeters on the phone.

I wonder if they accept collect calls on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge?

Awesome day at Fallen Feathers

Many of my friends know that I am disabled, having the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia (among a host of other medical issues). Many also know that I have been involved in wild bird rehabilitation for several years. There are days when the former is not so bad, and I am able to participate in the latter; yesterday was such a day, and what a great day it was!

Jody, the Executive Director & co-founder of Fallen Feathers -- my best friend -- called me to say that she needs help catching the Great Horned owls (GHO) so that we can take them to Game and Fish (G&F) for their flight and prey training prior to being released. It's not necessarily an easy task, catching GHOs; they like to dive bomb you, feet open with talons exposed for maximum damage. We have to worry about the kind of damage they can do -- their bite can hurt, to be sure, but each talon can exert 250 psi; in other words, it could totally crush your hand. We do wear welder's gloves, but pressure is pressure. They don't let go until they want to.

So we go to collect the GHOs when I notice that there is a panel which has fallen down, which divides an aviary in half; this aviary has a one-winged GHO on one side and a Short-eared owl (SEO) on the other. The GHO, named R2, was in on the SEO's side; this is not good!! So I fend off the very-ungraceful GHO while Jody captures the SEO and puts him in a temporary cage until we can get their duplex fixed.


Having averted crisis there, we move to the aviary with three GHOs. We have raised these three, and the other two which are going to G&F today, since they were just little balls of downy fluff. Baby GHOs are just too cute!

Great Horned owl chick
Picture by Delphia Strickland



The space in which we have to catch these three is not large; the two of us in there makes it just a bit too close for comfort, when avoiding flapping wings and razor-sharp talons. I managed to sneak up on one and catch him. Jody waved her arms and acted as a shield as I bent down to put the owl in the carrier; then she caught the next one and I was her shield. The third one was a bit more of a pain, but we finally got him in the carrier.



Next up were the two GHOs who were living in the aviary with our education GHO, Robert (who also has only one wing). These two we should have named Spitfire and Pi**-and-vinegar -- they are just about the feistiest ones we've had. It's a larger space in which to maneuver though, and while that sounds like it would make it easier, it doesn't; they have room to get a good run at you. Finally, we got them both and got them in another carrier. Yay! All five safely ensconced in carriers, ready to go for their next step in rehabilitation.

Right after this, Jody gets a call from a man who says he's bringing two American avocets (AA). We get lots of kinds of birds, but we've never had these before. Avocets are shore birds, with really long legs, webbed feet, and long, thin bills that curve upward at the end to probing the sand for invertebrates. However, these two in particular had gotten into oil.

The man who brought them works for an environmental cleanup company. One of his jobs is to clean up the oil in the reclamation ponds at a natural gas plant on one of the reservations. Natural gas is the vapor of crude oil, and when there is a leak in the line, a light-yellowish oil is released. It collects in a pond, and unfortunately, birds don't know that the pond is not safe. He said that he saw several birds already had succumbed, these two were the only ones that were still alive. He said he was frustrated because the residents of the reservation he talked to about the birds had no compassion for the animals which were being killed by the oil. I understand his feelings; it's hard to explain to people sometimes why it's important to do the work we do, to change peoples' minds about how we affect the wildlife, and when they just don't care, it's confusing at best.



When he arrived with the two AAs, I noticed immediately that neither one was very feisty. In wildlife rehab, being feisty is a good thing; it means the animal still has a sense of survival, of wanting to live. Lethargy is a bad sign. These two gave weak little flaps when he handed them over; they were covered in what looked like vegetable oil, every feather coated, in the eyes....and I knew they had ingested oil, as well. The feathers we can wash, using Dawn (approved for this very situation); we can try to give them a medication which helps to bind the oil and get it out of the animal's system, but if it's been too long, or they have ingested too much, then the damage is likely already done. Oil damages kidneys, blocks up the gastrointestinal tract, and can even blind the animal.


American avocet
picture by Delphia Strickland


With the GHOs in carriers waiting to be taken to G&F, we wrapped the avocets in towels and put them in an aquarium on a heating pad to warm them up and keep them contained until we returned. On our way there, we saw this amazing car. It's a "Shamu" car, from SeaWorld in San Diego, CA; I want one!



Shamu car
picture by Delphia Strickland

Flight training and prey training is an important step in the rehabilitation of raptors (birds of prey: hawks, falcons, eagles, etc.); they need to prove that they can control their flight accurately, and to be able to make kills successfully. These five are quick studies, and really not fond of humans; we suspect that they will not need more than a week to demonstrate their abilities. At G&F, each bird is weighed (at least two are females, one might be) and given a temporary band to identify it as one of our owls, and the information is recorded on a form. Then, I carried each bird to the big flight pen, which is about 50 x 20 x 150 feet, and let it launch from my glove. Each owl flew very well to high perches, and then glared at me as all good owls should do after such an ordeal.

Great Horned owls at Fallen Feathers
picture by Delphia Strickland

While we were there, we picked up three American kestrels which had completed the flight/prey training and are now ready to be released, as well as a fancy pigeon with a band; we will try to track down the owner of the bird and return it to him or her, and if we can't, then we will place the bird in a good home.

We returned to Jody's house, the Fallen Feathers base of operations, to take care of the avocets. Jody washed one, and I the other, taking care to wash each feather, the skin, the face, but keeping the soapy water out of the birds' eyes, nostrils and mouth. The bird I washed seemed to like the warm water, and put up virtually no resistance.





Washing the avocet
picture by Jody Kieran

Even though we lost the avocets, overall, the day was an awesome day in wild bird rehabilitation, for me.


:)

New post on Nestwatchers Club blog! UPDATED 01-21-2009

Check out my new post about my Zebra finch chicks!