Flyaway (2 page)

Now that I am older, wiser, and more haggard, I look back on my decision to rehabilitate wild birds at home with incredulity. There is only one sane way to get your wild animal fix: by volunteering at a bird or wildlife center. You show up, you work hard, you go home, you resume your life. Your wildlife work may occasionally spill over into your regular life, but it will not engulf it like a tidal wave, which is what happens when you attempt to set up shop at home.

This fact of life had been explained to me by several veteran rehabilitators, all of whom burst into gales of laughter when I said I was going to combine bird rehab with family life.

“How old are your kids?” said one, wiping her eyes.

“I'm going to start next spring,” I said firmly. “They'll be seven and eight.”

“Hmmm,” she said, assuming a perplexed expression. “Was I going to feed the kids and worm the crows—or vice versa?”

“It'll be great for your marriage,” added another. “Men just love women covered in bird doo.”

“I'm already covered in bird doo,” I said. “I have parrots.”

A third bugged her eyes and stared maniacally into space. “‘I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille,'” she hissed. “‘Just get these owls off me.'”

I scoffed at their lurid predictions. People create their own destiny, I had always thought; you could weasel your way into or out of any situation, given
the right motivation. The key was to be specific. Where there was a problem, there was a solution.

I swung into action.

The problem
: how to start a wild bird rehabilitation operation, at home, from scratch. I contacted the bird rehabilitators in my area, of whom there were surprisingly few, and found that what was desperately needed—besides more rehabilitators—was a good flight cage. Flight cages are the large outdoor enclosures where recovering adults can regain their wing strength and juveniles can learn to fly before they are released. At that point I was familiar only with raptor flights, the enormous enclosures made of evenly spaced wooden slats. Federal regulations prescribe flight-cage size according to each species; a flight cage for a red-tailed hawk, the most common raptor species in my area, must be at least ten feet by fifty feet by twelve feet.

It didn't take me long to figure out that building a proper raptor flight cage was a pipe dream. Our property's terrain is hilly, rocky, and heavily wooded; a few phone calls revealed that I couldn't even afford to build the flight, let alone clear the trees and bulldoze the hills so I had somewhere to put it. But at least an injured raptor could go to the raptor center; from what I had heard, there were no flight cages available for the injured waterbirds and songbirds of my area. I thought fondly of the swans I had just freed from their web of lines and fishhooks. The problem was that recuperating waterbirds eventually need water, and our pond was located at the very edge of the property, far from the house and right next to the road.

The solution
: I would build a flight cage for songbirds only. Since I couldn't accommodate the birds I had come to know, I would return to the birds of my childhood—the small perching birds of gardens and backyards. I had never lost the feeling I had experienced when I first stood outside my house, seed-filled hand outstretched and a chickadee hovering inches away. I still viewed even captive wild birds as mysterious and otherworldly, essentially untamable, my brief proximity to them a rare and fragile gift. If songbirds were the neediest birds in my area, then a songbird flight cage was what I would build.

The problem
: I needed a clinic. Early on I actually considered breaking through the wall of our bedroom and adding a small bird hospital room, complete with heat and running water. A rehabber friend, to whom I will be forever grateful, seized me by the shoulders and said firmly, “Just get a gun and shoot yourself in the head. It would be quicker.”

The hospital room also fell victim to financial reality. As I searched for alternatives, I regarded myself critically. I had a husband, two young children, and two parrots; common sense dictated that there were only so many creatures I could care for at once. But I knew what I was prone to and, worse, what I was capable of. I needed parameters set in stone, not subject to the vagaries of chance and my own bad influence.

The solution
: I would not take injured birds at all. I would build a songbird flight cage and announce that I would take in only small birds from other rehabbers—adult birds who had recovered from their injuries and just needed conditioning, or juveniles who simply needed to practice flying before release. Once I had my license and the Department of Environmental Conservation asked if they could give my name out to the public, I would say no. By removing the clinic, I actually believed that I was removing the one thing that would allow my bird operation to spiral out of control.

