rise up Rochester

When we think of environmentalism, many of us think of global warming and recycling. However, as I’ve mentioned in other articles, I think preserving our wildlife is an equal piece of the puzzle. No matter how small, each species plays a specific role in its ecosystem–every animal and plant has its niche. Sorry to go all Biology 101 on you, but I think that wildlife preservation is really important. And that’s why Andrew and I saved a young bird last night–Mr. Byrd, to be exact.

Mr. Byrd look-alike

We were riding around in his ATV (I know, who ever thought I’d been a country gal?) and we came upon a bird with a large sitting in the middle of the path. He wouldn’t move at all. He couldn’t even fly back up to the low branches of his tree. He fluttered a little at first when we came toward him, but eventually he trusted us. We quickly realized that something was very wrong with Mr. Byrd and that if he had any chance to survive, we would have to take him and either help him ourselves, or find a wildlife specialist. He kept opening and closing his beak, gasping for air. We petted his wings gently and wrapped him in my sweatshirt. He closed his eyes and fell asleep as we rode back to Andrew’s house on the ATV. Luckily, since Andrew’s family has kept other animals at their place, we conveniently had a large cage to put Mr. Byrd in. I was worried that he was dying because I let him out of my sweatshirt and he wouldn’t move. But, we found out later that when birds get covered, they often drift off until woken up. We petted him and he stirred.

We left him for a few minutes and unsuccessfully tried to ID him using www.whatbird.com. You plug in the characteristics of the bird, and it narrows down the possibilities. Then it occurred to us that perhaps Mr. Byrd had a disease, and when Andrew looked up some, we realized that it could spread to humans aka us if we weren’t careful. Finally, using the amazing 211, we had a least of possible people to call. One of them was the Black Creek Wildlife Station. Located in Churchville, NY, it’s a small station where a few volunteers take care of injured and sick wild animals. We drove alllllll the way there, hoping that we could save Mr. Byrd somehow.

We arrived at the small barn and found Mr. Zimmerman waiting for us. When I walked through the door, there was a small owl in one of the cages!!! That made my night. There were also some baby duckies at the shelter. As soon as the animal rehaber saw Mr. Byrd he told us that he was a juvenile American Robin and that his air sack had been punctured by a predator, most likely a hawk. This was causing his head to swell so that he could not move, make noise, or breathe properly. Quickly he injected a steroid into Mr. Byrd, to help the swelling and to get out the fluid. Immediately he started to move a little more. He put him in a cage and covered him. Mr. Byrd settled down and went to sleep. If we don’t call back, we will never know what happened to him. We were told that if he could make it through the night, he had a pretty good chance of living. If he makes it three days, then he should be okay…but you never know.
Do we want to know? Or is it best just to live with the thought that we did all we could for him?

I just wanted to take a moment to applaud the work that these volunteers at Black Creek are doing–it is tough and sad work. I hope someday I can volunteer or do something to support them.

Any thoughts?

Cute American Robin