On The Wild Side  Winter 2007

In this issue:

 Editorial:

We have had a very interesting year at the Wildlife Centre. Apart from our usual mammal and bird admissions, we hosted four Interns for three months. It was a great experience all round. We all learned a lot and I even coped with three youngsters in the house after three years of living alone. More about them later in the letter.

Our admissions were brisk in the Spring we were barely able to keep up, however the early Fall was much quieter with fewer admissions. Bird numbers are down by 20% especially during late summer. We had no idea why until Audubon’s report was released on the state of the birds. See page 10. Other rehabilitators in Ontario are seeing the same pattern in admissions. The dry summer is a concern for us with water as we are on a well here and not hooked up to the main water lines. Fortunately a few years ago we had a drilled well put in for back up.

We had to bite the bullet and have our clinic restored with new siding. The old wooden walls were leaking badly. I didn’t realize how much damage was done until we removed the bird cages. Faye Wan made us a new entrance sign and now we look really smart.

Thanks to all who helped by volunteering this year, we couldn’t manage without you. We have volunteers who drive and pick up animals and birds for us, hands on volunteers at the centre and those who work behind the scene doing fund-raising, computer work and accounting. We thank you for sharing your knowledge, moral support and so much more, you have all helped to make it happen.

Our educational program for school is underway, we fortunately have two qualified instructors working on this. Leah has been making Outreach presentations to groups. If you are interested please contact us.

                                   Sandy Pines Updates

A free e-mailing to subscribers that gives a weekly update of events with photos. This has been well received by those who don’t have time to volunteer with hands on care but want to keep in touch.

 If you would like to receive these postings, please email Connie: merlin@kingston.net

THE INTERNS 2007

From the left Katrina Cipra, Holly Vlaming, LeahBirmingham-Assistant Director, Nikki Reshke and Scott White. The poster was made by Nikki

We hosted these four Interns for three months this summer from May until July. They came from various college and university programs and were interested in adding skills in wildlife husbandry to their resumes. Three lived with Sue in the house and it worked amazingly well.

Leah did all the work organizing this program, sending out information packages, interviewing the applicants and working out a shift schedule. She did a great job.

Orientation was a very busy time as it happens in our busy baby season, but our volunteers helped us too and they really enjoyed working with the students and Interns.

We were lucky to have such a great group to work with, and work they did, leaving them no time or energy to party much. Thanks to all of you for making this an enjoyable experience for all of us.They all went back to University and Colleges to complete their education except Katrina who stayed on and helped us out for an extra month as we were so busy.

We all learned a lot from this program, with everyone contributing ideas to improve the way we cared for the animals and birds in our care.

We are planning a similar program in 2008 with a few changes to improve the continuity of care from day to day. It will be more International next year as we have approved a student from England . We are already looking forward to new Interns.

Raising the Roof for Raptors-First section completed

This aviary is designed for large birds of prey. We realized how badly we needed this when, two years ago, we admitted a Bald eagle who in the smaller aviary, was able to hop from perch to perch and we were completely unable to assess his flight capabilities. Matt Saunders and students from the Environmental Group from Kingston collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI) started this project a couple of years ago. They framed and wired the aviary, donating lumber as well as their time.

Our project has been on hold for a while because of funding and manpower. Thanks to donations we received from the Frontenac and Hastings Stewardship Councils, The Avian Care and Research Foundation, KCVI Environmental group and private donors, we were able to buy the materials to complete this large raptor aviary this Fall. Then all we lacked was the manpower. Fortunately one of our volunteers, Janet Drew, took on the project and has worked on it all year. With a little help here and there she has completed this aviary. Many thanks for your dedication to this project Janet.

Birds of prey need room to fly and regain condition lost by being in captivity. It will give them a much better chance of surviving in the wild if they are released in optimal condition.

You will notice the vertical wood slats that completely cover the inside of the walls and roof. This is to prevent the birds from perching on the sides where they can damage feathers. Every feather is precious for flight and damaged feathers will not mend, causing the bird to remain in captivity until they moult and grow replacement feathers. This is not the end of the project but a good start. We are planning to add connecting aviaries as we are able to afford materials and time.

This is the view from inside the aviary, look closely and you can see a Cooper’s Hawk high on the far wall.

Although we don't do tours, we would like to offer our donors a chance to see this aviary in person. Many of your donations went towards the materials for this flight cage. If you are interested, call and we will be very happy to see you.

We have been lucky to have had a volunteer Veterinarian helping us for the last two years. Dr. Bonnie Beresford works full time at Queen’s University in Kingston but manages to come visit us on weekends when she is able to get away.

One owl was lucky too.