The problem
: how to learn to care for songbirds, who have neither talons nor any desire to eat defrosted rats. I bought books. I borrowed books. I surfed the net and printed out information. I joined Wildlife Rehab, an electronic mailing list that encompasses all wildlife, but I set up my account so I received only e-mail regarding wild birds. Electronic mailing lists are a godsend for rehabbers, especially single ones working out of their homes. Once you join, you are linked with rehabilitators from all over the country—sometimes from all over the world—and whenever a member of the group posts an e-mail, you receive it. Subscribers include newcomers and veterans, single rehabbers and those working in wildlife centers and zoos, specialists who deal with only one type of bird and those who deal with whatever comes through the door. For example, someone posts a question, “What is the best diet and setup for a hooded warbler with a broken leg?”
and inevitably another writes back, “I've done
hundreds
of hooded warblers! My
middle name
is Hooded Warbler!” and showers the subscribers with advice and tips, which I would dutifully print out and file alphabetically in a purple three-ring binder labeled “
SPECIES SPECIFIC
.”

The solution
: sweat equity, the currency of rehabilitators everywhere. I spent months helping a friend who rehabs all kinds of birds, including the ridiculously small ones. During one of my first visits she showed me how to hold an injured chipping sparrow (weight, 10 grams).

“Look here,” she said. “You see that thing on his foot?”

“His foot!” I said. “I can barely see the bird.”

The problem
: how to build a songbird flight cage when the only flights I had ever seen were for raptors. I went on field trips. I visited several bird rehabilitation centers, took photos, photocopied their blueprints, and interviewed the volunteers about what they would change if they could. Songbird flight cages are smaller than those built for raptors, but the entire enclosure must be encased in metal hardware cloth (which is like chicken wire but stronger and has small squares) and lined with soft mesh. I asked questions: A-frame versus straight rectangle? Loft or no loft? What was the best substrate?

The solution
: It was an A-frame with a small loft, encased in half-inch hardware cloth, lined with plastic mesh, and had natural flooring with added organic soil and wood chips.

The problem
: where to put the flight cage. It needed to be near the house, but not too near the house. It needed sun, but not too much sun. Wherever it was built would entail cutting down some trees, but I hoped not too many trees. It couldn't be built on rock ledge—which probably lay beneath half our property—because a trench a foot and a half deep would have to be dug around the perimeter of the cage, the hardware cloth rolled downward and angled out and weighted with rocks, all to deter digging predators.

The solution
: 150 feet southwest of the house, tucked into a small valley between two hills. If the flight cage were angled properly, it would be protected from the north wind and receive dappled sunlight throughout the day. There
were rocks, but they were removable. The area was large enough so I could expand the size of the flight—maybe even build two. And the only tree that would need to come down was a huge old dying oak that had been struck by lightning and was already listing alarmingly to one side.

The possibility of two flight cages and the avoidance of healthy tree slaughter: this was becoming intoxicating.

The problem
: who would build the songbird flight cage? (It wasn't going to be me.) I grabbed the telephone. Had I been more plugged in to the local home-building scene, I would never have had the nerve to call Bruce Donohue and Michael Chandler, who, unbeknownst to me, were renowned for their high-end, elegant craftsmanship. As it turned out, they were also faithful environmentalists with a soft spot for nonprofit work. They were enthusiastic about aiding the recovery of injured wild birds, and they happened to have a small hole in their schedule.

The solution
: Bruce and Michael looked at the site, studied the blueprints, gave me a generous break on their fee, and said they could have it up in a week. I was the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill.

The problem
: I needed both a New York State Wildlife Rehabilitator's license and a federal permit to rehabilitate migratory birds. A state license allows the rehabilitator to care for mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and nonnative birds (house sparrows, starlings, and pigeons). Potential rehabbers have to pass a 100-question, multiple-choice test covering the natural history of all local species of wildlife, as well as their emergency care, nutrition, restraint techniques, wound management, parasitic infections, epizootic and zoonotic diseases, and release criteria.

