Laurin’s Last Post on Her Gulf Oil Spill Work

I had become so entrenched in the oil-spill lifestyle of work-bathe-sleep that when I finally thought to peek into the outside world, I was shocked to discover the date, July 21^st! I had only one week remaining in the Gulf!

I began looking at every bird, every pool, every wash, every intake, and every response worker with a renewed commitment to burning it all into my memory, down to the smallest detail.   In my last days, several Great blue herons  arrived, each pulled from sand berms created to prevent oiled gulf waters from entering coastal wetlands.  Though the berms functioned well for their intended purpose, they also created a quicksand-like trap for the resident wildlife. The new heron intakes were each coated, not in oil but in sand mixed with a mysterious substance, from head to toe. Otherwise in very nice physical condition, they waited their turn to go through the wash, as staff, after plucking a few breast feathers, performed feather tests to determine the best approach to removing whatever was coating their feathers.

On July 23^rd Hurricane Bonnie was threatening to bring her wrath down upon the already strained Deepwater Horizon situation. All of us working in the Pensacola Oiled Wildlife Facility monitored the storm’s progress as we hustled to hurricane-proof our center. Everything around the outdoor pools and aviaries that was not bolted down or was otherwise vulnerable was brought indoors, hundreds of plastic airline kennels stood at the ready for the order to evacuate, batteries in all flashlights and headlamps were checked and replaced, indoor bird holding pens were prepared for any post-hurricane patients. But as Bonnie crossed Florida from east to west she lost her mojo and was downgraded to a series of plain old thunderstorms.

Up to this point during my gulf stay, thunderstorms grumbled threats and spat lightening and rain but mostly simply rolled on through. But soon after we all breathed a sigh of relief at Bonnie’s failing vigor, I experienced my first real robust Gulf thunderstorm. As the clouds announced the storm’s impending arrival, the outdoor bird care crew all hustled to make sure all the gannets were fed their second breakfast. (The Northern gannets almost all arrived in an emaciated state. Once able to metabolize solid food, they were fed 5-6 meals a day, hobbit-style.) As the last pool finished their meal, the heavens opened.

Oregonians have a quiet pride about our rain tolerance. We do not let it cramp our style. We scoff at umbrellas. But this was no Oregon rain. Every drop was hostile and angry and screamed for us to go inside. It took mere moments for my whole crew to get soaked to the bone as we scrambled to secure all the pool door-flaps and head inside.  Inside the facility’s enormous warehouse, the rain sounded even more violent as it pounded the metal roof.  I had just grabbed a towel in a futile attempt to dry off when suddenly it began to rain inside the building! At first it rained just in one small spot over our newly remodeled animal care kitchens (an “Oiled Bird” kitchen and a “Clean Bird” kitchen.) It was quickly contained, but when we turned around there was literally a wall of water pouring down from the ceiling! The roar of the rain was so loud that it was nearly impossible to hear one another so I barely heard “May Day!” shouted over our walkie talkies. In an instant every person on site, from our requisitions person to our construction crew was working furiously to move birds, move equipment, repair leaks, squeegee floors, and move pens. Just as quickly as it began, it was over. Within 45 minutes, still soaking wet, we were back to business as usual.

After the storm, the herons were among the very first to be washed in our new wash station, redesigned and remodeled to function more efficiently than the original — which was set up in a hurry as oiled birds poured in the doors early in the spill. The herons’ feather tests had revealed that whatever was coating their feathers, along with the sand, would wash away using the same protocol used for the oiled birds.  The wash station set-up, and tubs filled and ready, I donned my Tyvek suit, gloves, and eye protection, and psyched myself up for tackling a very dirty, but otherwise fit and healthy, extremely scared and angry heron. Not a task for the faint of heart.

Successfully caught up and restrained, the heron entered the bath in the same spirit as all of our other birds, against its will, struggling and fighting. The Dawn/water liquid in the first tub turned a drab and dreary grey-green as most of the sand and debris released from its feathers. In the second tub though, the bath took an alarming turn. It was in that tub that we noticed the capillaries just under the heron’s skin were bursting. By the end of the bath, three tubs and a rinse later, its skin was completely covered with tiny hemorrhages called petechiae.

We had identical results with all of the sand berm herons, and similar problems with a Royal tern and a juvenile Black skimmer. I suspect these birds had been exposed to some kind of chemical that reacted with the water or the Dawn in the bath. Whether or not it was the infamous chemical dispersants we may never know. Fortunately, all of the herons, the tern and the skimmer, continue to heal and are slowly making their way towards their release back to where they belong.

My last day working the center was bittersweet. I hated looking at my beautiful gannets knowing it was the last time I would see them, and that I was flying away before they were. My spill friends, every one a person I adore and admire, threw me a little party complete with cake and cards and hugs. We all went out to dinner that night, too.

The next morning, at the airport, I met Pensacola’s crack security team. For the tiny airport that it is they take their security very seriously and apparently I had violated one of their serious rules. I had packed my tiny bottle of shampoo and tiny tube of toothpaste in the wrong size Ziploc bag, which triggered a search of all of my carry-on items. After my scolding and the ceremonial placement of my toiletries into a glossy new quart sized bag, I stood for the awkward while it took to rummage through the rest of my belongings.

In an attempt to make small talk, the airport security officer asked me if I was excited for my trip. I burst into tears and told her I did not want to leave, which made everything more awkward but also resulted in her kicking her search through my backpack into high gear.

Despite hating to leave, and wanting very much to go back, I am delighted to be home with my husband, who had too little human contact in my absence and had way too many long conversations with the cats…  and of course my beloved raptors, who seem so simple to me now, after handling so many less-familiar avian bodies. I feel so blessed for the opportunity to contribute to the oiled wildlife response efforts. I have never learned so much in such a short time, nor worked so hard, in my whole life.

I reveled in the spill responder lifestyle. No domestic responsibilities, no fundraising or event planning, no personal worries, just hands on bird care, every very long day.  I will always covet the friendships formed over tubs of suds, the stench of fish, sweat and crude oil, or a shared longing for a beer and a shower. Every person I met at the spill arrived with energy, positivity, applicable skills, enthusiasm, and willingness to perform any and every task. Not a soul arrived with ego or agenda.

Although the well is capped and despite the claims that things are winding down in the gulf, there is still a lot of work ahead for wildlife responders and rehabilitators. Breeding adults of many different species will be heading south this fall. There will still be oil on the shores and beaches, possibly more on the surface of the gulf waters, and their food supply is largely gone. What will happen then? Despite the horror of the whole situation, I find a lot of comfort knowing, from experience, that the wildlife in the gulf is in the best of hands.

