It’s Raining Cats and Ducklings!

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By Denys Hemen, Hospital Manager

Mallard ducklings in CWC care
Photo by Denys Hemen

During the spring and summer, Mallard ducklings seem to fall out of the sky in Los Angeles. California Wildlife Center can receive over 350 of these fuzzballs in a typical year.

Because of human development in their natural habitat, Mallards have taken to nesting in suburban yards where pools are present. Sometimes tragedy will strike. Mom gets hit by a car or a dog scares her off and what are left are up to 12 orphaned babies that need to go to a wildlife rehab center.

In the past, International Bird Rescue (IBR) in San Pedro has graciously taken ducklings that the public has rescued and brought to us. IBR specializes in the rehabilitation of ducks, gulls, pelicans and other birds that spend much of their lives in the water. However, as Safer at Home restrictions have caused IBR and other organizations to reduce staffing, they have paused on taking the hundreds of Mallards that will be brought to CWC this spring and summer. In response, CWC has renovated one of our 128 square foot songbird aviaries to accommodate the ducklings! They are very messy little animals. In place of the usual dirt floor, we built a slanted raised platform inside, complete with plumbing for drainage and waterproof surfacing that can be hosed down each day. The new duck suite also has its own kiddie pool for the ducklings to splash around in as much as they want! When life gives you lemons- make duckling enclosures!

Preparing the new enclosure for patients
Photo by Denys Hemen

Help Wildlife Avoid a Sticky Situation

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By Dr. Stephany Lewis, Veterinarian

A Wren stuck to a glue trap
Photo by Samantha Orzech

Every year, California Wildlife Center receives approximately twenty animals that have been caught in glue traps, or “glue boards:’ Some glue traps come as strips or tubes that are hung up to catch flying insects, while others are placed on the ground to catch crawling insects and rodents. Glue traps are used as a method of pest control, but unfortunately, these traps are indiscriminate. CWC most commonly receives small songbirds that have been caught in these traps, but we also see lizards, snakes, small mammals, and even small hawks and owls who have suffered from traps. Most of these animals eat insects and rodents, so these traps end up eliminating the most natural form of pest control!

When an animal gets caught in these traps, sadly their death is not quick and painless. They suffer for hours or even days, as they struggle and slowly die of exhaustion, hunger, and thirst. As they struggle to escape, they will often sustain painful injuries. Bird feathers also become severely damaged and mangled from the glue. If not dis­covered and freed from the trap quickly and carefully, the animal will die.

If an animal becomes stuck to a glue trap, they always need professional medical treatment. If you find a live animal caught in a glue trap, we do not recommend that you attempt to free the animal yourself. Without proper care and training, it is possible to injure animals even more while attempting to free them. Simply place a box with ventilation over the animal and keep it in a quiet and safe place while you contact your local wildlife rehabilitation center and transport the animal to receive help.

A Cooper’s Hawk covered in glue from a trap
Photo by Stephany Lewis

When we receive animals caught in glue, we carefully remove them from the glue with the help of a small amount of oil. In some cases, we may sedate the animal for this process to help alleviate stress and minimize struggle. The animal is then assessed for injuries and feather damage, and provided fluid and nutritional support, as well as pain medications and antibiotics if necessary. We wait several days before removing the remaining glue off their feathers, fur, or scales to ensure that the patient is stabilized before starting this process, because being washed is extremely stressful for a wild animal. For this reason, sedation or anesthesia are typically provided for the patient during the washing process. The glue is removed with a small amount of canola or a soy-based oil. The oil then must be washed off with dish detergent in warm water. The animal is dried and placed in a warm incubator to recover. Once the animal is clean and dry, they are moved to an outdoor enclosure to ensure that they can exercise and fly and can be acclimated prior to release.

There are many ways you can help wildlife avoid this situation! Please never use glue traps, sheets, or boards, and work with a reputable pest control company that does not use glue traps or poisons. A responsible pest control company will focus on natural and humane exclusion and deterrent methods and create a pest management plan that is best for the health of your family, pets, and wildlife. Educating your friends and family about the dangers of inhumane pest control methods is also an easy and important way for everyone to help our wildlife.

Growing Fast

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By Cambria Wells, Wildlife Technician Supervisor

A Lesser Goldfinch patient
Photo by Cambria Wells

Time in the Orphan Care Unit passes in regular increments marked by the beeping of timers and schedule of tasks. Every thirty minutes, every forty-five, every hour. Twice a day, three times a day. Once a week. The care of orphaned animals at CWC is not performed exclusively in the Orphan Care department but the rhythm of the room is uniquely fast-paced. There’s always another hungry mouth, always a new enclosure to clean, and always another baby coming in the door!

