Marin County

When I arrived today Joyce was running triple time with animal check-ins, follow-ups for patient inquiries, taking messages, checking the computer data base, checking and answering emails, and all of the many other things she does as part of her job at WildCare. As I came up to her she gave me a hug and handed me some fresh copies she had made for me of the new list of phone numbers of places we refer people to when they are too far away to bring an animal to us. She has masses of information stashed in her mind, but I am having a hard time remembering all the (what seems like thousands of) details I need to do my volunteer job well so Joyce makes me copies and posts notes where we can easily see them of anything current we may be getting calls about.

Joyce knows everything. She knows which of the Bee Keepers are currently active and where, she knows who to call for more details on Hummingbird questions, and it only took her two trys to find out the best place to buy smelt when one of the other rehab facilities called. And even better, Joyce shares what she knows without hesitation. She is not possessive of the work or the station.

I’m exhausted after this afternoon’s stint on the phones. It was non-stop phone most of the afternoon. At one point, one of the MHS (Marin Humane Society) officers came in and loudly asked me “Don’t you ever answer your phones? I called 5 or 6 times and no answer!!! What? is the ringer broken?” I think now he was kidding. But then I was shocked that his calls had gone unanswered. I’m so dim sometimes too. Of course I didn’t answer the phone, all the lines were busy, I was on them. His calls were rolling over to voice mail, only he didn’t bother to leave a message. I’ll have to think of some similar prank to have ready for the next time he comes in. Although, he looks to be a bit quicker on the uptake than me – might not be so easy

And when the phones weren’t ringing, the email was bonging.

And then, for some reason, most of the birdroom volunteers for the afternoon shift had not shown up so I was called the evening volunteers to see if they could come in earlier, as soon as they possibly could, and leaving messages with the no-shows asking them to please call me back as soon as they got the message. The good news is, that by 2:30, enough volunteers had shown up, and come in early, to make sure all of the babies got fed right on schedule.

I’m actually too tired to write anymore. How does Joyce do this almost every day? I’ll have to come back to this in the morning.

The lady comes up to the admitting counter with a box held in both hands, carefully, out in front of her. The classic ‘baby bird’ presentation. And yes, the box is peeping up a storm. “It’s a baby Quail” she tells me, “my cat brought it in.” I take the box and hand her the form to fill out with details on how to contact her if there are any questions. “Do I have to?” she asks. “I filled out three just an hour ago and one before that.” The peeping is loud, insistent. I give her a smile and tell her “yes, please fill out the form. We really do need that information for each and every patient that comes in” and start to walk down the hall to the Bird Room.

Peep peep peep as I walk down the hall.  My mind is pondering  ‘three earlier and one before that’ and  ‘cat’ and the fact that Quail nests can hold up to 17 chicks. Is this the last of the lot, or just the beginning? Did any others get past the cat? What about the parents if the cat is watching the nest? Peep peep peep peep, the noise from the box is strong and steady, and then, it suddenly stops. I enter the Bird Room, the box strangely quiet. I lift the flap a tiny bit more to see if the bird is in distress but I can’t see it. Diana comes over and takes the box and opens it. There is a small towel folded in the bottom. No bird. She gently lifts the towel, no baby peeper. She removes the towel and oh so carefully unfolds it. Nothing. She has to ask. “You are sure there was a bird in here?” She is giving me the ‘look’, sort of like the ’smile’ I gave the lady. . .

I’m sure there was a bird in the box. Panic is setting in and my brain is rewinding and replaying the audio from the walk down the hall. Baby Quail was in the box at check in – Baby Quail was in the box walking down the hall – Baby Quail was not in the box in the Bird Room . . . Baby Quail IS LOOSE IN THE HALLWAY!!!!!!!!!

I won’t replay the agonizing minutes spent searching. Staff was reassuring, “as soon as it finds a nice dark place and is still for a minute, it will start to peep again. We’ll find it, we will find it.”

As I walked back out to the front desk, watching the floor every step, life loomed darkly ahead as an endless search for Baby Quail.  First the hallway again, then under the med cabinets, oh please God, don’t let it be under the med cabinets. I can’t begin to tell you how sick I felt for fear the baby was squeezed into a dark corner somewhere; kidnapped, cat-licked, possibly hurt from the fall, and worst of all, alone.

And suddenly, on the floor by the front desk, there it is. Paulette sees it, picks it up, and expertly holds it in her hand, so that Baby Quail is safe and can’t squiggle out again. It is so small. How could it run so far?

Is it hurt by the jump? She doesn’t think so. And back to the incubator it goes, to be weighed and checked and put in with the rest of it’s clan when the danger from the cat saliva has passed. The little bird is found and safe and I can get back to the phone and check the messages.