Laurin Huse

Assistant Director

The everyday work of wildlife rehabilitation

It’s been fairly quiet on the eastern front of the oiled bird response efforts in the Gulf.  Currently, the Pensacola, Florida,  facility gets a few birds in every day, but they are typically not oiled and instead are in need of rehab for other reasons. There are so many people looking for injured wildlife that they are, not surprisingly, finding them … birds not making the first year cut, birds tangled in fishing line, and other problems.

Friday night, Laurin was the last to leave the center when a call came in from a transport team. She waited for them and did intake on a heart-breaking case – a baby laughing gull with a wing nearly severed half-way down the humerus: an injury so old the wing tip was completely desiccated and just hanging by some leathery tendons. Who knows what caused the original injury? Possibly hitting a wire or tangling in fishing line, but all Laurin could do was to carefully cut off the remaining dried out wing and make him comfortable til the next day, as she does not have access to the euthanasia solution, a controlled substance.

Every oil spill brings nay-sayers asking whether it’s “worth it” to spend resources on these birds who may or may not make it once cleaned and released, or who may not become a member of the breeding population … typically the survivorship statistics are old and combine results of different kinds of spills (some fuels are more toxic than others), different species of birds (some are far more susceptible to stress than others), different response efforts (how long the birds stay oiled before capture and stabilization has a definite impact on survival). However, the emotional response to the human-created catastrophes require that we do something to mitigate the impact on these fellow inhabitants of the earth.

But what the press does not see and report are the everyday tragedies of human-impacted wildlife. The osprey hanging in fishing line, the gunshot eagle, the duck with an arrow through its wing, the thousands of animals struck on our highways every day, the deer hanging in barbed wire…. Wildlife rehabilitators are some of the most dedicated and emotionally courageous people I know.

Laurin says one adult gannet – who should not even be in the Gulf at this time of the year – was brought in but didn’t make it. A masked booby died. An osprey was going down for the third time when a boat captain scooped him up in a net – the bird had barely been able to keep his head above water.  He was completely tangled in fishing line, but was at least otherwise very healthy.  He nearly drowned, but the line itself did little damage and the bird was released once they were sure there was no respiratory damage from aspirating water.

There is definitely a problem, not oil-related, with the gannets. All the birds seen are immature birds and they have really poor feathering. The problem has been seen at centers further south in Florida who are not seeing oiled wildlife, so it seems to predate the spill. All the oiled bird response centers are reassessing their release policy for the gannets, some of whom were recently released but immediately beached themselves and were brought back in. The birds are molting now, and the new flight feathers coming in are gorgeous – but the old ones are in very poor shape and show more wear than would seem normal for one year … meaning perhaps that food was scarce last year when those feathers were developing. Feathers have a blood supply while they are forming and growing in, and any trauma, starvation, malnutrition, or stress that affects the body affects the feathers that are developing during that period, causing lines of weakness called, variously, stress marks, hunger traces, are feather checks. One gannet was scooped out of the water today by a rescue team – he’s not oiled, but he can’t fly because of poor feathering. They are talking about moving all the gannets into a long term care facility to undergo a molt – an expensive proposition but potentially critical for a population of birds that is so concentrated on their summer grounds, either in the Gulf for the youngsters or in Newfoundland for the breeding adults.

Because all the birds that come in are considered evidence, the facilities cannot necropsy anything on-site, which can be frustrating when you want to gain some idea of why a bird died. One gannet, however, came in badly torn up, with both puncture wounds and lacerations all over the lower part of his body – possibly a boat propeller? It was sad that he had suffered such grievous injuries, but once euthanized, Laurin could examine him and did indeed find special airsacs under the skin which they can inflate at will (see previous blog). One of her colleagues in Pensacola has corresponded with a rehabilitator in Newfoundland, where the majority of the North American breeding colonies are, for information as to why they might choose to inflate the air sacs in this particular situation – but there is no obvious answer. The birds are otherwise healthy. Laurin would have really liked to be able to investigate more thoroughly to find the mechanism that allows the apparent shunting of air to these subcutaneous air sacs at will. [Oddly enough, this badly injured gannet is the only one they’ve seen with decent feathers - perhaps he’d completed a molt early, perhaps he was from another area of the Gulf? Mysteries!]

Our emissary to the Gulf, though, is about ready to come home! She’s put in for a return flight for next week and hopes to be back by the 28^th or so. Of course, the weather pundits are also predicting a change in the winds that might well bring a new rash of oiled birds to Pensacola as it would push the oil slick in their direction. So it’s a good thing the renovations at the facility are nearly complete.

The Florida panhandle weather remains hot, but somewhat overcast. The air looks sort of foggy, reports Laurin, but it’s really just the moisture in the air. Sunny with a chance of lightening, she says! She really enjoyed a wild lightening show a few nights ago – we just don’t get those amazing electric storms here in the Northwest. I keep forgetting to ask her if they have fireflies there … one of the joys of summers spent with my grandparents in Pennsylvania were the ‘lightening bugs.’

Louise Shimmel

Inflatable Gannets

Laurin has been rockin’ the outside aviaries at the Pensacola Oiled Bird Rehabilitation Facility: these are the aviaries with pools where the birds go after stabilization, then washing and drying, in order to reestablish their water proofing.  The birds stay out longer and longer, under her eagle eye, until ready to spend the night in the pool without a haul-out area.  Laurin loses sleep the first night ‘her’ birds spend outside, and grabs every opportunity to check on them – though without transportation from the hotel, that can be difficult.

One recent evening, a search and collection crew picked up a very debilitated bird along the coast and drove past the hotel to see if one of the rehabilitators would come check it in.  Normally they have warm hospital cages to put the new birds in overnight, if there are no rehabilitators on duty, but they didn’t think this one would last the night without special care.  Laurin jumped at the chance to do the intake, as she also wanted to check on seven birds that were spending their first night outdoors in a pool without a haul-out.  And that turned out to be a very good thing, as she found a pied-billed grebe that had managed to stick his head out through the netting and was just hanging there!

Laurin had another issue of concern.  All of the gannets were losing weight after moving outside, and she came up with a training technique to ensure they all eat and gain weight.  Before, fish were being tossed into the pool, but if not eaten right away, they’d sink to the bottom and be ignored by the birds, plus rotting fish then had to be cleaned out of there.  Laurin changed the protocol to 5 feedings per day, but after medicating those that need it (e.g., all the birds in the bumblefoot aviary are on antibiotics), she has trained them all to swim around and across the pool for their food, which she tosses individually to each one as it cross the invisible ‘finish’ line … so not only are they back up in weight, they are improving in fitness!  Pensacola is getting kudos from Tri-State management for the condition of their gannets.