Before timers for feedings have started, we begin our day by preparing formulas to feed our seasonally occurring orphaned and injured species. Right now, in late spring and early summer, that consists of an assortment of songbirds and corvids (Crows, Ravens, and Jays). We address our patients in order of their need. We start first with providing formula and clean nests to Hummingbirds, House Finches, and Goldfinches, then split up to feed and clean our insect-eating birds such as Northern Mockingbirds.

Fledgling Northern Mockingbird
Photo by Cambria Wells

Finally, we work with our Mourning Doves and Band-tailed Pigeons, cleaning their enclosures and starting their tube-feeding schedules. Throughout this process, we prioritize based on patient age and medical status. A fledgling Crow may not need special care from us for most of the day; a nestling Humming­bird, on the other hand, will need feedings a minimum of every thirty minutes, along with regular bedding changes and fresh formula. Each species and each baby is unique, and pro­viding the best care for them means carefully considering their natural history and individual needs.

Beyond feeding and cleaning there’s also a host of other animal care concerns. Many orphaned baby birds at this time of year come in with wounds, parasites, and viral or bacterial infections. Some have developmental problems which require special corrective “shoes” or wraps. All need enrichment in the form of fresh branches, new food items, and opportunities to learn to forage for food on their own. When one baby turns into three, and three turn into thirty, raising orphaned animals becomes a complex and rewarding experience.

 

A Peek Inside California Wildlife Center’s ICU

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Join us each week as we look at different areas of California Wildlife Center. This week, enjoy a peek inside the Intensive Care Unit!

Each video comes with a children’s activity.  Click here for a hidden picture seek and find.

A Visit to CWC’s Orphan Care Unit

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Join us each week as we look at different areas of California Wildlife Center. This week, enjoy a look inside the Orphan Care Unit!

Each video comes with a children’s activity.   Click Here for an Orphaned Animals Word Search.

Returning Cliff Swallows to the Wild

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CWC Performs Its First Hawk Blood Transfusion

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By Dr. Stephany Lewis, Veterinarian

On the morning of December 30th, CWC received an adult female Red-Tailed Hawk from Newbury Park with evidence of anticoagulant rodenticide toxicosis (rodenticide poisoning). Raptors are exposed to rodenticides by ingesting poisoned rodents, and it leads to an inability to clot their blood, resulting in massive and often fatal blood loss. Our Hawk patient had multiple bruises on her body, was actively bleeding through a tiny puncture wound on her toe, and was severely anemic. We performed a crude test that quickly helps support a diagnosis of anticoagulant rodenticide toxicosis; we pulled a small amount of blood from the bird and placed it in an additive-free tube. Normally, a Hawk’s blood should clot within 2-5 minutes in the tube; our patient’s blood did not clot until the next day!

Hawk 3859 receiving a blood transfusion, photo by Cambria Wells

I decided to attempt a treatment that I had not performed since I was a dog and cat veterinarian; I opted to give this bird a blood transfusion. For a blood donor, we used another systemically healthy adult female Red-Tailed Hawk who had been in our care for about two months, but still had at least a few weeks to go in her rehabilitation process. She was briefly placed under anesthesia, and a unit of blood (which for her size is about 10 mL) was drawn from her jugular vein into a syringe with a special anticoagulant in it commonly used for blood transfusions. Our donor bird recovered extremely well, and no negative effects from the blood donation were seen.

Our recipient bird had a catheter placed into her right ulna. For birds, intraosseous catheters (catheters placed into the bone) tend to be more reliable than intravenous catheters since bird veins are very small and fragile, and the medullary cavity (marrow) of most bones (except the “hollow” ones that are continuous with their air sacs) are directly connected with their blood vessels.

Dr. Lewis administering blood transfusion, photo by Cambria Wells

The blood was slowly given through a blood filter and into the intraosseous catheter. The Hawk began to perk up towards the end of her blood transfusion and started to nibble at the line, so we placed a falconry hood to keep her calm and keep her from fussing with her catheter and line. She completed her blood transfusion without any complications and was administered fluids for the rest of the day through her catheter. Her catheter was removed that evening. We also started her immediately on vitamin K, which is an antidote to this type of rodenticide.

The next morning, I received a message from one of our technicians describing this bird as “salty.” And indeed she was! She was bright, alert, quite feisty, and significantly less anemic! I had never seen such marked improvement so quickly in a patient suffering from rodenticide. From then on, her recovery was smooth sailing; she was able to live in one of our outdoor flight pens while completing her therapy, and the vitamin K was just hidden in her diet. The vitamin K is always administered for a full month, until the rodenticides should have cleared the body.  Her anemia quickly resolved, and her blood was able to clot normally after discontinuing the vitamin K. After a couple of weeks reconditioning in our largest flight pen, she was successfully released back into the wild!

