Avian Wildlife Center Internship

It has been so busy at AWC. All of the chimney swifts we have are taking up a lot of Giselle's time and I am feeding the birds that are not in the nursery, and are being fed every 2 hours. In between feedings I am working on cleaning, checking the ducklings outside, checking the geese outside to make sure they are not bleeding or having other issues, and bathing the goose we have with a broken back. We have a wooden...I don't even know what to call it. I guess it is kinda of like a wheelchair for a goose. It holds the goose up to relieve pressure from its back because it cannot stand and tends to flop over on its side when able to. This is why we have to supervise bathing in its tub because the poor thing just falls over to its side and cannot get up. It was found on a lake upside down trying to keep its head above water. It is thought to have been purposely hit by a boat.

Saturday Giselle was at a meeting so I went to AWC to feed all of the birds for the day. First I had to call back 2 people that had injured birds, but one already died and the other was closer to another avian rehab center. Giselle took the swifts, but the other birds in the nursery are mostly fed every 2 hours with the exception of the barn swallows which are every hour. The nursery includes many robins, 3 cedar waxwings, blue jay, 2 mallards, the one legged red bellied woodpecker, non-releasable hummingbird, hummingbird that hit a window, mockingbird, and 3 catbirds. The downstairs birds are 2 non-releasable bluebirds, 4 robins, 2 cedar waxwings with a young bluebird, 3 barn swallows, the broken backed goose, 2 injured mourning doves, and 3 house sparrows. There are also several screech owls, a kestrel, 2 cooper's hawks, a broad winged

hawk, and an egret. The 4 red bellied woodpeckers outside were released yesterday, and 2 crows were released last week. The robins that were in with the red bellieds had a fecal done today and they have coccidia. So along with the other 2 robins in the outside aviary, these are now going to have to get treated water to get rid of the coccidia parasites. All of the small circles all over the slide in that picture are the coccidia. There are also 2 cages of house sparrows, an aviary with a tufted titmouse/2 phoebes/2 barn swallows, the blue jays and mourning doves, 10 ducklings, 2 geese, and all of the owls and hawks that are only fed in the morning or at night.

We got a new goose in today that was kept in someones garage for the past year. This goose looks to have some kind of respiratory infection and is overweight. A young screech owl came in yesterday after being found under a pallet, probably hit a window and has a broken wing.

Most of this week was feeding the usual round of birds every 2 hours and working on cleaning out cages/aviaries that are now empty from releases or birds moved. The outdoor crow aviary was quite a mess and it took a while to scrub down the walls to make it look halfway decent.
One of the robins downstairs has mites and is now being treated with powder. I had the wonderful experience of finding them crawling all over me and had to figure out which robin it was coming from because there are 3 separate carriers with robins I was feeding at the time. Of course it was the middle one, so all three were treated just in case.

Monday night I went and picked up 2 robins from a mammal rehabber that picked them up from someone that was unwilling to drive them to AWC and I brought them the next day. They are still doing well although I was surprised how young they were because most of our robins we have are all feathered. These are still half naked and need to be kept in the incubator.