kiskadee! kiskadee!

Sunday was off to a rough start when I went in for the first feeding at 6:30. I found the smallest woodpecker out of his nest basket and quite cold. He appeared to have aspirated - the day before he regurgitated a bit of food which may have led to the aspiration. I started him on an antibiotic but he continued to go downhill and by 8:30 he had died. Poor kid. I think he was just too small and weak to fight off whatever malady he had. He was considerably smaller than his siblings with his weight more than 20 grams less than them. The other two are doing great though. One little guy started acting a bit down on Tuesday and stopped begging. I started him on antibiotics and he is doing much, much better. Both of them look completely different from when they first came in. Now they actually look like birds since they've grown in quite a few feathers instead of naked mini-chickens. Thankfully, they're feeding well every hour instead of half hour so I'm not completely knackered (sometimes I like to pretend I'm British) feeding 6 babies every half hour. These guys grow up so very fast. The Roadside Hawk was released on Wednesday morning. He waited about five minutes after I opened the hatch door and then took off. Of course, he perched in a tree and the Groove-billed Ani started going after him... that's how he got here in the first place. He flew off though so hopefully we won't be seeing him again. Yesterday evening, I got a call about four Great Kiskadee hatchlings. Their nest had been destroyed but the people were talked into re-nesting. Apparently the re-nesting didn't work out so well because I received the babies this morning. I'm fairly certain they're Great Kiskadees, but as you can see from the picture (insert picture here, but not since the internet is broken again.. go here instead), it's impossible to know for sure. These little guys are tough to rehabilitate at this age since they're so very tiny. For their initial exam, the smallest was 9 grams while the largest was 18 grams! They're supposed to be flighted in less than 15 days. Here's hoping I don't fall over from exhaustion before then! Oh, and Great Kiskadees get their name from their call which is "Kiskadee! Kiskadee!". You can listen to it at xeno-canto.org.

On another note, it has rained almost every day for the past two weeks. It's a nice break, actually. Usually rainy days make me want to just curl up in my bed but this rain has been a nice refresher from the sweltering heat. I actually had to wear a sweater the other night. So weird. Although, one of the negative aspects is the mud. The dirt here is very clay-like so the mud sticks to everything. It's pretty much impossible to get off when it's wet and makes a huge mess. Good thing the clinic has white floor! And then there's the mosquito aftermath.. my ankles are covered in bites. Again. Did I mention I stopped taking the Cholorquine? We won't discuss the reasons, but I'd rather take my chances. Fingers crossed?

So that's all for this week. Minus 2 patients plus 4 more, rain, and.. and.. err... lots of running around like a crazy person?

Less than four weeks until Alison comes as the Assistant ACM!

babies!

Well, this week pretty much exploded patient-wise. Monday, I received a call about two baby woodpeckers who had been rescued from a fallen tree in a family's backyard in Roaring Creek. They arrived Tuesday morning and I've been running non-stop since then. They're nestlings so they have to be fed every half hour. Tuesday evening, I received a juvenile Roadside Hawk from Belize City. He was being attacked by black birds, but it appears completely fine... just slightly keely with an old, healed fracture to the leg. Is it possible? An actual patient that's releasable? The veterinarian that is with the Peregrine Fund is going to take a look at him tomorrow and give his thoughts. On Wednesday morning, I received the third of the Woodpecker trio. He was a quite dehydrated and smaller than the other two. He's doing great though.. all three of them are piggies. I haven't had much one-on-one experience with Woodpecker babies; they've always just been in the feeding assembly line that occurs during baby season. These guys are hilarious though; they've each got their own personality and they're very grumpy when awoken for a feeding. It's definitely a learning experience to determine what schedules suites them best. I started out with 14 hours worth of feedings on Wednesday but I had to end earlier tonight because I had to fight with them in order to feed them during the second to last feeding. I just decided to let them sleep instead. 13 hours worth of feedings should be sufficient, I think... and so does the awesome purple Hand-Rearing Birds book. It's pretty much the best book ever for hand-rearing the littles.

So yes, baby season as officially begun! I've only got about 20 minutes between feedings so I've been running around like a crazy person trying to get everything done. Wildlife rehabilitation centers can have hundreds of baby and adult patients during the busy season. It seems crazy that 12 patients and 2 education birds would be so exhausting! Hopefully I can get some people here trained on feeding the kids. We shall see..

No other news. Field work will be put on hold for a bit until I can get somebody trained to feed the chiledren. Off to bed so I can rest before doing it all again tomorrow!

lost birds and four months

I received a text on Friday informing me that there was a hawk in Orange Walk. That's still all I know about the situation. I'm assuming that 1.) it didn't need immediate attention and healed on its own or 2.) it is no longer is in existence. We'll go with theory number one just so we stay on the positive side of things, yes? There is a third option, however... the hawk may have somehow turned into a Yellow-crowned Night-heron and it was on the island of San Pedro (on the coast), and not in Orange Walk (north of San Ignacio, near Mexico). So on Wednesday, I was invited by the BFD (Belize Forest Department) to do a presentation at the Santa Elena Primary School. The BFD, coming from Belmopan to do the presentation, transported the YCNH to CASA. By the time I had assessed the patient, the presentation was over. At least I'll be prepared for the next presentation - lovely Powerpoint presentation and all! The Yellow-crowned Night-heron, a juvenile, had a broken tibiotarsus. He was easily stressed and didn't end up making it through the night. I'm not entirely sure how long he was down, but he didn't look great when he came in. Hopefully one day I'll have a fixable patient; this is starting to become depressing.