The blood transfusion recipient the next day, photo by Dr. Stephany Lewis

We were all so happy to have had such a successful outcome for this patient; however, many carnivores suffering from secondary rodenticide toxicosis do not have positive endings. CWC receives between 20 and 40 cases of secondary rodenticide poisoning yearly, and the success rate historically has been less than 10%. Almost all these patients perish in the first 12 hours, which is before our vitamin K therapy is able to take effect and stop their bleeding. In this case, the whole blood transfused not only provides life-saving oxygen and nutrients to their cells, but also replaces some of their clotting factors that have been inactivated by the rodenticide, so they can immediately stop the bleeding that is occurring. This is very helpful while we wait for the vitamin K antidote that we give to take effect, which takes 12-24 hours.

Our hope is that with this treatment, our success rate for patients suffering from these poisons will increase. The only challenge may be finding a readily available donor bird, as bird blood cannot be effectively stored for any significant amount of time. However, birds do not have any naturally occurring antibodies to blood types, so we can safely give a blood transfusion without typing or cross-matching and can even give blood from one completely different bird species to another without risk of a serious transfusion reaction. Though the best thing for our patients is for rodenticides not to be used at all, so they never need a transfusion in the first place! Please use poison-free alternatives for rodent control to protect all of our native carnivores!

Support CWC’s treatment of rodenticide-poisoned Hawks. Donate to the Have a Heart for Hawks campaign at cawildlife.org, mail in the enclosed envelope, or call us at (310) 458-9453, ext. 101.

Clever Crows

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By Cori Carlson, Administrative Assistant

American Crow, Photo by Johanna Molina

Crows may not be the most popular of our native wildlife. But the black bird made famous in folklore and song lyrics is one of the most intelligent and an amazing problem-solver.

California Wildlife Center admits up to 175 species of birds each year, including American Crows. While CWC takes in adult Crows throughout the year, we start seeing babies in our Orphan Care Unit (OCU) in early May. Babies come to CWC when something happens to their parents, or they are injured. Last year, the OCU cared for 66 baby Crows.

While Crows are in care at CWC, we provide them with enrichment activities to keep them active and help them develop skills they’ll use back in the wild. While the younger Crows are inside a building, the staff put flowers in their cages and hang colorful, shiny materials with bells to encourage them to explore. When they are self-feeding and ready to move to larger outdoor enclosures, the staff have used dog-training toys with levers, slide doors, and slots for the Crows to open and find treats. CWC staff and volunteers also make homemade enrichment boxes, which they fill with shredded paper and hide treats for the Crows to find.

American Crows live across North America. While they prefer open spaces such as farmland and grasslands with trees nearby, they also live in suburban areas. Most types of Crows live in groups, called murders – a name that may not help with their popularity.

Crows are part of the Corvid family, which also includes Ravens and Jays. Since Crows and Ravens look similar, people sometimes confuse the two. Ravens are larger, have bigger beaks with a curve at the tip, their tails are wedge-shaped, and their wings come to a point. Meanwhile, a Crow’s tail feathers are the same length and look more like a fan when the bird’s in flight.

Typically, young Crows will be ready to leave the nest at four weeks of age, but they will continue to rely on their parents to feed them until they are about two months old. Crows are omnivores, which means they eat both plants and animals. Their diet in the wild includes grains, seeds, nuts, berries, fruit, insects, worms, and mice. Crows will also eat fish, eggs, and nestlings of other bird species.

When Crows come to CWC as orphans, they start with the corvid nestling diet, which is a blended mash of high-quality ground puppy food, hard-boiled eggs, bananas, baby food, vitamins, and minerals. As they get older, they transition to a Crow diet, which consists of bite-size pieces of high-quality dog food, hard-boiled eggs, fruits, vegetables, meat protein, vitamins, and minerals.

To give the Crows the best chance of making a successful transition back into the wild, CWC starts releasing them in groups of 9-15 birds beginning in August. This is the end of baby season when the Crows in the wild are less territorial. They start to join together in larger groups for the winter, known as communal roosting.

An Orphan Care Baby Book

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By Cambria Wells, Wildlife Technician

There’s nothing quite like seeing your baby experience the world for the first time. We are privileged at CWC in the Orphan Care Unit to get to work with a wide range of species and to see all their firsts. A few, this year, were especially touching.

First solid food: This year’s earliest litter of Virginia Opossums entered our facility too young to be out of their mother’s pouch. After weeks of careful care, they were finally old enough to be offered something more substantial than formula… and immediately made a mess of themselves! Staff and volunteers adapted by giving them supervised time with their food dish, breaks in the day that we quickly dubbed “mush bowl parties,” followed by a sponge bath.