However, Laurin is dealing with a mystery with the gannets.  For some reason, she is finding that some of them abruptly inflate air sacs under their skin over the whole breast and belly – like a ruptured air sac that we see from blunt trauma in songbirds that have been pounced on by a cat or hit a window really hard.  One of the gannets died, but that could have been from other causes, and the others that are doing this are eating and behaving normally. With a ruptured air sac in a songbird, the birds are clearly uncomfortable and it takes days to resolve back to normal, even with periodic aspiration of the air with a sterile needle and syringe. Except for one gannet that ‘inflated’ in the wash, it does not seem to be when they are under duress, is not from rough handling or running into the soft sides of their pools.  Everyone in the bumblefoot pool suddenly inflated … but by the next day every bird is normal.

Laurin and I were discussing what would be behind an apparently voluntary ability to send air from an air sac to under the skin (or maybe to inflate special air sacs under the skin that are not part of the usual respiratory system, but then where does the air come from?) We found in species accounts that gannets sometimes do this when diving into the water.  But the different sources described it differently, from being around the neck and shoulders to breast and belly.  And it’s still not clear what would stimulate them to do it in this captive situation.  They nest in such close proximity to one another and have to pass myriad birds’ territories on their way to and from the cliff for takeoff, I was wondering if it had anything to do with making themselves look larger or to protect muscles from the bruising a poking gannet might inflict.  Maybe, in the water, it allows them to rise faster after a deep dive?  Like putting on water wings?

Pelicans normally have subcutaneous emphysema – like bubble wrapping paper – tiny pockets of air under their skin to help take the brunt of their sudden dives into the water, but what the gannets are doing is quite different.  They look more like someone stuck a balloon under their feathers.  At any rate, it’s an interesting thing to research – though we’re not having any luck contacting the author of the Birds of North American species monograph on Northern gannets.  Any clues out there?

Laurin is mentally designing ‘Gannet Liberation Army’ t-shirts as she cheers the gannets on towards release.  All the birds start in the baby (‘kindergarten’) pool, a small pool with an easy haul-out.  The ‘elementary school’ pool is larger with several haul-outs; the bumblefoot pen where everyone is on systemic antibiotics has fewer haul-outs, as the more the birds stay in the water and off their feet, the faster their feet heal.  And the ‘graduating’ pen – the fewest haul-outs of any pool and the last stop before freedom!  Some of her birds are on track for release on the Atlantic Coast, including one gannet that somehow lost its tail.  It’s growing back and its lack doesn’t seem to slow it down in the water at all.

The Royal tern that had blood blisters on its breast is healing well, but now a baby black skimmer has boils all over its skin – pink, blistery boils.  No one is sure of the cause but the chemical dispersant being used on the oil is being discussed.  The best product for treating these skin disorders has turned out to be a panthenol and vitamin E-based hair product!  Panthenol is a derivative of pantothenic acid, or B5 – one of the B vitamins.  It’s water soluble, so doesn’t grease up the newly washed feathers, penetrates the skin easily, is anti-inflammatory and soothing, and is sometimes used in human medicine for minor skin injuries, burns, allergies, or insect bites.

The birds being collected and brought in now are not usually being found drenched in oil; they may be lightly oiled but are coming in because of other problems.

Laurin is beginning to think about her return to Oregon – and she’d like to be back in time for her birthday at month-end.

Louise Shimmel

FYI, a report today from Louisiana Fish & Game included the following information on wildlife rescued from the spill through Wednesday 7/14:

BIRDS  (Overview for duration of response) -
2,986 total birds collected within the five-state impact area (LA, MS, AL, FL, TX).

Louisiana bird collections only:
1,555 total birds processed in LA through Fort Jackson rehabilitation: 837 birds collected alive;  718 birds dead on arrival at rehabilitation center, euthanized due to extent of injury, or dead after rehabilitation efforts unsuccessful.
461 birds treated and released.
MARINE REPTILES & MAMMALS (Overview for duration of response) –
660 sea turtles collected in the five-state impact zone.
106 sea turtles of the total above were collected in LA waters (9 recovered alive; 97 dead).
64 dolphins have been collected in the five-state impact area -
35 dolphins were from LA waters (1 recovered alive; 34 dead).

Wildlife impact numbers are reported to the Unified Area Command from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, United States Fish and Wildlife Service, incident area commands, rehabilitation centers, and other authorized sources operating within the Deepwater Horizon/BP incident impact area.

Laurin’s in a Lull

Laurin called Thursday evening, the 8th.  The team had gotten off early, had dinner, and were returning to the Pensacola Oiled Bird Rehabilitation Center later that evening to pack up a great blue heron and three loons for transport at midnight, for release in the Tampa Bay area first thing Friday morning.  Earlier on Thursday, the Governor of Florida had personally released, on an inland lake, some pied-billed grebes the facility had washed.

Things have calmed down a bit, for the moment, for all the facilities with the exception of Gulfport, MS, which is being hit really hard right now.  Pensacola had received only three oiled gannets and a pelican on Thursday, allowing them to do some catch-up work.  It’s been convenient, timing-wise, as the laborers that just started were in the middle of moving the wash stations closer to the water heater, and trying to do something about the area between the outside aviaries, where the constantly spilling pools has created a bit of a marsh.

Laurin’s buddy, Greg Frankfurter, was leaving Friday to go back to UC Davis, where he is, I believe, a second year vet student and also works at their raptor center.  He had been training her for the last several days to take over the outside husbandry work.  It’s another adrenaline-rush job and Laurin feels flattered the team is trusting her with it.  It’s a heavy responsibility:  stopping and checking on each bird in each pen, trying to see bands, knowing a bit of each one’s history of washing, stabilization, progress, and making decisions.  Making sure they are eating, preening, not lethargic or depressed.

Once the birds are washed and dried, they go to the outside aviaries.  There, they must be watched constantly, individually – if they get cold, or they are swimming too low in the water, if their tail is up, if they get wet, or they’re sinking – they need to be netted and put back in the drying room.  Since most of these birds (e.g., the gannets and loons) are not designed for life on land, when inside they get a towel ‘doughnut’ vet-wrapped to their keel to prevent pressure sores, and vet-wrap booties to prevent bumblefoot or pododermatitis, a general term for foot infections.  The inside pens and cages all have net bottoms, to both allow feces to fall through to avoid soiling feathers, and to distribute the bird’s weight – the netting gives a bit, like sand.  (Net-bottom caging was one of the single most important advances in sea bird care some 20+ years ago.  In normal hospital cages, with the birds on towels or newspaper, feces can build up around the vents of the birds, disintegrating feathers and allowing water to get in to the skin – once started, the process is difficult to reverse.)