“Hello, there is an injured Duck on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. At least I think it is injured, it is holding its wing funny. It is sort of out front of the Stay As Long As You Want Motel. OK, I think you have everything you need to know to come pick it up.”

Yikes! We don’t have any way to pick up an injured animal, MHS (Marin Humane Society) does that. And the caller didn’t leave a call back number so I have no way of checking if the duck is still there. I try calling the motel front desk and the lady there is nice enough to get up and go outside and take a look around. She tells me she doesn’t see any ducks or anyone that might have called it in. I tell here if someone does see the duck, and they can contain it without running it to death, they can then call the Marin Humane Society or bring it directly to us. I thank her for her time and we hang up.

A short time later the Quail lady is back again. This time the baby is wrapped in a washcloth. She and I need to have a chat about that cat. But first, this baby goes right back to staff and safety, my eye on it the entire time.

Looking at her face I can see she is concerned, but she isn’t really getting what needs to be done here. She thinks she is powerless over the cat. She is glossing over the fact that the cat is watching the nest, catching and torturing the babies as they hatch and take their first steps of life, and probably killing most of them. The cat may already have attacked one or both of the parent birds, which means the remainder of the babies, if they do hatch, face a sad future.

Letting the cat run free and bringing the surviving Quail babies to WildCare is not the solution. A baby bird’s best chance for a healthy future is if their parents can feed them and train them up for the life where they were born.

The cat has to be kept in. The cat only thinks it absolutely must go outside and it has convinced the lady likewise. Cats are safer and healthier and don’t damage the ecology when they are kept inside. And they do inflict great damage. They kill many more songbirds and ground birds than their owners ever suspect. And death by cat is a gruesome way to go. Keep that kitty cat safe and warm inside where it belongs and give it a catnip mouse to be a cat with.

Something else this lady has not considered. WildCare is not a government owned or a city or county supported facility. WildCare survives on donations. Gifts of money and blankets and chicken wire, time donated by the Volunteers, and the long hard hours put in by Staff is what keeps this place going. Even the branches that the birds use to perch on are brought in by volunteers. And we need a couple of trees by the way. Something that will fit into the flight aviaries with bigger, stronger branches. Call us if you think you have something WildCare can use – 415-456-7283 – even better, send us a check! See, you can help too!

The lady agrees, 10 more trips here with cat abused baby Quails is not the thing.  She had no idea volunteers who specialize in the care of orphaned Quail are driving down from Sonoma to help out for each of the intakes, and are paying for the gas out of their own pockets. It is hard to imagine the incredible dedication it takes to act as safe-haven for the wild animals of Marin as they come into contact with, and are affected by, the people that live and visit here. I do my best to tell her and I think she starts to understand.

She promises the cat will live indoors. She will watch for the rest of the Quail as they hatch, and make sure at least one of the parent birds is still around and able to care for them.  And I have promised to check back with her in a week to see how things are going.

I look forward to talking with her again.

It was a wild and woolly time at WildCare Bay Area this afternoon.  The phone rang non-stop, a new shift of volunteers came on board in the Bird Room, and a dozen or two intakes, including a box of five baby turkeys. Five of the most beautiful little critters I have seen yet

- – - something is up outside off the back deck of the house. I just realized the Robins and Scrub Jays have set up The Call and are not stopping. A cat has a fledgie possibly, these birds are really upset and I have to go see what is going on out there.

I’m back. It was a hawk! Perched casually in the top of one of the pines. Those silly Scrubs were almost upon it, with their insults and flashing wings, one of them was about to be dinner I think. The Robins were sensibly yelling from the next tree over. Even the Plain Tits and a Pair of Hummingbirds were involved. A few hand claps and some loud ‘Clear Outs’ from me and the hawk has flown off and across the way to the next clump of trees. Good, hopefully it will not take a another bird from my yard this evening. Light underside and a markedly striped, fan shaped tail. A young Red Shouldered maybe? – - -

Back to WildCare. There were some pretty amazing calls in today. A young man from San Francisco called in with an injured Dove. Hit by a car he said. He had no way to bring it in, no car. So he put an ad on Craigslist. He got responses to it too! I know because three people called me to volunteer to drive the Dove over to us.

A girl called in, anxious to bring in a fledgling pigeon that she, and her friends, were sure had been abandoned by its parents. “Why do you think it has been abandoned?” I ask. “Because some people tried to pet it and scared off the mother” was the reply. Oh boy. “Were is the Pigeon now?” I ask. “On the grass, just sitting there” the spokes-girl tells me. I explain about baby birds leaving the nest in order to grow their flying feathers. About how the fledgling babies jump out of the nest before they can fly, then climb up into the bushes where the parents can feed them in safety. And why it is usually better to leave baby birds to the parent’s care.