Opossum joeys eating their mush bowl
Photo by Cambria Wells

First steps: The Acorn Woodpeckers rescued from a fallen tree branch this summer were happy to stay in their nest box upon intake, but soon enough, their excitement for food led them to lean out the entryway to the box. One morning, that lean turned into a jump, and we caught a nestling’s first “branching” out into the world!

Acorn Woodpeckers peeking out of their nest box
Photo by Cambria Wells

First of their species: When workers brought down an electric pole in Santa Clarita this July, the crew heard crying from within an old woodpecker cavity inside. With the help of the wildlife biologist onsite, they extracted young Ash-throated Flycatchers from their disrupted nest and brought them to be raised in the Orphan Care Unit. These are the first of this species of bird ever to be raised at our facility.

Ash-Throated Fly Catchers
Photo by Heather Patrice Brown

First friends: Many babies come into our care alone, displaced from their whole family. These animals are almost always placed with foster siblings; for certain highly social species like Eastern Fox Squirrels and American Crows, these friends are believed to be critical to their survival post-release. When released in a group, young animals have more eyes to find food and watch for predators. Volunteers and staff find these relationships to be touching glimpses into the lives of the animals we work with.

Squirrels napping together
Photo by Samantha Orzech

 

We are grateful to all CWC supporters for making these precious moments possible, and especially to our dedicated Orphan Care Unit volunteers for giving up their summers to help orphaned and injured wildlife. This year, Orphan Care supported a total of 1052 patients! Our impact, by the numbers:

Squirrels: 175

Mourning Doves: 138

Band-tailed Pigeons: 21

Northern Mockingbirds: 85

Virginia Opossums: 80

House Finches: 90

Cliff Swallows: 47

Hummingbirds: 141

American Crows: 66

Common Ravens: 30

And MANY assorted species of songbirds!

 

As the unit closes for the winter, we look forward to resting from the busy season and getting ready for next year, but of course, the rest of California Wildlife Center is here year-round for wildlife of all ages.

Woodpecker Nestlings Rescued from Branch Collapse

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By Cambria Wells, Wildlife Technician

Acorn Woodpecker Nestlings
Photo by Cambria Wells

In early July, a Mimosa tree in Newbury Park cracked open, half the tree splitting apart at weak points created by years of Woodpecker activity. The homeowners had been expecting just such a thing to happen eventually; it had been assessed for removal in previous years but their affection for their local Woodpecker colony, which nested in the tree year after year, had driven them to keep the tree as long as they could. One such nest came down when the tree broke, dropping four naked, blind little nestling Acorn Woodpeckers into the sage planted below. Thanks to this soft landing and shade, the four babies were alive when the homeowners responded, collecting them and bringing them to California Wildlife Center for evaluation.

The Broken Tree Limb
by Cambria Wells

Though the Woodpeckers were uninjured, their home tree was still unstable and needed to be trimmed to prevent the destruction of a second nest in the tree. After fluid therapy and the initiation of feedings every thirty minutes, the four nestlings settled in for a hopefully temporary stay in an incubator at CWC. They proved to be excellent eaters with a very strict “pecking order” and regained their strength quickly. Four days later, with the Mimosa tree carefully trimmed to save the Woodpecker colony’s other nest, staff from California Wildlife Center responded to attempt to reunite the Woodpecker nestlings with their parents. The homeowners had observed four Woodpeckers providing food to another nest in the tree. In the absence of their own babies, it’s likely that the parents of the rescued Woodpeckers had turned to assisting their family members in the care of another nest.

The Woodpeckers as Fledglings
Photo by Cambria Wells

Tree trimmers had saved the portion of the branch which contained the original nest, so CWC staff used heavy-duty straps to close the log and mount it on the Mimosa tree, as close to the original branch location as possible. The four rescued Woodpeckers were given copious amounts of food and water by mouth, then placed back in the nest cavity via the entry hole created by their parents. Unfortunately, despite the begging of the nestlings, they were not recognized by their family, and their parents did not approach to feed or care for them. Acorn Woodpeckers are highly territorial and family-oriented; the three days it took for the area to become safe to return the babies and the change in location of the nest were likely the reason the nestlings were not accepted back.

The Woodpeckers in Their Outside Enclosure
Photo by Denys Hemen

Luckily for the nestlings, they had a warm welcome waiting at California Wildlife Center. Staff extracted the four babies from the log and brought them back into care. Several weeks later they are all thriving fledglings, now fully feathered and able to fly, hop, and use their amazing bills and tongues like adults. They have been united with a foster family of five other individually orphaned Woodpeckers. Once all are self-feeding, this summer’s nine Acorn Woodpecker siblings will be moved to an outdoor enclosure to condition for soft-release in the oak forests of the Santa Monica mountains. There they will be fed and protected until they can integrate with a colony and be safely released.