Regaining and maintaining water-proofing is the single most important aspect of the birds’ readiness for release.  Thursday night was going to be the first night outside for three gannets and Laurin was like a nervous mom!  It’s a nerve-wracking balancing act, basically, getting the timing right for when they can handle the pools full-time, without ‘mom’ looking over their shoulder.  They do have haul-out platforms, but if they get wet to the skin, they can get hypothermic, even in the Florida temperatures.  Laurin was hovering over 4 pelicans, 20 gannets, 4 loons and 3 grebes in the outside pens.  The scoter is now able to keep his down dry – those all-important under-feathers – but his outer feathers keep getting wet, making him too heavy and he sinks.  So he has to be supervised carefully when in the water, and he can be outside for short periods only.

The Coopers hawk mentioned in the last blog had a coracoid or other shoulder girdle fracture and was very emaciated.  He wasn’t oiled and having him brought into the oiled-bird facility only delayed getting him the care he needed, as they have no supplies for starvation cases other than fish eaters.  He was transported to a local rehabilitator.

There continue to be rescue snafus – like US Fish & Wildlife bringing in 300 cannon nets, but only 150 of the propane containers needed to shoot them off.  Word on the street was that they managed to catch 80 gulls with one net, but only a few were oiled.  It sounds like these nets would have been awesome earlier on, when the Louisiana barrier islands where the pelicans were nesting were first hit by oil.

The facility’s supply situation is looking up… they now have plenty of dry erase boards and office supplies, and netting for cages.  But no bandage scissors – they’ve been requisitioned. I forgot to ask if they had gotten forceps or tongs to replace the chop sticks they were using to hand fish to the birds!  Laurin says she lives in a pen vortex – she’s constantly losing the pens she needs for writing on charts.

Many contract responders have a personal ‘spill bag’ – so when they get the call, they need only pack their clothes and they’re ready to respond.  Things like spill boots, preferred gloves, their own bandage scissors, or a Leatherman, a pocket belt to keep all these things in, even duct tape and pens!  Laurin is planning her own – I can tell.  She’s clearly been inducted into a way of life that she enjoys – learning a lot, working hard for the birds she adores, with companions she respects and likes.  Some aspects are becoming a bit too ingrained, though – she confessed that when she was eating lunch the other day (and the new caterer is awesome!), she found herself putting on her safety glasses as she reached for her fork …

Louise Shimmel

Laurin gets a day off!

Laurin has been gone two weeks now, cleaning birds from the Gulf spill, and just got her first day off yesterday.  As her team members predicted, she reveled in getting to sleep in (usually she’s up at 5:45 am and at work by 6:30), going to a movie, and watching some tube … but she couldn’t resist calling in to the Pensacola Oiled Bird Rehabilitation Center, where she’s worked for the last week, to see what she missed.  The team of rehabilitators stationed there is now up to six, but they are losing one on Friday.

The facility is finally hooked up to a nearby fire hydrant and has adequate water … now they can wash a bird, fill a pool, and use the bathroom at the same time!  It is a little overwhelming just how much water they go through, Laurin said – they started to try to figure it out, but it was too scarey, with all the overflow pools going 24 hrs/day (the pools must constantly overflow in order to keep feces and oils from the fish fed to the birds, now clean, from soiling their feathers again).  All the wash water and anything contaminated by oil goes into a hazardous waste containment system.

They have new contractors coming today, with diverse jobs on their agenda.  One of the critical ones is rearranging the set-up so that the washing basins are closer to the water heater (or vice versa), as it’s been difficult to keep the water right at the 104ºF (well, between 103º and 105º) that the birds need, as it cools too much as it circulates through the pipes from heater to wash station.

Laurin also wanted to mention a special person who works with TIGER, a group that provides security and other facility assistance: Bob Evans.  He’s become like the teams’ concierge, providing amazing smoothies (much better than the inedible breakfasts that have been provided by the caterer, who is also being replaced this week), and doing their personal laundry three times a week.

A media day was scheduled while she was gone, with 20 CNN and other media people converging on the facility.  The staff was anxiously doing evaluations on three oiled gannets to see which would be strong enough to survive the ordeal of not only the wash but being in the middle of the camera firestorm.  It takes three people to wash a bird – one to wash, one to restrain the head (unlike with raptors, the head is the business end for seabirds), and one to restrain the body.

Just being in captivity is, of course, very stressful to the birds and the goal is to move them back out to the wild as soon as their health and the situation allows.  The Pensacola facility has birds lined up for release, but the process to identify a release site, get permission, and make arrangements for transport takes at least a week, not to mention the final release evaluation of blood draws, weight, and final weather-proofing assessment.   So as soon as a bird turns the corner, they add him to the release list, knowing they can always take him off at the last minute, if necessary.  The latest batch of pelicans released from the Lake Jackson, LA, facility were flown to the Atlantic coast of Georgia.  Laurin has no idea where their birds will go.  All the gannets they have are juveniles, who take several years to mature, and could be released probably anywhere along the Gulf or Atlantic coast (the adults should be way up north at breeding colonies at this time of the year).  Same really with the loons, which will be the non-breeding one- and two-year olds who often stay on the ocean wintering grounds until they reach sexual maturity.

Laurin loves both the birds and the people.  There is a strong camaraderie that underlies everything they do – everyone is working long hours, with such dedication to the well-being of these birds, and they all share a wildlife rehabilitation background that allows them to get attached to the birds but also to let go.  People roll with the punches of the losses and deal with everything else with humor.  Laurin reports that it’s dangerous to eat or drink because someone will often say something to make her laugh, with indelicate results!

There is also a culture of superstition … you will be shushed if you blurt out your relief that there’s ‘only three more birds to go’ – as then more will definitely come in!  You don’t say ‘this bird is handling it well’ – as then it will probably crash.  (I’ve seen this in general rehab, as well – sure as anything if I say a surgery to pin a wing is going well, something will go wrong!)

The birds also have idiosyncracies and case oddities, by both species but within species.  A Royal tern developed what looked like blood blisters during the rinse, and its skin was very white, even though it did well through the wash and the water was not very hot (they test it constantly).  They are still perplexed by that.  A loon had some kind of non-oil-related adhesive on its crown and the back of its head that they have yet to figure out how to remove safely – most adhesive solvents being too toxic for the bird or its feathers.  Another loon ended up slightly orange from the oil staining its lighter feathers and became known as the ‘Goth girl loon distressed that her dye job was fading’ … the distress calls the loons make, in the wash and afterwards, are often upsetting.  Humor helps.

Even the pens of birds take on personalities.  While tubing all the birds in the pens, Laurin has tagged one group of gannets ‘the EMO pen’ and another ‘the THUG pen.’  The latter stick together, are strong and fight back, with No. 107 standing on top of them all and No. 111, the second in command, protecting 107′s back…  The thugs do better than the emos, who mope, go in for drama and are very sensitive.  The stress of captivity takes a toll on both, but it’s more obvious with the emos.