“But it doesn’t look well” she assures me. “The parents haven’t been to it all day.”  All day?  “When did you start watching it?” I ask her. “Since this afternoon” she tells me, “and now it is getting late and the parents won’t come back.”

Baby Pigeons are sweet and friendly and I am beginning to get the idea that this little tyke has not been abandoned, but has spent the afternoon with a gaggle of girls, being petted and chased and watched too closely and it probably should come in, just so we can check it. It is the ‘petting’ that really bothers me. Birds are not built to be pet, hands and feathers are not a good fit.

“Why do you think it is sick?” I ask. “Does it look hurt anywhere? Are its feathers alright, do you see any blood?”

“It doesn’t look well” she says again. “It is just sitting there and not moving and it will be dark soon and I am afraid a dog will get it.” There is an urgency in her voice that hasn’t quieted the entire conversation.

“Do you have a box, with something soft like a crumpled up paper towel in the bottom so the baby won’t slide all around and someone to drive you to WildCare” I ask.

“Yes!” she says, “yes, my mother can drive us.”

“‘Bring it in” I say and hear a chorus of relief on the other end of the line. “We are on our way” she tells me.

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Think you might like to answer phones here?  – WildCareBayArea.org

It is that time of year again. The mating dances have been done, the nests have been built, the eggs laid and hatched. Battles have been fought with marauding Crows and Jays, and the babies that have survived, with feathers not long enough to fly, are leaping from their nests and making the good citizens of Marin, who have been watching nests for the last couple of weeks with some interest,  crazy with fear for their safety.

Fear for the safety of the fledgies that is.

And so the telephone rings as the Baby Bird Dramas begin . . .

“My friend is coming over and she is bringing heavy gloves and we are going to try to put it back in the nest.”

“We put them back up in the nest but they keep jumping out and landing in the trash.”

“We managed to catch most of them and pick them up with a spatula and put them in a box but now the parents won’t come to feed them and we are afraid it is because we accidentally touched some of them.”

and “Should we feed them?” And, “What should we feed them?”

I am always so so grateful these people have WildCare to call. I know they are trying their hardest to do the right thing. I understand how heavy that burden is, of not knowing what to do, and yet feeling you must to do something. Of thinking ‘we just can’t walk away when this baby bird is so defenseless’. And then, if we do try to help, the worrying that we didn’t do the right thing. People lose sleep over this stuff. I certainly did.

Yes, I speak from experience. I too have shoveled a sharp-eyed young fledgie back into the nest it just left.

I got to know the nest when it blew out of the plant by the front door and onto the path. I was able to wedge it back into place, a bit further back and out of the wind, and put the 3 surviving babies back into it. The mother noticed the nest had moved about 4 inches, but she didn’t dwell on it. Feeding baby birds doesn’t leave a whole lot of time to think. She certainly didn’t care that I had touched them. She did care that I was still there and made it very clear I was to leave. Tohees do that ‘follow me down the path and away from nest’ thing. She was very good at it. A really rotten nest builder, but she did actually get me to follow her down path.

It was thrilling and so sweet to watch them grow. To hear their loud cries when the parent birds showed up with lunch. To peek in the nest when the parents weren’t around and see the baby birds, huddled down, giving us dirty looks. They do you know. Baby birds don’t like anybody.

I was leaving on an errand when I noticed one of the fledgelings was missing from the nest and dropped everything to go on a frantic hunt to find it. I did, it was about halfway along the path, in a patch of sun, getting ready to go the next 10 feet to the bushes where it would climb up and be hidden and safe and fed by its parents while it grew the longer feathers needed for flight.

Forgive me little Tohee, forgive me, because I gathered you up, and with the best intentions (and complete lack of brains), put you back into the nest. Which meant you had to make that 8 foot drop again. I am so sorry I made you take that jump twice. So very, very sorry.

It made the second jump early the next morning. Fortunately, by then I had called WildCare and been informed that it wasn’t my job to put fledgeling birdies back into their nests.

What a relief.

The Tohees grew to maturity in the dense trees and bushes of my yard, and have come back year after year to nest. Never again in the plant by the front door though.

And so, I really am glad when people call, worried to death about the baby birds. They don’t need heavy gloves, they just need to keep the cats in. They don’t need to put young birds in boxes, just leave them be and the let the parents lead and feed them. If a young bird is in danger, if there are only sidewalks and no bushes to climb into, then bring it to us and we can take over what the parents can’t finish. And yes, put a cover on that trash bin so the baby birds can’t fall in. And finally, don’t feed them, don’t feed them, don’t feed them. For strong bones, good feathers and bright eyes, baby birds need what their parents have so ready to give them.

