A plea to those who care about the animals we save

Many folks, at sometime in their lives, will need the help of a wildlife rehabilitator.  Whether you find a nest of baby birds on your lawn after a wind storm, or you are out hiking and find an injured squirrel laying on the ground or one of many other situations we intervene on all the time, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.  We are NEVER without patients, but certain times of the year, we are busier than normal.  This is one of those times.
Spring is when babies are leaving their nests, holes or cavities and many becomed orphaned due to human activities or even worse, cruel and sometimes illegal activity.
These events happen on top of our 'regular' patient load, such as animals hit by vehicles, caught in traps that injure them and poisonings, just to name a few.  We have to have food and supplies on hand at all times and these resources dwindle every day as needed.  Spring time causes these needed items to disappear even quicker while donations dwindle as well. 

Just because the donations and funds become depleted, the animals keep coming, still needing our help.  Our supplies run low or completely run out.  It's a very stressful and busy time for everyone, but we must continue to provide for our patients.

We have to be prepared for anything at anytime and all of this requires money.  Our group is one of the few left that does not take any of it's donations for personal use, such as paying volunteers for their time or myself, taking any compensation for my work.  All the money goes to the wildlife expenses.  Please consider a donation through our Pay Pal account or our address is listed on the 'location' link.  If people waited until they needed our services to make a donation, many of us will not survive to provide that service.

Thank you in advance.

More babies...finches and sparrows

Here are some pictures of some, just some of our orphaned nestlings.  One group is House finches, the other is House sparrows aka English sparrows.  We are also feeding nestling Starlings and Magpie's.

We have lost several Starlings due to people feeding them inappropriate food, THEN calling us while dying.  Very heartbreaking and completely preventable.  If you find a bird needing help, call your wildlife department immediately.  They can't go without appropriate food for very long.  Leave it to the professionals and NOT that friend of yours that lives with a pet bird and thinks they know everything about all birds; even a veterinarian doesn't know everything about birds and most know virtually nothing about birds as this requires extra schooling and most are eager to finish with school and since there are no laws preventing any veterinarian from working with birds, despite of their lack of knowledge. Wildlife rehabbers are professionals regarding wildlife.  They stand a better chance of survival with one of us.

Babies and more babies.................

Here is an updated (sort of) photo of the orphan Great Horned owls we are raising.  There are even more recent ones, but I'll post them later. They are growing fast.  Aren't they adorable.
 We've named them Dandylion and Sweet Pea.  They are self feeding now and learning that they are owls and not people.  It wasn't hard, since we have two of them and  they now have  a foster Great Horned owl mom helping them learn what it means to be an owl.

This time of year, here in most western states, young Great Horned owls are 'branching'.  They are getting out of the nest and practicing getting around in their' tree or cliff nest.  Some will end up on the ground, but if uninjured, they climb right back up to the branches.  They are great climbers, so don't intervene if you see one on the ground next to a large tree and a parent is nearby in the tree, as they are watching.  Injury would be the only reason to intervene at this stage.  Being orphaned is also a problem, but one truely needs to be sure there is NOT a parent nearby.  Again, this only applies to older chicks

Debbie

Here we go again....

Sorry everyone, but this brand new computer keeps losing my posts as soon as I hit the publish key.  In fact, just now, with only a couple of sentences in place, it deleted everything and sent me back to 'new post'.  I hope I can make it through this without any further problems, including me throwing this computer on the floor
There has been a lot of things happening; way too much to try to post all over again, so I'll post a few things and that will have to be good for this current post.



Spring is certainly in full force; babies are everywhere.  Please, don't prune your trees or shrubs until late summer or early fall.  Babies in nests are occupying these places and we don't need homeless orphans that could have been prevented by just waiting to trim that tree.  Feeding every 20 minutes with some small babies isn't something YOU would want to do and we don't either.  Mom and Dad do a much better job than anyone could.  Please don't make our job any harder than it is.  Just be patient, they will be gone soon enough.
We are caring for orphan Great Horned owls, Starlings, unidentifiable Sparrows at this point in time.
The owls, came from different parts of the state.
Our Golden Eagle status has changed a lot, having released two of our Goldens recently.  We have another Golden that came in since the last post, that we are getting ready for release.  Our immature Bald Eagle is doing well.  We have some foot issues, but after those are resolved, she too will be ready for release.  The Bald we are calling Desert and the Golden I mentioned, we are calling Sia. 



We have a Red-Tail that came in as a gunshot victim.  This poor little guy, we're calling Axtell, had both femurs' from both legs shattered.  Surgery was performed on one leg, but the outcome is still questionable.  All those fragments in both legs was just a mess.  I can't believe how many gunshot cases I've had in that past few months.  Their total is more that all the other cases combined in all my years of rehabbing.  It's just sickening.  What has happened to the human population?


We are doing physical therapy on Axtell now, since his pins were removed last week following the initial surgery over a month ago.  Time will tell what outcome we will have.  Obviously, the goal is a release.

We also released our Great Blue Heron, Nadia.  It was a wonderful release in Moab.  I hope she has found her mate as I was told he continued to wait for her, being spotted where he and Nadia had been seen before.  Let's hope they found each other!









Well, I'm going to go add the photo's and that's going to be it for now.


Please consider clicking on the PayPal button and supporting our work.  None of us takes any pay and like all rehabilitators, our work is done with donations only.  We are not paid by anyone for the work we all do.  We are not paid by the entities that be, such as USFW or our own states wildlife departments.  They do not financially support our work, so anything we do, including buying food for all the different species of wildlife we care for or purchasing all the supplies used in our work, which is basically and animal ER and paying for surgeries out of our own pockets, none of this is free and they animals we are caring for don't BELONG to us; they belong to no one and yet, everyone to enjoy and appreciate.  We can't do it without ongoing donations.  These photo's give you an idea of what your donations can do.

Thank you, Debbie