Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 12:38:04 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Pete Webb Subject: A Sad, Cautionary Tale MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii A Sad, Cautionary Tale Monday May 19 at work in Howard County, I got a call - a strange bird had turned up in the Test Station Warehouse. When I hurried down, I expected a House Sparrow or a Starling, but it was... .. a Least Bittern! A beautiful bird, full adult plumage, and cute as can be. Our smallest and least common member of the heron family, it fit easily in my hand. A co-worker and I took the bird to the marshy ponds at Rt 100 near Rt 29, "Meadowbrook", much favored by Bonnie Ott and other Howard County birders. When we arrived, we found a largely undisturbed pond to release the bird - but it wouldn't fly, and was easily picked up and re-captured. Concerned that it might have a broken bone or other disabling injury, we decided to take it to an animal shelter nearby, where they could have a vet look it over for possible hidden injuries. We left it in their care, confident that the injuries, if any, wouldn't be life-threatening. In that, we were right ... ... and also horribly wrong. Thursday we got the report - the bird had died. They had taken the bird to a veterinarian, who concluded that there was no injury, just dehydration and starvation. They kept the bird there and offered it water and mealworms and other food items, but it neither ate nor drank, and passed away Thursday morning. What neither the shelter people nor the veterinarian had known was that many bird types, including shorebirds, herons, loons & grebes, and many others are strongly instinct-driven and can only recognize food when it's the right item in the right setting. While many songbirds and also geese and mallard ducks are generalists and often graze for food on land, specialists like our bittern only seek food in special settings - frogs among reeds, for example. In the absence of the reeds, and with no frogs presented, the bird starved to death in the presence of food items any self-respecting robin or canada goose would gobble right down. I had actually read an account of a Greater Yellowlegs in someone's care which would only eat mealworms when they were shallowly buried in sand in the bird's vicinity - not when the worms were in plain view right nearby. And if they didn't move, they obviously weren't food items. The yellowlegs had an injury which did heal, but the caretaker was unable to provide enough "food items" and the bird did ultimately die of starvation. With the Least Bittern, I suspected a similar situation and hoped that the care-givers into which we had entrusted the bird would know the bird's requirements - but they didn't. And certainly the veterinarian and his/her staff didn't. In retrospect, I should have released the bird, flying or not, at the marshy place I had selected origionally for its release; had I done so, the bird would have taken care of itself and survived to continue its migration. Instead, I have some cute digital photos I can't currently bring myself to look at, and memories of a bird whose fate was literally right in my hands, and I handed it off to its death in unfamiliar and unnatural settings. The moral of this cautionary tale is that it's almost inevitably far better to release any "injured" bird in appropriate habitat nearby, rather than attempt to "rescue" it; only if it has very obviously disabling injury should intervention and captivity be considered. Especially baby birds found "abandoned" on the ground should never be taken into captivity; the adult birds are almost certainly nearby and ready to continue to care for it; at most, one might place the baby bird in or on a nearby bush out of the reach of dogs and cats. And specialty birds like those mentioned in this account can not be left in the care of even the most knowledgable rehab animal shelter or veterinarian facilities unless you absolutely know they have the specialized expertise and resources to care for them. It might be feasible to have a vet experienced in birds do an exam and recommend some immmediate treatment, but these specialist birds can not be kept in captivity; they won't survive. Pigeons, robins and starlings, and canada geese and mallard ducks do enough ground feeding to be possible survivors in captivity, but not herons, shorebirds, diving ducks, and other specialists which are not open ground feeders. Sadder but hopefully a little bit wiser, Pete Webb Baltimore County, Maryland, USA pew ~at~ niroinc.com (work, M-F 830-5) pwebb ~at~ bcpl.net (home, after 6) ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================