A federal permit allows a person to rehabilitate all native birds. Obtaining the permit entails writing an autobiographical summary of your avian expertise; describing what your birds will be fed and how you will obtain specialized foods; submitting diagrams and photographs of your facilities; and gathering letters of recommendation from what seems like every person on the planet who has ever uttered the word
bird
.

The solution
: For the state test, I studied. In most areas, wild opossums live two to three years. The only sure way to kill the eggs of the raccoon roundworm is with a blowtorch. Feed kitten milk replacer to orphaned bobcats and goat's milk to orphaned white-tailed deer. For the federal permit, I wrote. I called. I asked people to say nice things about me. I sent out stamped, self-addressed envelopes. I rolled my eyes. I said bad words.

 

In mid-September, the kids and I sat on our deck listening to the clatter of hammers against wood. As the flight cage rose in the distance the kids casually tossed me state license questions, proving once again that young brains absorb information far more quickly than older ones.

“What do you call the underside of a turtle's shell?” asked Mac.

“The carapace,” I replied.

“Wrong!” crowed Mac. “It's the plastron!”

“Darn!” I said. “Well, at least I know that a rabbit isn't a rodent.”

“But that one's easy,” said Skye, sighing deeply. “Everyone knows that rabbits are lagomorphs.”

The flight cage was more solid than my own house. It was a 400-square-foot enclosure separated by a plywood wall into two rectangles twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and eight feet high, covered by an A-frame roof and lined with ethereal green mesh. In the late afternoon sun it looked magical, a place where a broken bird could learn to fly again, a temporary refuge created by a crew who were craftsmen by day and artists and musicians at night. It had just come into the world, but already its karma was good.

Where there was a problem, there was a solution. I was confident that when our doors opened in the spring, everything would go according to plan.

There are many areas to which chaos theory applies. In wildlife rehabilitation, it rules.

For the single, home-based rehabilitator in particular, one's sensitive complex system hinges on the ability to set limits. As both logic and my longtime rehabber friends told me, one has a finite amount of space, a finite amount of energy, and a finite number of hours in the day. Small changes in one's limits can cause unexpected results, especially when they become the norm instead of the exception.

Eventually I would come up with my own version of chaos theory.

In the beginning, however, I was golden.

 

It was early May and we were all in the kitchen, waiting for the delivery of our first songbird. The kitchen is a spacious room with a sliding glass door that opens onto the deck. Ninety degrees from the glass door is a bay window, on the bottom of which rest two large manzanita parrot jungle gyms. The jungle gyms are three feet tall and covered with toys and ropes, with food and water dishes bolted to the highest perches. The one on the left belongs to Zack, the yellow-collared macaw, and the one on the right to Mario, the African grey parrot.

Long ago I tried to make the window more “tropical” by placing several nontoxic potted plants around the bases of the jungle gyms. The parrots froze and gazed at me in horror, as if they had just watched me seed their territory with nuclear warheads and could not get over the betrayal. Since this was a somewhat normal reaction I left the room for an hour, figuring they'd get over it. I returned to find that they had rappelled downward, yanked the plants out of the pots, chewed them to pieces, flung the dirt all over the bay window, and then pushed the pots onto the floor, where they lay broken into what appeared to be several million pieces. The window bottom is now covered with miscellaneous unbreakable parrot toys, but little else.

“When is she going to get here?” demanded Skye, hopping up and down. At seven years old, she was kinetically active, emotional, and theatrical, prone to racing through the house singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs, no matter what the season.

“She'll be here,” said Mac, who at eight was calm, centered, and sported a mane of blond hair that reached past his shoulders. Having started growing it in homage to his medieval, dragon-riding heroes, he had stubbornly refused to cut it despite the taunts of his schoolmates, none of whom had hair past their ears.