On Friday, as an early birthday present to myself, I played tourist at

the Cahal Pech Resort and lounged around at the pool. The resort sits on the hilltop next to the Cahal Pech ruins and it overlooks San Ignacio and Santa Elena. I had a nice lunch of quesadilla de soya (with soy meat - I'm still not sure how I feel about it) and got rained on a couple of times by the random Hawaii-esque showers. A few hours later and a few shades darker (or redder?), I headed to Greedy's and hung out there for a while, reading my book and enjoying happy hour whilst listening to American music. It was a pretty good day; I hadn't realized how much I missed being able to jump in a pool. I might have to make that a bi-monthly occurrence... even though it's all the way up the hill. It's okay, I like hiking. And swimming. And sunburns. Okay, not really sunburns.

Saturday was my birthday. I played with birds and ate some cake and had a beer. It was a birthday. Now I'm a year older. I've kind of felt like I've been 27 for the past few months and I think that successfully warded off any anxiety / omghowdidthishappen / whatamIdoingwithmylife attacks. Victory! ...for now, at least.

I've been here for four months today. My time in Belize is 1/3 of the way through... I don't know how I feel about this. Closer to leaving, closer to really needing to figure out the next step. South Korea for a year or two or maybe somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere. While I do miss the familiarity of things in the States, I currently don't have any urge to return there permanently. Not as of this moment, anyway.

Tomorrow, perhaps I will help with some field work. Perhaps not, although I'm at a loss of what to do otherwise. Suggestions are appreciated!

purple birds and the oil "spill"

I've found that I'm really bad at (the list keeps growing) collecting browse for the birds; I blame inexperience with the native plants and lack of knowledge as to the whereabouts of said plants. It takes me f o r e v e r to do it and I can never find enough. Thankfully, Ricky, who once was a chiclero and spent months in the bush, collects the browse for the parrots. On Tuesday, he brought back branches with tiny dark purple berries on it. There's only a Mayan name for it, of which I cannot remember because he only verbalized it and I didn't write it down (apparently I'm an extremely visual person and can usually only remember something if I read it). Anyway, as I mentioned last week, Tuesday is cage scrub day so the cages were all nice and clean pre-browse with berries. Well, when I went to give everybody their PM diets on Tuesday... I had an exciting mess waiting for me. The two Pionus parrots are naughty and always perch on the door to their aviary in an attempt to escape. In a way, this is helpful since I can get a close look of their underneath bits and their feet. Yesterday, their feet were purple. All of the parrots' feet were purple. And their beaks. And their feathers. And the entire floor and bits of the walls. Really, I couldn't help but laugh. At least the aviaries aren't a dull cement gray anymore?

Last Saturday I attended the Agricultural Show. I passed out a ton

of flyers and coloring sheets, as well as got the word out about CASA. I shared a table with the Forest Department and set out some of my flyers and coloring sheets - the kids loved coloring! However, everybody expected a prize for finishing. I guess coloring a pretty picture isn't prize enough. Next time I'll bring candies or something along so as to not disappoint. It was a bit of an eye-opening experience. I didn't attend Sunday since I'm generally the only one around here on Sunday; there were supposed to be more people there since the rodeo was on Sunday. Thankfully the Humane Society got involved and nixed the cock-fighting. I had intended on posting a picture of kids coloring the CASA coloring sheet, but I accidently selected the wrong photograph. Because this internet is awesome, blogger only lets me upload one photo per post. Instead of seeing the kids coloring, you get to enjoy a beautiful sunrise from last Friday. At least it helps getting up so very early even more worth it!

And I got to enjoy this sunrise before going to help out with more field work. I won't share any of the details, but I'll just say that it was a reminder as to how brutal nature can be sometimes. No field work thus far this week. Perhaps next week.

Next week, I may be doing a presentation at a school here in San Ignacio. Thanks to the Forest Department for including CASA, I may get to do some more educating. I am not a huge fan of public speaking, but I always force myself to get over that aspect somehow.

On another note - I'm sure you've all heard about the Gulf oil spill debacle. If you live in South Carolina, Rosewood Market in Columbia is collecting donations for Save our Seabirds in Florida, who is gearing up to help out the avian victims. If you want to help, the International Bird Rescue Research Center has a team down there and could use the donations. MSNBC also has a list of organizations that could use your help. You can contact your local wildlife rehabilitation center for suggestions as well. If you've been reading anything about it, it's easy to realize that this is going to have a huge effect on the environment and all animal populations - including ourselves. Just a few dollars or donated items could help save a life!