For the Birds

The title could actually go to any of the Wolf Hollow posts I have made this past month and probably the rest of the winter. See, most of our clientele this time of year are birds. We only have one mammal in house right now and that is an adult squirrel who will probably be leaving us in a week or so anyway. But back onto the topic of today, birds.

We started the day doing the normal routine, and around 9:30 we got a call from a local who works for the ferry and they got a seabird last night that landed on the ferry deck. He kept it overnight and wanted to make sure someone was at center to get the bird. When it came in this is what we saw:










An Ancient Murrelet! It isn't very often we see them in, and usually it is a quick turn around. This is because they are seabirds, and if they land on something that isn't water, they are unable to take off. So a false landing on the deck of the ferry caused such a problem. Those little feets are soo far back that they aren't able to get up and walk away. That is exactly what it was today. I quick check over, a distilled water wipe down of the feathers & then off him and I went to Deadman's Bay for release.


Here he is at release, I went to a rock sheltered spot so that it wasn't such a wave shock when he went in. I flew across the water, landed, dove down and I didn't see the Murrelet again!

Once I was back I did some upgrading of animals we have in house. The fox sparrow got moved to a larger fledgling cage into Iso room. Then I moved the saw-whet owl to Aviary #1. Jessica, you remember this little girl, she came in at the beginning of October!! She is finally up to a stage were we just need to get her fit enough to release again. We had moved her out to Willow's Mew to first test her flight ability and soon found out that she is a calm little bird. Then with the storms we had to move her back in. Now, we are hopefully in final stages with her as well!!






Soon after coming back in someone approached the door with a bag, in the bag was a little bird that was found in the middle of the road. It wasn't until the finder was headed out the door and I looked at the intake form and went, Duh! I know him.. that was Liam! He brought me in a little Golden-crowned Kinglet, and when I say little, I mean little.. like 6 grams. According to one of our books they are the next smallest birds to hummingbirds. The kinglet was pretty mobile upon arrival and I kept him calm and quiet for about 45 minutes before taking him out for frolic with the other GC Kinglets in our woodland!










As you can see he flew up and landed on my arm, and kept climbing around on me jumping from shoulder to shoulder. This made me a little fearful, but talking to Shona they seem to be more oblivious to the actual person than to it just being a perch. You can also see that his "crown" isn't exactly straight b/c of me having to continue to grab him and put him back in the basket! It is also very hard to see, but it is a boy b/c there is some orange/red streaks in that bright yellow feathers.


We are currently working on finding the owner of a Black Swan in the area. Over the past few days we have gotten numerous reports of a black, very friendly, swan out in Fisherman's Bay on Lopez island. So far we haven't had any luck on finding its home. We are now working on finding temporary placement for this "domesticated" swan until its owners come forward.


I am soo excited that I am not on call tonight, as I have been on call the last 2 holidays, and it also means I won't be picking up any eagles like last year!


I hope you all have a great night, and the new year brings about positive changes!