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.

Yesterday I installed and tested our new medical database on a laptop, sent out a WRC Update to more than 400 volunteers, and spent six hours in a car transporting our first Avian Nursery patients back to their Duluth home.

Of the many hats I wear at WRC, my favorite by far is as a participant in the absolute joy of releasing animals back into the wild; animals that would have died without our care.

The two Hairy Woodpeckers I returned to Duluth were our first Avian Nursery patients to be released this season.  They were orphaned in early May as a result of tree trimming.

They arrived at WRC as tiny, naked nestlings in the actual tree limb that had housed their nest cavity. After weeks of care, the birds were flying well and foraging for their food, and most importantly, were feisty toward humans: a good sign that they were ready to be released.

The Hairy Woodpeckers, a male and a female, are now flying free on several acres of wooded land just north of Duluth.

Here’s a video of Avian Nursery Coordinator Jessika preparing the birds for their journey back home.

Canada geese are very attentive parents and will even raise goslings that are not their own.  They will also form nursery groups of many goslings and adults as shown in this photo.  Yesterday we were able to successfully “foster” five goslings admitted to the center into a wild Canada goose family.  Fostering waterfowl is by no means an easy process, only works with certain species, and requires a knowledgeable trained person to be successful. 

First, a family must be located that has goslings relatively the same size as those needing to be fostered and that we are able to get close enough to in order to make an introduction.  We are always careful not to choose a family that already has a large number of goslings.  Once the perfect family is found, then we need to approach the family and allow the foster goslings to make noise and let the adults see them and hear their calls. 

For me this is the most amazing and rewarding experience.  As soon as the adults hear the goslings distress call, they are all business and came right up showing their displeasure that I was near their family.  Once the foster goslings saw the adult, they immediately ran to it for protection.  The adult then lead the goslings and united them with their own, still of course making sure I knew my presence was not welcome. 

The best place for an orphaned goose is to be raised by its own kind in the wild.  So a family of 4 became a family of 9 giving these foster goslings the best chance of survival.

The 3 Red Fox kits that came in a few weeks ago (see March 27th post) are growing by leaps and bounds (no pun intended)! They’ve already tripled their weight, and their eyes and ears are open. Tiny, sharp teeth are growing in, and they’re starting to explore solid foods.  These babies are estimated to be approximately 3 weeks old now. They will be with us until they are completely weaned off formula, and have been eating solid foods for several weeks.

Sunday we got our first baby squirrel of the season in!  He’s a healthy 52 grams with a small puncture wound on his abdomen–otherwise he’s doing great!