Laurin has been amazed at just how many oil spills there are, constantly, all over.  There are two more right now that Tri-State is dealing with, along with the Deep Horizon – so they are staffing three spills at once.  One is a diesel spill and the other a ‘black oil.’  To Tri-State, a ‘little spill’ is 100 birds.  She is also learning the shorthand, like RP for Responsible Party.  In California, where IBRRC is headquartered and has two fully functional permanent facilities, there is a law that is envied by other responders: the RP is responsible, financially, for all costs. Period.  So IBRRC just gets what it needs and then bills the RP.  If there is no RP, then there is a state fund to cover costs – the same fund that has outfitted facilities throughout California to be ready to respond to a spill – via a tax on refineries.  Of course, IBRRC works all over the world as well, where things may not be as clear cut.

On Monday, Laurin was in and out of the facility all day, moving birds in, then back out, in a constant pouring rain.  She first tried to stay dry by wearing a clean Tyvek suit, but it was so hot that she was getting just as wet from her own perspiration.  So she gave it up and just stayed soaking wet all day. When I spoke with her last night, she couldn’t wait to get back to her 15-hour days.  The facility had admitted a Coopers hawk while she was off, their second raptor – like the osprey, not oiled, but something is wrong.  His tail feathers are a mess, with much of the white stripes eaten out and only the shafts remaining – from her description it sounded like a poodle cut for birds!

Her last word was that since she wasn’t supposed to be taking pictures of the birds, she’s been documenting her bruises instead …

Louise Shimmel

PS Laurin mentioned that if anyone is interested in sending anything down, they could really use Starbucks gift certificates!  By the time they eat lunch, they’ve been working for over 6 hours, and after they eat, they all get very sleepy … a daily trip to a nearby Starbucks has become a necessity to fight off the sleepies!  Contact me at Louise@eRaptors.org for her mailing address.

Laundry Day Phone Calls

The need to travel light means Laurin has to do laundry every three days or so – and that’s the best opportunity for her to find time to bring me up to date on what she’s doing. ( I’m just glad that this time I wasn’t trying to cook rice, so I couldn’t forget it again and ruin another pot….)  So she called Friday evening, the 3rd, actually rather late and we didn’t get off the phone til about 11:30 her time.

She’s still in Pensacola, the ‘forgotten facility,’ as she calls it.  They’ve gotten two more IBRRC staff people to help and are now caught up on paperwork, weighing, and bleeding for evaluations.  She was delighted to see the new folks, and knew both of them from ‘Fish Camp’ – as the house where she stayed in Louisiana was called (it gets rented out to deep sea fishing parties under normal circumstances).  But the facility is still badly lacking in supplies.

They’ve got only a few net-bottom pens and hospital cages, though more are made just waiting for the netting.  They have one pair of forceps, no tongs, and are feeding birds with chopsticks gotten from the Thai restaurant next door.  They just got a dry-erase board on which to write out daily chores – before that they were writing on cardboard boxes and using a different box each day.   They had run out of Sporanox – liquid itraconazole that is essential for the prophylaxis and treatment of aspergillosis, a fungal disease to which stressed seabirds are prone – until the two new folks arrived with a few bottles.  And yet there are stacks of the netting, unused, at Lake Jackson, and shelves of office supplies in the break room.  In Pensacola, they have safety glasses but no face masks to protect them from stabbing beaks – but there’s a box of unused face shields in Lake Jackson.

They DID receive several cases of Pepto-Bismol and Laurin had no clue why (thinking it might have something to do with the yellow mayonnaise on recent sandwich orders!), until I told her I’d seen a video where it was shown being tubed to the birds to prevent absorption in the stomachs of the oil they had preened from their feathers.  But the Pensacola facility strikes Laurin as the bird version of M*A*S*H, with everything from writing pens (the kind that can keep the ink flowing to the tip even when vertical, as they jot things on the charts clipped to the pens full of birds) to medications in short supply.  For BP to pay for anything involves a lengthy requisition process, with multiple authorizations along the way.  If purchased outright and receipts submitted,  reimbursement is very unlikely.  Although IBRRC has been willing to put their own resources out there, Tri-State is not – and Tri-State is running the Pensacola facility.

Laurin plans to suggest she take her allotted day off, the ‘day off’ vehicle, and drive to Lake Jackson to load up on supplies.  It’s a four hour trip each way, but she loves road trips!  And it’s through some interesting country.

The Pensacola facility is also short on water… they were supposed to get hooked up directly to a fire hydrant today, but it didn’t happen.  Right now, you can’t fill a pen, wash a bird and flush the toilet at the same time – two out of three, maybe, if you’re careful!  Water is coming in through a very small line and just isn’t sufficient.  She hopes they don’t have to wait til Tuesday to get access to the fire hydrant water and its water pressure.

The facility gets a few intakes every day – and they recently got their first raptor: an osprey.  Unfortunately, oil wasn’t his primary problem, but fishing line had been wrapped for so long and so deeply around the toes on one foot, that one toe was nearly severed and he’d lost the use of another, plus a deep gash on the leg had exposed and dried out a tendon.  Laurin was called in to help assess, but the facility has to operate on a triage basis, and they all agreed this bird needed to be euthanized.  His chances were poor for a return to function; it would have been a lengthy, stressful process (osprey are notoriously difficult to get to eat in captivity); and they have to think of all the other birds who need their care, time, space, and food, with a better chance of release.

Osprey

The gannets coming in are already in bad shape, for some unknown reason.  Two of the people working in husbandry in Pensacola are DART (Disaster Animal Response Team) volunteers, who are from Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in the Tampa Bay area of Florida.  They say they’ve been seeing similar problems with the non-oiled gannets in their area.  The gannets in Pensacola are mostly only slightly oiled, maybe a ‘bathtub ring’ or even get some oil on them after intake, but they are coming in unhealthy, with low blood values that show poor overall condition.

Gannet preening

The weaker gannets are hard to feed.  Fish can be tossed to the stronger ones, but the weaker ones need to have a fish put half-way down their throat, which they then swallow, or they need to actually be force-fed.  Today the staff came up with a ‘pool feeding’ protocol: 3-5 times a day, the birds in each pen are moved to an inside small pool where they happily splash around gobbling fish thrown in.  But they need more pools, which means more water.

Reporting back on two birds mentioned in the last blog, they did lose the green heron, but the Canada goose with the chemical burns is improving.  Something else is wrong, though, and she’s scheduled for a neurological exam.

