One of the best parts about working in the Avian Nursery  is seeing the process of a newly hatched bird growing up, being cared for by our interns and volunteers, becoming independent, and eventually getting released back into the wild.

Every year around late May to early June, Killdeer chicks inevitably get brought to the WRC for rehabilitation. These cute, tiny little “cotton ball on toothpick leg” orphans will eventually turn into elegant, sleek shorebirds that are commonly found on golf courses, sod farms, mudflats and other areas of low or no vegetation. They can be challenging to raise during their first week of life. Killdeer have very specific temperature, habitat and food requirements that need to be met. They also need to feel safe and secure before they will begin self-feeding….but once they start eating, there is no stopping them!

A newly admitted Killdeer chick snuggling into a warm towel.

5 weeks later, just prior to release.

Just released and already at home in a marsh!

Last week we released two juvenile Killdeer into a park next to a large marshy area, which is the perfect habitat for them as they demonstrated to us by seeking out food just moments after release. Watch a video of this here.

Keller Golf Course in Maplewood isn’t just a haven for urban golfers. It’s a haven for urban Eastern Bluebirds.

With more than 30 bluebird nestboxes it’s easy to see why Keller has been certified an Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary by Audubon International.

What does that mean for WRC? Not only does it mean we get to establish ties with community leaders (in fact, our Executive Director Phil Jenni is on the Ramsey County Park Commission),  it means we have lots of bluebird houses nearby that can be used for wild fostering of orphaned bluebirds. It’s a tricky business, this wild fostering. The birds have to be within a day, possibly two, of the other birds and that’s difficult to find in the wild.

Last week, Golf Course Superintendent Paul Diegnau met me at the maintenance building and we headed out across the course with a cardboard box containing two tiny bluebird nestlings that had been orphaned:

We headed to a bluebird house on the course that Paul had been monitoring. It’s in a gorgeous setting; bordering restored prairie habitat. In the house? Five wild bluebirds being well-tended to by their parents.

Paul carefully added two more chicks to the house:

And then we sat back and watched for a half hour to make sure the fostering had been successful. The female bluebird returned and perched on a nearby house for 10 minutes before entering her house. We were guessing that maybe she can distinguish her own nestling calls from the two new birds and was wondering about the new sounds.

In any event, she went in, checked things out and then continued on her daily pattern of catching bugs and bringing them back for now seven hungry mouths.

Paul followed up on the bluebird nest the next day, just to make sure things were going well. All seven chicks were active and alert, gaping to be fed.

With this wild foster we continue an amazing streak of 100% success in fostering orphaned bluebirds into wild homes. Many thanks to Paul Diegnau, his staff, and Keller Golf Course for welcoming two more bluebirds to their community.

note: If you monitor a bluebird trail in the Twin Cities and wish to be added to our list of resources for wild fostering, please email me and let me know your location and the date of your most recent egg hatch or, if you’re into your second brood and the eggs haven’t hatched yet, email me when they hatch.

Recently a newly hatched American Woodcock (or ‘Timberdoodle’) was admitted into our Avian Nursery. He won the hearts of everyone and even though he had just hatched, he was incredibly curious; running around exploring every corner of his enclosure.

Did you know that woodcock eggs split lengthwise during hatching? (Most eggs split width-wise!)

Even though woodcocks are technically a type of sandpiper, they live in young forests rather than near shorelines and live on worms and invertebrates that they find by probing their long beaks into the soil. Woodcocks are considered precocial since they are covered in downy feathers and have their eyes open when they hatch. Unlike most precocial birds though, they cannot feed themselves until about a week after hatching. For the first week of life they depend on their mother for this. Watch our little woodcock being fed here.

Our American Woodcock (left) sitting with a Killdeer chick.

Every time I see the picture in the lobby of the three baby beavers from a few years ago drinking from their bottles, I wish we’d get a truly orphaned beaver in again (as opposed to one mistakenly taken from its family).

This morning my wish came true!  A beaver kit was found on path, weak and crawling around.  The finders put him under a bush so the family could come find it.  After 6 hours, the kit was still there so it was brought to WRC.  The kit is weak, dehydrated and has a mild upper respiratory infection.  It is on treatment and hopefully will do well.