On the Monday of the Civic holiday weekend in August we had a call from Kingston Humane Society. A Great Horned Owl had been found near the 401 highway, probably hit by a vehicle. We phoned all our volunteer drivers in the area but no one was home on this sunny holiday afternoon. Bonnie volunteered to drive in to get the owl and transport it here.

On examining the owl she discovered a laceration over the metacarpal area (the wrist) that needed suturing. After sedating the bird Bonnie gave it fluids by injection and sutured up the wound.

The owl was bruised and sore and we kept her in a small aviary and hand fed her for a few days. We also gave her medication for pain. She gradually recovered and within a week started to fly.

Two weeks later she was eating well on her own and ready to go. Bonnie had the pleasure of releasing the owl near where she was found, and watched her fly away to freedom without a backward glance.

 Buckwheat

Every spring the calls come rolling in from people who believe they have found an "orphaned" fawn. We explain to each of the callers that deer leave their young for long periods during the day. To humans it seems unnatural but to a protective doe, the best defence she can give her babies is to keep away from the virtually scentless fawn. So she forages and leaves her young tucked away, camouflaged from most predators, for several hours at a time. Unfortunately, with loss of habit due to human urban sprawl, humans and dogs often discover the fawns. Most of these people can be persuaded to put the fawn back where they found it and check again in the morning. In successful cases the mother returns to find her young and moves to a safer location. However in most situations the finders have had the "orphan" for days, the animal comes into the centre dehydrated, malnourished and terrified. Usually the well-meaning individuals have been treating the fawn like a pet and struggling for days to get it to feed. Depending on the age of the fawn when found, one will experience a varied acceptance to fawn milk replacements (cow's milk can cause digestive problems and death) and the human who is trying to force-feed it. The older the fawn, the more difficult it is to deal with as mother has already taught it to be very wary of two-legged animals! The window of opportunity to reintroduce the fawn to its mother is about 24 hours. Callers often insist the fawn is an orphan and refuse to attempt at reuniting the young one with its mother as they see this cute, scared animal in need of their help, and they don’t want to put it back out into the wild all alone. Their fear is that a predator will find it long before the parent comes back, and in some cases this may happen, however for the fawns who are back in their natural environment with their much more capable parent…it was a risk worth taking!

In early June of this year we had an injured fawn brought to us. He came to us from the Peterborough area, and had been hit by a car and found at the side of a busy road, no mother in sight. A kind passer- by stopped and picked him up and took him to

Champlain Animal Hospital where Dr. Kim Facey treated him for the initial trauma. He was severely traumatized by both the accident and by being in an Animal Hospital on IV fluids, surrounded by the scent and sound of potential predators. They did not have much luck getting nourishment in him, and Dr. Kristy McNabb (Kawartha Turtle Trauma Centre) had suggested they send him to us. The staff had named him Buckwheat and they were all really rooting for him.

We estimated his age to be 3-4 weeks, plenty old to have been taught a fear of humans by his mother! We kept him on antibiotics, and worked hard to get him to drink Fawn Milk Replacer (FMR). He fought and resisted any contact with our milk and us. The whole event of trying to force feed Buckwheat was stressful on everyone, and many times during the first few days we debated euthanasia, his eyes were swollen and infected, he had multiple wounds on his legs, which didn’t seem to be healing, he was a dehydrated mess.

We agonized over carrying on with treatment and after some discussion we decided to give him 24 more hours and then making a decision. Sue loaded him up with sub-cutaneous fluids (a treatment to help with dehydration), and assumed he would not make it through the night. When she went out the next morning he was bright and alert, the fluids had helped and apparently with a new lease on life Buckwheat was finally ready to start trying to live again! Sometimes animals and birds have a tremendous will to live, you can almost sense it.

It wasn’t all plain sailing from there, we had a couple of set backs, a non healing wound, further complicated by a bandage that was accidentally placed too tight. In order to do his bandage changes he had to be tranquilized daily at first, then every other day for one whole month. He had a very bad reaction to one of the anaesthetics, and stopped breathing during one of the early bandage changes, so each attempt to anaesthetize him became even more stressful, We used a method of bandaging with sugar, this is very effective, low-cost, and a little messy. The excess sugar made him a hit with his fellow fawns that liked to lick it off him, especially while he was a little sleepy from his anaesthetic. He started to tolerate the feeds and seemed to find comfort from the other fawns. In august the Quinte Conservation Day Camp became sponsors of Buckwheat; they invited SPWC to their camp for a talk about Wildlife Rehabilitation. Now forty or more children and their camp leaders, the staff of Champlain Animal Hospital, the interns, volunteers, and staff of SPWC were cheering Buckwheat on. He had a lot of hope in his corner. Finally we had reached a point where no more bandage changes were necessary, which only helped the healing process more. In wildlife rehabilitation we battle between the benefit of treatment and the side effect of stress. Stress prevents the body’s ability to heal, sometimes so much that a wound will heal better if the patient can be left alone with very little stimuli.

