Hello everyone, unfortunately the grosbeak we had died a few days after my last post. The 10 ducklings that were released are still hanging around in the pond and the swan is still trying to regain reign over the pond that he thinks belongs totally to him.  The last batch of mealworms that were ordered were not very good.  Most of them died quickly so I had to clean most of the dead ones out of the 20,000 mealworms that were ordered. Oh yes that was lovely...Many of the birds are eating on their own so all we have to do now is put fresh food in with them a few times a day although, we are now getting chimney swifts which need to be fed every hour.  We also have robins and sparrows that are still being fed in the nursery room.
An ACO (animal control officer) brought us a young crow that had to be force fed and only had talons on one of his feet.  A flicker was released last week that was in with the blue jays and mourning doves.
Okay, that was just a general idea of what has been going on recently.  I unfortunately have not been to Avian Wildlife Rescue since Monday because I sprained my ankle pretty bad but I will be going back this Monday and resuming my normal schedule.


Last weekend we acquired two baby cooper's hawks and wow are they round fluffy little things.  All they really have are their wing feathers coming in and the rest of them is fluffy down feathers.  Thursday I dropped off some black berries, blueberries, and grapes for the birds that I got from a mammal rehab center that had extra.  The birds, especially the robins go through a lot of fruit daily and with about 200 birds at the center at the moment, fruit vanishes before we even realize we are out.  I really have no idea how Giselle does it.  Now that her husband is retired he is helping out more, but feeding birds every hour and then by that time you have to start over every day of the week from 8am to about 1am is crazy.  I have trouble keeping up with all the birds and who is who and who is where because birds are shifted and moved often.

The hairy woodpecker is also still hanging around but not seen as often.  We leave some soaked puppy show on the roof of the vulture cage so that wild birds can eat and learn to find food on their own.  So the hairy has been yelling at us when the bowl runs out.

Last week I had my own bird rescue adventure when my grandparents neighbor called me to say that their other neighbor had baby birds fall out of the nest and they did not know what to do.  So I drove over there and brought back 2 phoebes to AWC.  Phoebes nest twice in the summer, and this time of year is their second batch of babies.  Unfortunately, the majority of the time the second batch is usually infested with mites and these two were no exception.  One died soon after I brought it from being anemic, and the other died later on that day from the same reason.  We got the one eating a little bit but it was even too weak to swallow correctly.

Monday the 9th I helped out Giselle with a summer program at a church.  We brought along Trooper, a kestrel, a robin nestling, a sparrow, the one legged red bellied woodpecker, and the chimney swifts because they had to be fed several times while we were there.  I fed the robin, walked around with the sparrow and mealworms for the kids to look at, calmed the kestrel down when he kept getting twisted up on his perch, and just helped out organizing everything for the presentation.  It went well but the kids were very talkative so it made things kind of difficult.

Everything was slowing down with birds until the swifts started coming in.  Most of the robins are quite grown up and we have one young blue jay that is doing well.  Now the baby swifts are being admitted like crazy and they have to be fed with a syringe because of the way they shake their heads when feeding.  I have not fed them yet but soon they will have taken over the entire nursery (Giselle said that this time of year we start getting TONS of swifts).