They are seeing a lot of Common loons, which are very fragile, apparently, and they lost one Saturday right after the bath. The co-worker who does contract work for Tri-State told Laurin that a spill she worked in Boston some years ago, which was mostly loons, had only a 3% release rate. They have one scoter, which went through the bath, seemed fine, was placed outside, and then they nearly lost him to hypothermia as he was not waterproof and he got wet to the skin from the rain.  He has bounced back after warming and fluids.  They also washed a great blue heron that was strong and healthy.  The bird had apparently waded through oil and then, in tucking those long legs up, had contaminated his lower feathers.  Laurin has never handled a great blue heron without a face mask – that impressive bill is the first thing you see, thrusting out of the pen at anyone who disturbs him – but she managed to throw a sheet over it, grab the back of the neck and pick the whole bird up. Getting control of the head is a must!  The bird did well in the bath.

Weather reports show daily thunder storms for most of the Gulf coast – but Laurin doesn’t see outside from about 6:30 am (except for occasional smoke breaks) til she leaves for the hotel, since she’s not in husbandry and caring for the cleaned birds in the outside aviaries.  She has heard it rain, she says, but it wasn’t raining the few times she was outside today.

Sleep deprivation is beginning to catch up with her, as well as the constant humidity and heat.  Her skin is breaking out and she doesn’t take her scarves off her head all day – she battles with her corkscrew curls even here – but I’ve told her she is not allowed to go back to dreadlocks! She has a roommate now, but it’s someone who’s not anxious to work the longer hours required in this response center, so Laurin is going to see if that can change.  Staying late is not a problem for Laurin, if she can get a ride back to the hotel.  Luckily, her room is right next to the laundry the hotel provides for guests, so she can relax, check in with me, and wait for her clean clothes.

Saturday was a bad day for direct poop hits, from both a gannet and a loon, and she ends up standing in line at Subway or the grocery store looking like a creature from the lagoon…with safety glasses forgotten on top of her head, poop stains, and an overall smell of fish (she assumes – but she has lost her ability to smell it).  She has a hard time remembering what happened on what day.  She continues to care deeply about what happens to each bird, but understands that herd health and triage sometimes require decisions we wouldn’t have to make in a non-crisis rehabilitation situation .  And she’s still loving it!

Louise Shimmel

PS For photos of the rescue efforts and bird operations in the Gulf, check out IBRRC’s facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/eRaptors#!/ibrrc

Update on Laurin at the Gulf spill response

Laurin has been moved to Florida!

After less than a week at the Fort Jackson Oiled Bird Rehabilitation Center, Laurin was sent to Mobile AL on Monday, and then to Pensacola FL on Tuesday.  There are four oiled bird response centers – each less than an hour or so from the next one – in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle.  Not a particularly efficient use of resources, as each one needs a huge structure, lots of water, large pools and aviaries, and disposal systems for the oily water.  Although it’s always good to get a bird into care sooner rather than later, this set-up seems prompted more by politics and driving birds across state lines (like they don’t FLY across them daily?)  Each facility has staff, laborers (the massive set-ups can be put up in an amazingly quick amount of time), and volunteers.

Fort Jackson is the largest center, with the most staff, and Laurin enjoyed being there.  The other centers are not as well staffed and in Pensacola, sort of the ‘forgotten’ facility for awhile, one woman (who literally hung a hammock in the office to sleep) was the lone rehabilitator until two people from Tri-State arrived the day before Laurin.  Fort Jackson eased Laurin into the pool, as it were, with lots of supervision and a chance to get her feet wet in different areas.  In Pensacola, she’s been thrown into the deep end and is coping very well.  They don’t want her to go anywhere else! Laurin has one of the radio phones, so can be in constant contact with other staff in the huge space – definitely a sign of the responsibility they’ve given her.

The facility in Florida is half of an enormous warehouse, close to the train tracks.  Although Laurin can hear the thunderstorms that are pelting the region, she hasn’t actually seen much of anything.  She doesn’t hear much of the outside world (except the trains!) and doesn’t even know what the hurricane is doing at this point.  They work longer hours at the Florida center, and it’s normal for her to get back after 9:00 pm to her hotel (where she has her own room – a nice change after sharing a room with 3 others in a house with 19 people!)  The three miles between her hotel and the warehouse could be anywhere – just big box stores, fast food outlets, nothing to say she’s in Pensacola and not Cincinnati.  The train is loud when it goes by, but doesn’t seem to phase the birds, of which there are about 100 at the moment in various stages of stabilization, washing, or recovery.

The species being treated at each of the two centers are a bit different.  At Fort Jackson, she saw a few of every species but the majority were pelicans.  In Florida, she’s seeing a ton of those other species that were only a few in number at the Louisiana center.  Hundreds of pelicans in Louisiana, only two in Florida.  A few gannets in Louisiana, but they are the majority in Florida.  There are more wading birds – herons, even a really sad green heron covered in oil – and laughing gulls, even a heart-wrenching Canada goose with severe chemical burns.

Before Laurin left Fort Jackson, she spent a day assisting at a wash table.  Because of her handling skills, she was doing the body holding (washing is often a three person job, one restraining the body, one the head, and one washing).  A badly oiled gannet took 5 baths and 20 bottles of Dawn – and then they nearly lost him to the stress.  The completely collapsed bird was taken to the drying room, given IV fluids, and eventually recovered.

Her last day in Louisiana, Laurin was put in charge of the drying room.  She had not been looking forward to that as the feedback she’d gotten from two house mates was that it was ‘boring.’  However, that’s not what she would call it!  Being completely in charge of a room full of birds in different stages of the drying process, constantly checking that one was not over-heating, that another was not dangerously hypothermic (too cold) from the bath, adjusting the dryers, providing fluids, keeping them all quiet … was enormously stressful, yet very rewarding.

She has also been in charge of ‘marinating’ birds.  An ironic term, but the crude oil at this spill is so heavy, that the first step in the wash process is actually coating the birds in a light vegetable oil to help lift the crude off the feathers, before the actual wash in Dawn dish-washing liquid.

A Canada goose she washed in Florida on Tuesday was suffering from chemical burns, with feathers just falling out.  They aren’t sure if it was just the crude that she got into, or something else as well.  No one has done any studies on the effect of this much chemical dispersant, as it’s never been used to such an extent before.  This bird is particularly heart-breaking, as she is so scared by everything she has had to go through that she just flattens herself to the ground if anyone approaches.  However, she is resilient, as not long after Laurin administered IV fluids, she was up and eating!

Laurin has now been in the thick of it for about 10 days and at the morning meeting Thursday, she was told she could take a day off sometime in the coming week.  In fact, she was offered either 2 days off together each two weeks, or one a week.  Her response was that she’s not sure what she’d do with it!  Staff who had been there longer all said, ‘Sleep!’  She’s also not sure she’ll be stationed there long enough to take advantage of a day off, but the Tri-State staff have said they weren’t going to let her go.