Beavers form very tight family units and the young kits spend two years with their parents learning how to survive, build dams, etc. In rehabilitation, it takes a very long time (2 years!) and is a complicated rehabilitation process to prepare kits for release. A single kit must be released with another orphan of the same age into an area that is perfect beaver habitat but is unoccupied by beavers. Sadly, even then, many of these beavers that are released don’t make it.  Most likely he (like the three from a few years ago) will will be placed with an education facility or zoo to be an ambassador for wildlife.

Canada Geese goslings are often orphaned when they fall behind or something startles the parent geese and they take off.

The parent geese are good parents, but they can’t count so if they get to wherever they are going and are missing a gosling or two, they usually don’t notice. Luckily, geese families are very indiscriminate and will raise orphans. They have such a strong parenting instinct that when they hear a gosling cry, their instinct is to protect that gosling – whether or not it’s theirs.

Here at WRC we take advantage of the fact that geese can’t count. When a healthy Canada Goose gosling comes in, we find a goose family with goslings of the same size and introduce the orphan to them. Sometimes it can be difficult since the parents are trying to protect the goslings, but if we’re patient and give the parents time, they’ll adopt the orphan. Here’s a video showing the process.

Note that this does not work with mallards. They will actually attack ducklings trying to join their family that are not theirs.

I walked by our Avian Nursery this afternoon and was surprised to hear all sorts of chirping. In the  past 24 hours, we went from only a few birds placed in our Orphan Outreach Program, to a nursery with nearly a dozen birds in it. Nesting season is upon us.

This group of young House Finches came in this morning (I love the wispies on their heads!):

This fledgling-stage robin also was admitted this morning and to be honest, we were a bit surprised at how old it is already:

Young robins, like many other bird species, leave the nest before they can fly. That’s why you always see the spotted robins hopping around the yard, hiding under your shrubs, etc. They leave the nest simply because there’s not enough room in it for their flight feathers to develop. Think about how small a nest is, add four growing robins and you can envision the space problem!

They’ll spend 5-9 days on the ground learning to search for food, taking practice flights and picking up tips from their parents on how to evade predators.

A reminder that fledglings should be left alone. This is an important stage of development necessary for them to lead successful lives in the wild. We realize it is stressful if there are feral cats in the neighborhood, or if your neighbor leaves their own cat(s) out, but the robins need to learn to survive. Hopefully, if you point out the cute young robins to your cat-owning neighbors, they’ll agree to keep their cat indoors for the next couple of weeks.

Of course, mistakes are part of the learning curve and accidents will happen to young birds. If you notice a fledgling dragging a wing, not able to stand or worse yet actually pry it out of a dog or cat mouth, you can certainly bring it in. That’s why we’re here!

A nest of three newly hatched Spotted Sandpipers was noticed in the path of harms way by an observant worker on a site where industrial equipment was about to drive through. The nest would almost certainly be destroyed. The little birds were brought to our wildlife center and admitted to the avian nursery. Once in a safe and warm incubator, these little birds were eating small brine shrimp and tiny mealworms on their own within hours! Sandpipers are semi-precocial birds, which means that they can run around and eat on their own shortly after hatching, but still need their parents to keep them warm for a week or so until they can regulate their own body temperature.

The sandpipers started off living in their warm incubator, then moved to a large tub with a heat lamp, and eventually to an outdoor enclosure with grasses and small wading dishes to replicate their natural habitat. One thing that we learned about Spotted Sandpipers while these little guys were in our care, is that they can really eat…no wonder they grew up so fast! Last week they began to fly in their enclosure and we knew that they were ready to return to the wild. Not only were the sandpipers released in the same location where they were found (the industrial equipment was long gone), but the two ladies that found them and brought them to us happened to be present to see the not-so-little birds fly free. See the release here: Sandpipers being released

The sandpipers shortly after being admitted.

A few days later: running around and eating.

Being a non-profit, we typically do not pursue expensive and invasive procedures due to the price relative to the prognosis.