I believe that the animals we treat teach us many lessons. With Buckwheat we each gained our own knowledge, some of us learned about the amazing will to live these young animals have. I learned the fine line between beneficial treatment and stress, not to give up too quickly, and that medications must be used with great caution in fawns.

Buckwheat was released successfully this year, and is just one of the many animals helped this past season at SPWC

Orphaned red foxes. Their mother was hit by a car and they were found near her body. They were very independent and remained very wild. They were released near where they were found this Fall.

Thanks to the offerings of volunteers and staff who collected road kill, we were able to feed them an entirely natural diet. They are always alert and very playful when they think we aren’t around.

Common Loon. A land lander, who landed on a wet road probably thinking it was a river. With their legs set very far back on their body, they are unable to walk or take off from dry land. We usually get a few in every year and once we check them out for injuries we release them immediately into the nearest body of water.Loons do not do well in captivity and can lose their waterproofing if out of the water for any length of time. This loon had sore feet from the crash landing but was otherwise uninjured so was released by the finder near where it was found.

A Great Horned Owl fledgling who has left the nest but sits out on a branch and still unable to fly, is fed by its parents. This one was found alone on the ground and starving with no parent in sight. It was weak and starving when we received it. After a few days it regained its strength and was transferred to The Owl Foundation in Vineland, Ontario to be with other young owls who were being raised by a foster Great Horned Owl with other branchers.

Young birds of prey habituate very easily to their human caregivers when in captivity, so it is very important to have them raised by con-specifics. so that they don’t have an identity crisis. This owl was released into the wild this year.

This lucky duck was picked up in a parking lot in Scarborough by a long distance truck driver who didn’t want to see it die. It appeared to have botulism. Its eyes were almost closed and its wings were paralysed. We treated it with fluids and slowly it recovered. These pelagic ducks are from the far North and only winter in coastal areas and out in the Great Lakes.A real problem to feed and we had to tube feed initially. Finally he started to self feed minnows. There is an outbreak of e-type botulism in Lake Ontario around Prince Edward County now (November)that is affecting hundreds of Loons and Long-tailed Ducks. This duck was one of the lucky ones. Thanks to my minnows provider, Don Baker of Baker’s Baits in Napanee, we were able to provide cray fish and minnows to whet the appetite. Successfully released mid November.

State of the Birds

CBC recently had a news item about the decline in the number of birds. This verifies what we have been seeing at the centre. It is not just that less birds are getting injured or orphaned, but there is an alarming decrease in overall numbers of common species.

Excepts from this report: Common Birds in Decline –– Summer 2007

"Birds are important indicators of the overall health of our environment. Like the proverbial canaries in the coal mine, they send an urgent warning about threats to our water, air, natural resources, climate and more."

"Audubon’s unprecedented analyses of forty years of bird population data from Christmas Bird Count and Breeding Bird Survey reveals alarming declines for many of our most common and beloved birds. Since 1967 the average population for the common birds in steepest decline has fallen 68 percent, from 17.6 million to 5.35 million. Some species have nose-dived as much as 80 percent and all 20 birds included in the report have lost at least 50 percent of their population - in just four decades."

Most of us are aware of the endangered loggerhead shrike but even grackles and several familiar sparrows are on this list. I have noticed a decrease in the number of birds at the feeders here, we used to have Evening Grosbeaks and several nests of Barn Swallows in the barn, none at all this year. Loss of farmlands and hedgerows to monoculture and urban sprawl are the main cause of diminished numbers of birds like the Eastern Meadowlark and the Ruffed Grouse

Check this website for more information www.stateofthebirds.audubon.org

FUNDRAISERS Special thanks to these area Businesses for their support

Urban Paws Pet Supplies - Kingston

Earthworx & Shea Construction - Kingston

Food Basics Frontenac Mall - Kingston

Berry's Pet Foods - Amherstview

The Brick - Kingston

Looking Good Esthetics - Kingston

Global Pet Foods - Kingston

Pet Panache - Napanee

Always needed: Paper towels, bleach, detergent and toilet tissue.

Lumber- Privacy fencing, plywood 2X4' etc. to build more aviaries

Surveillance Camera -to spy on birds in the aviary.

Remote controlled toy speedboat-to help round up injured birds from the water.

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