“What kind of bird is it, again?” asked John, leaning against the counter in rip-riddled running gear. After the successful publication of his first book, John had left his job intending to set up a home office and write another, only to realize that there wasn't enough room in the house for him to do so. The eventual solution was a small writing cabin tucked between the house and the flight cage,
affordable as long as a bathroom was not included. With the construction of his cabin and my flight cage, it seemed as if we were both on the road to our dreams: living in a beautiful rural area, each doing what we cared about, connected to the advantages of modern life but raising our family as far from the stress and hustle of it as we could manage.

“It's a house finch,” I said. “He dislocated his wing a few weeks ago, it was set and healed, and now he just needs to start flying again.”

House finches are small brownish-gray flocking birds, often seen around backyard feeders; the males have reddish-orange feathers from their heads down to their bellies. This finch was being delivered by Maggie Ciarcia, whom I had met at a workshop for prospective wildlife rehabilitators. Sponsored by an organized network of rehabbers in the county south of where I live, the workshop had starred Maggie and Joanne Dreeben, both veterans, who spent two hours trying to ensnare innocent civilians. They showed slides, told stories, referred to graphs, and introduced their wildlife ambassador: a huge, easygoing white pigeon. No matter where you go in the world there are never enough wildlife rehabilitators, which is not surprising: there is little or no money in it, and like all nonprofit work, the burnout rate is high. But every once in a while someone will hear the call of the wild, and another rehabber is born.

House Finch

“I take small mammals, small birds, and game birds,” Maggie had said, smiling, to her rapt audience. “Lots of baby bunnies and squirrels. Songbirds and pigeons. I love wild turkeys—they're my favorites. No raptors. I don't take any birds that can hurt me. Joanne will, though; she'll take anything.”

The unflappable Joanne shrugged and gave a rueful grin. “Whatever,” she said.

Both had been delighted with the prospect of a new flight cage, and they had exchanged knowing glances when I told them firmly that I was not taking any nestlings or injured birds—only healthy adults ready for a flight cage.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” said Joanne.

There was the barely audible sound of a car door slamming, and both kids bolted from the room. We heard the front door open, Maggie's voice greeting the kids, and a moment later she was escorted into the kitchen. Zack let out a piercing shriek, bowed energetically, flashed his eyes, and shouted, “Hello!” Mario, more circumspect, regarded the new human suspiciously and withheld comment.

“Did you bring him? Is he in there?” demanded Skye, vibrating with excitement and trying to peer into the cardboard carrier Maggie was holding.

“I don't think she'd drive all the way over here and bring us an empty box,” said Mac.

“Not to worry,” said Maggie. “I guarantee you that whenever I show up here with a box there will be a bird in it.”

“And so it begins,” said John. “Will this be the best of times or the worst of times?”

Maggie grinned at him. “Probably both,” she said.

We all trooped outside, past John's office and to the finch's temporary new home. John and the kids took up positions outside while Maggie and I entered the flight cage. I had furnished both sides with hanging tree limbs and leafy branches, and I planted a live tree in each. On the ground were logs, small brush piles, and shallow rubber saucers for drinking and bathing. In each flight one end of a long, slender tree limb rested on the ground and the other on a perch, allowing birds who couldn't fly to hop up to a comfortable spot. The connecting door between the two sections swung easily and latched securely. There must be something I've forgotten, I thought to myself as I opened the finch's carrier.

The diminutive bird looked up, jumped onto the rim of the carrier, then hopped down onto the ground. He paused briefly to assess his new surroundings, looking like a tiny ringmaster dwarfed by a cavernous Big Top. Making no attempt to fly, he scooted up the angled limb and onto a leafy branch, where he regarded us with concern.

“Is that it?” asked Skye incredulously from outside. “Is that all there is?”

“That's all for now,” I said, as Maggie and I filed out of the flight cage and latched the door.

Later that night I turned to John. “I know this is unprofessional of me,” I said. “But I hope he's all right out there. He's all alone in a new place. I hope he's not scared. Do you think he's lonely?”

John smiled, blissfully unaware of how many times he and I would have similar exchanges over the next five years.

“I'm sure he's fine,” he said. “He's a wild bird.”