For instance, we receive many, many animals who have spinal trauma.  Diagnosing the specifics of a spinal trauma would involve expensive imaging (myelogram, MRI or CT) and to treat could involve invasive, risky surgery (laminectomy, pins, etc).  The total cost of this is easily >$6000; the prognosis for return to the wild in the case of an animal who needed surgery would be poor.

Does it make  financial sense to spend $6,000 on one animal who likely won’t be released, when we could put that money toward rehabbing several hundred other animals who have better prognoses? And more importantly, does it make sense to put an animal with such a poor prognosis through a very painful and invasive procedure, when it will likely be euthanized?

These are questions we ask ourselves every day.

Luckily, some cases are a bit easier to manage, due in large part to specialists who volunteer their time.

Recently, we had a Red Fox kit with a broken leg (femur).  This fracture would not heal with a splint or cast, and needed surgery to be fixed.  I am not a trained orthopedic surgeon, so if I were to do the surgery, the prognosis wouldn’t be very good.

Luckily, two surgery residents from the University of Minnesota, College of Veterinary Medicine volunteered their time to come and do the surgery.  The fox recovered beautifully from the surgery and will be ready to be released soon. In the photo at the top of this post, the surgeons have completed their work and are fitting a crossbar to help stabilize the leg while it heals.

Thanks so much to Dr. Duane Robinson and Dr. Jeff Biskup for their time and expertise, and to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center for their support!

This morning after heading to the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, I stopped by Coastal Seafood to pick up three pounds of live crayfish. No, it’s not for a crayfish boil tonight, but for the herons.

From there I headed up to WRC where I met Deb W. who was kind enough to bring to us more than two dozen sunnies that she caught this morning. Again, all for the herons. (are you getting an idea of how much they eat? It’s amazing, really.)

I then headed south to the herons’ outdoor caging facility where I watched entranced as they preened, interacted, fished and yelled at me.

The herons have matured to the point that they choose sunfish (probably their most plentiful fish in the wild) over the other fish in their pools, and eschew the dead fish, preferring live ones.

Hope you enjoy the videos!

Heron fishing for minnows.

Heron gulping a sunfish (amazing how they instinctively know to rotate the fish, and keep it moist to help it slide down).

Herons interacting with each other (great look at how they flex their crowns)

Yesterday was an exciting day at WRC.  The Great Blue Heron chicks rescued in the aftermath of the tornado that ripped through north Minneapolis on May 22 were moved to large outdoor flight pens, their final stage of rehabilitation.

About 30 songbirds raised in our Avian Nursery also made the journey with the herons to their new outdoor caging.

The “celebrity-status” of the herons alone makes the move newsworthy, but it also has larger implications for WRC.  To fully explain I have to go back a few years.

In July of 2008, WRC’s Board of Directors held a strategic planning session that resulted in a sweeping, far-ranging vision for WRC’s future.  We looked at it as an opportunity to dream a bit about our future, to “make no small plans,”

Our vision was to create the Wildlife Health System; a network of facilities that would better serve the needs of the people who bring us animals and the wild animals who need our care.  Our current Roseville facility would serve as the flagship medical facility, providing the best possible care for injured animals and training the next generation of veterinarians.

We also envisioned satellite facilities to respond to the increased demand for our services for healthy, orphaned animals.  Facilities would need ample outdoor caging, to reduce the stress of human contact and provide species with specific care.  An ideal location in the south metro was subsequently identified.

Several months later the economy collapsed and WRC, like the rest of the community, hunkered down in survival mode.  Fortunately, we survived and last year even retired the remaining debt on our Roseville clinic.  Relieved of that debt, during the last year we began planning to expand our physical capacity to respond to the increasing demand from the public and our patients.

This spring, we finished construction on several large outdoor flight cages at the southern facility in Inver Grove Heights. This will be the final stage rehabilitation site for the majority of our nursery patients. It’s vital that they acclimate to the outdoors, away from humans, prior to release.

So it is fitting that the first patients in our new outdoor facility are the herons.  Their plight struck a collective nerve in the community.  Watching them spread their wings in their new outdoor flight pens, is symbolic not only of survival, but of WRC’s ability to spread its wings to meet the needs of future generations.

It’s a small, first step in what we hope is a “big plan” and a soaring journey.