Dirty Work in Rehab!

For those of us who work in the Wildlife Hospital on a daily or weekly basis, the bird poop, castings (undigestible materials that birds regurgitate - essentially a hairball with bones), blood and preparing whole food items (rats, rabbits, mice etc.) is just another usual day at work.

Young Great-horned owls make a mess overnight - castings and poop greet the rehabber first thing in the morning!

Then there are days that we deal with maggots in the wounds of a newly injured bird brought in to us - a common case during the summer months.  There are other parasites that multiply quickly on wild birds when the bird is injured and does not have the energy to care for itself - like flat flies, mites and the odd bloodsucking fluke.  None of these are hosted by humans, so they do not present a danger to us or infest our hospital, but they are still pretty gross and we do occassionallly get freaked out by them!

Sanctuary Manager, Joe Hoffmann, and Volunteer, Craig Lanham, handfeed a Red-Tailed Hawk small pieces of rat.

There are a host of other nasty jobs that are 'all in a day's work' for a wildlife rehabber, but that's another blog!  In any event, getting a bird through the trials of looking like it won't survive to the point where it is released back into the wild, healthy and fed-up, is a reward that makes this all worth while.

This is what makes it all worthwhile!  Release of a Red-tailed Hawk that recovered in our Wildlife Hospital.

If this hasn't sent you gagging, and you would like to enjoy the reward of seeing a bird return to it's natural habitat after caring for it in our wildlife hospital, you can volunteer in our Wildlife Hospital. Download a volunteer application form here.

If the works sounds too dirty, but you'd still like to help our wildlife hospital, you can sponsor the release of a bird rehabilitated in our wildlife hospital by clicking here, or buy our environmentally-focused children's music CD, "Save the Future" here - all proceeds go directly towards the feeding and care of birds in our Wildlife Hospital.

Submitted by Joe Hoffmann, Sanctuary Manager, World Bird Sanctuary.