And no cheating by feeding the parents either.

It was a great day at WildCare today. I spoke to so many wonderful people. I met a caring and concerned young couple who took time out of their vacation to bring in an injured sea bird. A mom came in with two young boys with a bird caught and injured by their cat. We had a good talk about the value of boys keeping doors shut so the cat doesn’t get out again. And a young girl who had found a dirty and crusted fledgeling and brought it in and asked if she could help. But she is another wonderful story, for another time. I am so looking forward to seeing her again when I go back to volunteer answering the phones at WildCare in San Rafael, California.

I just got through cutting some branches to take in for the patients at WildCare Marin. I love the time I spend volunteering there. I put in 4 hours a week answering the phones and manning the front check-in desk. Every week; something different, something new, something exciting, something amazing.

Three weeks ago, the calls were coming fast and furious, a Rogue Band of Wild Turkeys terrorizing the inhabitants over at the point in San Rafael. “They’re sitting in the trees out back, looking at me”, one man said, “they look at me every time I go out there.” “They are pooping all over everything!” a lady calls in, “can’t you DO something? Can’t you come and get them and take them somewhere?”  And another, “Will they hurt my dog, he’s very small .” And ” . . . the Humane Society said you would send someone over to get them, there are about 20 of them, I think you’ll need big cages.”

These are all actually very nice people. They are just afraid. So afraid of wildlife. As we talk about flapping umbrellas and shooing turkeys, and how beautiful their feathers are in the sunlight, and how just recently I saw a hen turkey ushering her single chick along the path in Tennessee Valley the fear subsides and the questions begin. “Why are there so many turkeys?” “Where did they come from?” “How long will they stay?” “What will happen to them?”

I like to start with “Why are there so many turkeys?”.  There are so many turkeys because somebody is feeding them. Somebody, who wanted to be kind, is putting out food for them. Somebody, who leaves their pets out during the day, is putting out a lovely turkey smörgåsbord every morning before they go to work.  Often, it turns out the caller already knows who is feeding the turkeys, they just don’t know how to approach it. “Can you talk to them?” I ask. “Can you just have a friendly chat with your neighbors?” And I am always amazed at the ready ‘yes, yes I can go talk with them this evening!” Occasionally, someone will even fess up and agree that they did wonder how their pets were managing to eat so much food.

Sometimes, while on the phone, we go on the internet together. I show them pages that spell out clearly the benefits of NOT FEEDING THE TURKEYS so that they have some printed ammo to take with them to the neighbors. Sometimes we talk about Exclusion, ways to discourage turkeys from coming to visit, like the sprinklers with the motion sensors. Chances are though, by the time the sprinklers are installed, the turkeys will have moved on.

Some people just want the turkeys gone. They want those rotten, pooped all over my car birds collected up and escorted out of town. They tell me they would like to see the turkeys ‘relocated’ to somewhere ’safer’ and ‘better’ for turkeys. Somewhere far, far away.

It is hard to break the news gently, that we can’t capture and cage and dump the turkeys somewhere else. First, we couldn’t be that cruel. The stress and terror of the capture and caging, the hunger and confusion of being dumped in place where nothing is known, we just could not do that. And second, the turkeys are not ours to move. Besides, the good people who call in to WildCare don’t really want the birds to suffer either. They just never thought it through. The more they think about it, the less fearsome the turkeys become. Looking at the bigger picture, it starts to look a lot easier to feed their pets inside.

The turkeys have moved on now. They passed through San Anselmo and then there were a few calls from Fairfax, and then I think, the turkeys must have reached a place where people worry less about their cars, because now the telephone calls are about other animals, doing the things that other animals do. Like Mama Fox, leaving dead rodents lying around in the front yard, half chewed, from last night’s training sessions with the kits.

The turkeys will be back of course. Next Spring.

The sun is out here, and the high fog that rolls in through the Gate and around Mt. Tamalpais is burning off. The sun is out, did I say how good it feels? To go outside and feel its warmth on my skin. Happy.

Life is still good in the fast lane. My workspace layout is not working, not sure how to go about tackling that. There is so much wonderful stuff in here . . . and it needs to be boxed and sent to storage and worried about some other time. But not today. Today I get that Spry dropdown menu up and running and looking the way I like it. Works in every browser in the world but IE. So many peeps use Internet Explorer and they have no idea it is broken and old. Oh well.

Back to work, )