She enjoyed Fort Jackson, feels she did well there and hopes to end up there – but it’s been really good to connect with the Tri-State folks as well.  She has met one Tri-State contract worker who is actually a teacher but works spills for Tri-State every summer and Christmas break.  There are so many smaller spills that we never hear about – enough to keep permanent full-time Tri-State staff working only on spills, as well as some contract workers every vacation.  This teacher keeps a ‘kit’ of her own rubber boots, gloves, apron, and bandannas – ready to roll!

A the Gulf spill continues into its third month, each state is developing its own response protocol.  In the Florida panhandle, they have divided the coast into sections and each section has an oiled wildlife response team, with vans and teams of drivers and handlers ready to respond to calls about wildlife found.  Mississippi, Alabama and Florida seem to be working with US Fish & Wildlife on the rescue end of things in a much more cooperative fashion than in Louisiana.

So much else is going on that Laurin only hears peripherally – an effort is about to get underway to move something like 70,000 turtle eggs from about 800 nests in nests in Alabama and Florida.  They don’t want the baby turtles to hatch and head straight out to the oiled Gulf, to pretty much certain death – thus losing an entire generation.  But the eggs are very delicate and moving them without jostling the embryo is also risky.  They will be dug up, placed in custom-designed cartons, packed with sand, and carefully driven to a climate-controlled warehouse on the Atlantic coast.

On the home front, we are hanging in there but missing Laurin.  We three staff members tend to operate as a team, each with our own specialty areas but a lot of overlap where we can replace each other … but some of the ‘irreplaceable Laurin’ holes are beginning to show up!  Kit and Louise are definitely enjoying having the three part-time staff, Brian, Carrie, and Hannah, and could easily get spoiled and Kit is really liking having office space that’s NOT in the gift shop… Babies continue to trickle in.

Stay tuned – next time Laurin has to do laundry, I expect to get another call!

Louise Shimmel
Executive Director

CRC Responds to the Gulf Spill

Laurin, our assistant director, arrived in Louisiana Tuesday evening, and her first day at the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center was Wednesday … starting at 6:30 am.

The Fort Jackson center is in a large warehouse, near the historic, decommissioned 1800-era Fort, about 70 miles south of New Orleans in Buras, Louisiana.  On the west bank of the Mississippi River with a bay on its other side, the long, narrow town (elevation 3′) is surrounded by marsh lands.  On a topo map, not much around there is above sea-level and the town itself has been repeatedly wiped out by hurricanes: Betsy in 1965, Camille in 1969, and Katrina in 2005.  Buras has the distinction of being the place where Katrina made first land fall.

This is definitely the epicenter of the Louisiana spill response.  On the large field next to the fort, helicopters come and go all day long, hauling the 2000 pound sand bags in an attempt to barricade the oil from further entering the extremely sensitive and difficult-to-clean delta marsh.  It’s like living in a war zone, with the sense of urgency and organized chaos, but not the danger.  Yet.  There is a large storm forming near Cuba.  Although its direction is not yet clear, they are adding rebar to tie down aviaries.  Every time it thunders, even with normal summer rains, everyone is instructed to come inside and is prohibited from using anything electrical, even washing their hands.

There are currently 16 huge outdoor aviaries, each with two big overflow pools and 50-75 pelicans in each. New aviaries go up almost every day.   Inside the warehouse are 26 pens with up to 15 pelicans in each, plus dozens of stacked airline carriers with terns and gulls.  The water in the pools is pumped in from the Mississippi.

Laurin is one of 19 people staying in an air-conditioned 4-bedroom/3 bathroom house about 10 miles from the Center.  Each co-ed bedroom has 4 full-sized bunk beds (and room for not much else!) and the kitchen is kept stocked for them.  Audubon just donated funds for a shopping trip to Whole Foods and everyone got to order what they most wanted.  There are 5 ‘house’ vehicles.  However, the house is used for not much more than sleeping and she has only met about 8 of her housemates.  She has seen the armadillo, though, that lives in the culvert at the end of their driveway!  And she’s seen ibis, a spoonbill, and countless other birds flying over.  There are lots of bugs, lots of mosquitoes – and trucks spraying Malathion travel the roads every morning and evening.

Some people are staying in 4 trailers in the parking lot of a local bar.  Middle-of-the-night police visits to the bar are not unusual – apparently there’s not much to do in Buras, a town of about 4,000. (But they do have drive-through daiquiri bars, like our coffee stands!  Very cold and in lots of flavors …)  The night shift also stays in those trailers.

There are 4 groups represented: Tri-State Bird Rescue from Delaware and International Bird Rescue Research Center (IBRRC) from California, Louisiana State Animal Rescue Team (LSART), a state group that responds to large scale emergencies, and Phoenix, an environmental damage control company.  Phoenix is responsible for infrastructure, checking water and putting in electrical lines, building pens.  Safety inspectors are on-site all the time. LSART has a contract with the University of Louisiana and veterinary faculty, students, and graduates are there helping as well.  IBRRC is also working on setting up a permanent facility nearby.  Laurin has no idea how many people are working there – but everyone is very cheerful and out-going, despite the conditions.  Security is tight, with bar coded badges checked by armed guards every time you enter or leave the area, even to go to the car, if you left something behind.

Each morning, Laurin is up at 5:30 am; breakfast is provided at the response center, along with a daily safety meeting; day crews start work at 6:30; lunch is provided at 11:30 and dinner at 6:30; then back to the house for bed.  The food is plentiful and decent.  However, the heat and humidity is overwhelming.  The heat index there today was 115º. The only air-conditioned area on-site is the meeting/meal area in the warehouse, an office area upstairs filled with computers and where requisitions are stored, and the LSART mobile office trailer which is being used as headquarters by all the groups. Workers are instructed to take a break whenever they feel the need, urged to drink at least one bottle of water every hour and one bottle of Gatorade for every four bottles of water to keep their electrolytes in balance.  There is a ‘cooling area’ in the warehouse where they can take breaks, which is somewhat cooler than the rest of the warehouse – where large fans pump in cool air that is then circulated throughout the huge space.  It only manages to cool the building down about 4º, but it is definitely cooler where the air first comes in.

For these first three days, Laurin has mostly been working in husbandry and, today, in release evaluation.  Husbandry is tubing, weighing, hand-feeding inside birds like the babies and those too weak to be outside in the pens or who have other problems, like fractures or wounds.  Outside husbandry is cleaning and feeding – and together that takes most of the day for her team.

