Video: Storm Battered Brown Pelicans Admitted to Hospital

The relentless storms and torrential rains in California have impacted pelicans, and the number of wet, cold and often hypothermic birds arriving at our centers is growing rapidly.

This past week has been very busy at the hospital with all of these pelicans. Most of the birds have been washed, and a great many of them have been transferred to our outdoor pelican aviary and spa.

Each pelican can eat $500 - $1,000 worth of fish during his rehabilitation. Donations of any size will really help!

http://www.ibrrc.org/

Video: Why Pelicans Could Not Weather January Storms

IBRRC's Executive Director, Jay Holcomb, explains waterproofing.

As of yesterday, IBRRC in San Pedro has received a total of 130 non-oiled birds since the beginning of last week's storms. 107 of these birds are pelicans. In addition, 9 oiled birds from natural seep and 6 oiled birds from the spill in Huntington Beach have been received.

IBRRC in Fairfield has received 50 pelicans and expects another 20 in the coming days. A number of ducks (including buffleheads and canvasbacks) have also arrived, some that have been shot and others downed by the storms.

IBRRC now has an official YouTube site! :ecsmile

I've mentioned net-bottomed pens (pelagic pens), but we also have wall cages at IBRRC.

These wall cages are for birds who can stand and walk and sit on land. We don't have to worry that they will damage their keels when they sit.

Our wall cages were covered with towels, to give the patients privacy and calm them. Seeing people scares the heck out of them and delays or prevents their recovery. So they need time to themselves.

The problem with the towels is that they admitted no light into the cages. The birds sat in "twilight" during the day. Also, the towels didn't completely cover the cage doors, and birds could peek out and see people walking around.


wall cages in Holding 1

I told the Wildlife Rehabilitation Manager that I could design and sew some covers for the cage door that would admit the light, be easy to slip on, and give the occupant more privacy.

It took three designs, but finally I had one that worked. And then I sewed more. And more!

I thought they should look cheerful, so the envelope at the top, which fits over the top of the cage door, is a colorful material. The rest of the cover hands down inside the cage and is white. We want the cover to hang inside the cage as this protects the bills of our patients.


wall cages with their covers in ICU

When the cage is unoccupied, the white part that hands down can be folded up and hang over the top of the cage. It's easy and fast to unfold the cover and let it cover the whole door when a bird is put into the cage. The cage is washed every day and a new cover put on the door. Also, all is washed before another bird is put into the cage.

I made about 30 of these and wrote out the instructions and gave them to the hospital so that other volunteers could sew them. We have a good supply now.

I've talked about net-bottomed pens and wall cages. We also have peli boxes. These are large enclosures with a wood frame and heavy plastic cloth on the sides. The bottom has no floor, to make it easier to clean. It sits on our concrete floor, which is covered by sheets, blankets, or even a comforter.

These enclosures were built for pelicans, but they also house cormorants, ducks, geese, and other birds.

Each day the occupant gets an exam. While that takes place, a volunteer removes the linens, tub of fish, perches, etc., from the enclosure. The walls and floor under the peli box is thoroughly washed with Simple Green and disinfected with Clorhex. The linens are replaced, too.

Here's an older peli box outside the laundry room. We have a mound of clean laundry in the tub. If you look through the windows on the double doors, you can see into Holding 2, which is reserved for oil spill birds. The peli boxes now have white plastic cloth on them, which admits more light.


peli box outside of laundry room

And yes, all that laundry will be folded and put away.

In 2007, a beautiful pelican aviary and spa was being constructed. It was to be completed by the end of that year, but in November we had the Cosco Busan oil spill crisis, and work on the aviary was halted.

It was completed in 2008, with many volunteers working on it. It is gorgeous, with two pools! It is also a flight cage. Pelicans, cormorants, and gulls share this aviary. And here it is:

video: Tranquil Pelican Aviary

I made this video in July, 2008. At the far end are the two adult Double-crested Cormorants, who served as role models for the chicks which hatched in our incubator. If you look very closely at the video, you'll see a black cormorant perched at the far end of the aviary.

I filmed the clips around 6 PM, standing in one corner of the aviary and not moving around. From this perspective, the two pools look small, but they are actually very large. The birds seem to be enjoying themselves, preening, swimming, flying, eating.

The aviary is 100 feet long!

We don't have the money to replace some of our smaller aviaries, so volunteers have restored them.



Video: Peaceful Egret Aviary

This is a little video I made of one of the aviaries while refilling the pond. All wasn’t so peaceful when I first entered, but after a few minutes the residents concluded I wasn’t going to eat them after all, so they settled down to their usual routines of wading in the water, flying from perch to perch, eating, and pecking their neighbors.

The small pond was created, pots of plants were added (we took the plants from the marsh behind IBRRC), two layers of netting were hung inside to protect their beaks from the metal mesh of the cage and give them some privacy (we washed and used the old netting). Gravel was added to the floor of the aviary (which sits on the ground) so we could hose it down without creating mud puddles. There are shallow bowls filled with water and smelt (the water keeps the fish fresh and keeps the ants away).

There are branches in the aviary, suspended by bungee cords. The reason we used bungee is that we wanted the birds to get used to landing on moving branches, so when they are released into the wild, they won’t be frightened when they land in trees. We try to make the aviaries as close as possible to the birds’ natural habitat.

These are snowy egrets and cattle egrets.

After I posted this video, someone wanted to see the other side of the aviary, so here it is:



video: The Other Side of the Egret Aviary

This video shows the large branches suspended by bungee cords. The egrets fly back and forth, and when they land, the branch sways. The aviary is also a flight cage. We hope to have the funds to build a new, larger one in the future. I'm not sure when that will happen. Last year our funding was severely cut. Now we are operating on a shoestring. Half a shoestring.