Hours Covered: 10-20
This journal will cover part of my second and my entire third day at the wildlife center. At this point, I had not had a formal orientation yet, and had just been following directions from my boss and the other directors. There are several people in charge of the center. Starting with the woman in charge of interns and volunteers, is my boss Jane. Other directors include Diane, Nichole, and Audi. For my second and third day of interning at the wildlife center, I was again dealing with the ducklings in the pond room. It was still raining on these days, so they had to stay inside again. Cleaning them overall took me about an hour and a half, but overall, it went faster than my first day. One of the things that took up a lot of my time on my second day was organizing the freezer. We received a huge donation of dog roll that foxes, raccoons, and opossums love. However, there wasn’t much space in the freezer, so Audi had me pull some stuff out and put it into the fridge, and then make space for all the boxes of that were coming in. I found out later in the day that a large shipment did not mean 20 boxes; it meant about 75. From this I learned that it is important to stay stocked on all the food we know the animals like, so that they never go hungry. Additionally, I found out that opossums can be cannibalistic is they are not given enough food. On my third day, Jane showed us interns how to syringe feed baby birds. Even though they are not native to New Jersey, we accept Starlings, because there are so many. I found out that they are good to train on because they only accept the food they are hungry for. Other birds, like robins, keep begging even if their crop is full and will eat until they explode. It was interesting to see that you have to insert the syringe so far into the birds mouth to go past the glottis so it does not choke on the food. Birds for the most part get fed every hour and the amount is determined by size and species of bird. I also learned how to clean the birds. First, it is very important to make sure their face and cloaca is clean. For birds still needing to be in an incubator they get small plastic containers with toilet paper in them to create a simulated nest. Of course, I learned quickly that birds do not like to stay put. The incubator is stage 1 out of 3 for birds. Stage 2 is a small reptarium, which is a rectangular netted enclosure. This space gives them more room to grow, and they no longer need the extra heat from the incubator. One the birds are big enough and are trying to fly, they move into stage 3, which is a much larger reptarium about 1.5 feet by 3 feet and 3 feet tall. Also, by this stage they are picking up food on their own, but still get offered food every hour like all the other stages.
Learning how to properly care for birds reminds me of learning about parental care in different species. Because the baby birds who arrive at the rehabilitation center are often so young, they cannot care for themselves yet. In the wild, they would be relying on their parents to feed and clean them, but here, we have to care for them. This is why they need almost constant attention, because they cannot do anything themselves yet. Like I stated earlier, it is very important to make sure their cloaca is clean otherwise they can not properly eliminate waste and it could lead to health issues. For birds like crows, caring for them at a young age is especially difficult because talking or too much handling can cause imprinting. And once an animal has imprinted on a human, it makes release nearly impossible because once in the wild they will head right back to humans.
After working with birds for a couple days, I was feeling a couple different things. To begin, it was wonderful getting more hands on experience with a new species of animal. Handling the baby birds is much different than handling baby waterfowl. But, I was very nervous around the birds for a couple reasons. As they get bigger, they are a flight risk, but when they are very young they are so fragile. With very little experience, I was really scared to accidentally harm a bird when cleaning or feeding them. Eventually, I got more confident working with the birds, but I was still really looking forward to working with mammals in the next couple of weeks. I still had two more shots for finish before my rabies series would be completed, but from what other volunteers and second year interns had been saying, the raccoons are a lot of fun to work with. Overall, I was still getting settled into the routine of the wildlife center, but I was really excited to be spending my summer there.