Release evaluations are lengthy and involved, testing the birds’ waterproofing, drawing blood for evaluating overall physical condition, a thorough physical exam.  If they pass, the birds are banded and put in a release pen to wait for release.  Right now there are 150 pelicans ready for release but there is some difficulty finding safe places to take them.  Aransas Wildlife Refuge in Texas has taken a large number of them and wants to limit any additional.  Some birds have been released in Florida, but the oil has now hit a Florida beach.  Baby pelicans need a very specific set-up: an island where caretakers can feed them every day.  The food provided the babies attracts adult birds, and then the youngsters can fledge into the group of adults.

There are only a couple more birds that need to be washed at this time – but a huge influx is sure to follow a bit storm that churns up Gulf waters, even without a direct  hit. Washing is a lengthy process that starts with an intake exam, stabilization for stress and to start to mitigate the internal effects of ingesting the oil while preening, such as hemolytic anemia and gastro-intestinal distress. Once the birds are stable – which can take a few days – they are first ‘marinated’: washed in a light-weight vegetable oil to help lift off the heavier crude oil. Then they are washed in Dawn dishwashing liquid, rinsed, and go to the drying room.  The oiled bird area is kept completely separate from the washed bird area … the food is stored commonly in huge coolers, but food preparation, all medical and husbandry equipment is kept completely separate.

Everyone working in the oiled bird area is dressed in ‘PPE’ – personal protective equipment – basically a heavy Tyvek suit, with elbow-length plastic gloves duct-taped to the sleeves, a yellow apron, safety goggles and face shield, with the back of the Tyvek suit cut out for some ventilation and ease of movement.  Husbandry workers are provided t-shirts to help identify their affiliation with Tri-State or IBRRC and must wear long pants and close-toed shoes. Responders sign on for approximately three-week shifts, with five-days notice asked for when you want to depart.  Some return or stay for longer periods.

The contract that Laurin has signed with IBRRC prohibits her from taking photos of the response. There is an official ‘event’ photographer and everyone will get a CD of photos – but there’s concern about privacy and the responders feel that control over what goes out is important.  Photos can be misinterpreted.  Press days have been reduced to two or three times a week to relieve stress on the birds – but when the press comes in, the workers do not change a thing that they are doing or ‘clean up.’  Laurin is checking into whether or not she can blog – she will try to get that clarified tomorrow, but still isn’t sure she will have the time or energy for that at the end of her 12 hour days.  In the meantime, I’ll do my best to pass on what I hear from her.  She is keeping a detailed journal.

 

Assistant Director Laurin

 

 

On the home front, Kit (education director) and I (executive director) are very much appreciating the help of three of our experienced volunteers that we have hired part-time in Laurin’ absence.  It’s not that they are replacing Laurin, but by answering the phone, greeting visitors, supervising volunteers, and helping with programs and bird training, they are freeing up Kit’s and my time so we can do some of what Laurin would normally be doing.  It’s amazing how much more work I can do when I am not interrupted every few minutes!  Multi-tasking does NOT improve focus, as recent studies have proven.  Your financial support during this time is very much appreciated.

Come to our next Family Nature Discovery Day this Sunday, June 27th and enjoy a Passport to Nature!  Make your own field notebook, go on a scavenger hunt, find such treasures as a pileated woodpecker hole, a nurse log, learn to identify stinging nettles and poison oak, and win an ‘Expert Nature Explorer’ badge.  12:00 to 4:00.  Regular admission plus a $2.00 activity fee.

–Louise Shimmel, Executive Director

Come celebrate Birds in Sprintime with us on May 30th!

In the kick-off event of our Family Nature Discovery Days, on May 30th we invite families and their “fledglings” of all ages to come up and celebrate Birds in Springtime. For an extra $2.00 with your admission you can learn all about how Oregon’s amazing feathered friends handle the busy season of nest construction and egg laying, and you will make some nests and eggs to take home!

Using their “beaks,” guest nest builders will retrieve twigs, lichen, branches and leaves and build their very own nest! What type of bird are you? Will you build a big, round Osprey nest, and keep it nice and strong from year to year? Or you can be a crow for the day and have your family help you build a safe, soft nest! Don’t be a Great-horned owl, as they don’t build nests but will take over any nest they find to their liking — whether or not the hawk, raven, crow, etc., that built it plans to come back!

Bald eagle nest

Bird nests can vary greatly, depending on the particular species. Some raptors, like eagles, construct and maintain large, intricate stick nests near a preferred food source, and return to these nests annually. Other raptors, like Screech owls or kestrels, look for cavities in trees to call home. The ground nesters, like Snowy owls, will find an indentation or small mound on the ground and line it with soft vegetation and some feathers. Some birds, like the Bullock’s oriole, make pendulous basket nests that hang from trees. Come prepared with questions about bird nest building, and visit with our own Resident Raptors as they too contemplate this season of nest creation.

When you’ve got your nest constructed to your liking, you can make papier-mache eggs to go in it! Will you make round owl eggs? Fancy speckled Red-shouldered hawk eggs? Tiny Saw-whet owl eggs? Are you a big eagle, with one to three eggs? Or a little kestrel, with as many as seven? Will you fill your nest with beautiful blue Robin’s eggs?

Ki the Red-shouldered hawk with her very first eggs!

Raptor eggs are usually rounded or oval, and can vary in color and size. Cavity nesting birds will usually lay white eggs. Hawk and other tree-nesters will often lay speckled eggs to help keep them hidden from hungry animals that are looking for a quick egg snack. You can make your egg as plain or as fancy as you please!

Please join us from Noon to 4 p.m. and help us start off our Family Nature Discovery Days series. There will be handler talks at 12:00 and 2:00 pm. And of course you’ll get to visit with our Resident Raptors, some of whom have already finished sitting on their own nests for the season!

Family Discovery Days at the Cascades Raptor Center

Family Nature Discovery Days at Cascades Raptor Center!

On the last Sunday of the month Noon-4PM, May through September, visit CRC for family-oriented fun exploring the wild world.

May 30: Birds in Springtime
Hone your nest building skills for your decorated egg.
June 27: Passport to Nature
Travel around the CRC grounds on an adventure designed to highlight the wonders of nature.
July 25: Wildlife Play Hospital
Rehabilitate an injured stuffed animal and be a wildlife rehabilitator for a day.
Aug. 29: All About Owls
Discover what owls like to eat for dinner and create a pinecone owl of your owl to take home.
Sept. 26: Migration Station
Learn why birds migrate, where they go, and what they may encounter along the way.

Come for the handler talks and stay to play. Don’t forget to bring your curiosity and imagination!

Cost: CRC admission plus an activity fee.

For further information check CRC’s website or call 541-485-1320.

Come visit Valentino the Great-horned owl at CRC's Family Nature Discovery Days