Wildlife rehabilitation

Cara Abdo

Biology 4400, Spring 2002

I work at Terwilliger wildlife rehabilitation center. We treat over 4,000 animals each year providing rehabilitation services to ill or injured wildlife and raising orphaned young animals, which have been abandoned, mostly as a result of human disruption of habitat.

We get all kinds of birds brought into us because someone’s cat caught it, or an opossum mom killed by a car with her babies still alive in her pouch. We also take in animals that people decided to keep for a pet illegally until they realize how hard it is to keep a wild animal. They initially try to realize the animal, but the animal has become habituated and is unrealizable. Until humans can show respect and their responsibility for the environment there needs to be ways to make people aware about the native species in communities and around our planet. Humans need to be taught about these species because in the creation of a concrete jungle it is easy to ignore nature.

Human babies learn in two ways, through language and art/expression. Both forms are very apparent in modern day advertisement. Language and art are the most effective ways of putting a person in touch with a certain emotion. Since it is difficult to view wild animals most of the time, art is a good visual way to connect a person.

A few native species in our community of Marin County, are the red-tailed hawk, Heermann’s gull, double-crested and Brandt’s cormorants, and the brown pelican.

The red-tailed hawk is distinguished as one of the largest North-American hawks. Red-tails are approximately 2 feet long with a wing span of 4 1/2 feet. Usually seen because of their habit of circling high in the air. They range throughout the United States and Canada. Typical habitat is open country, scrub woodlands or wide rocky canyons. The red-tail has the widest ecological tolerance of any hawk in North America. Being a bird of prey, they need a large amount of protein and calcium during their growth and development.

Kali, is a red-tailed hawk and was brought to Wildcare in 1989 with an injured wing, a gun-shot wound. Most of the injured wing could not be saved and was amputated which left her unable to survive in the wild.

Heermann’s gull is a gull that is seen along the west coast and it is smaller and darker than the western gull. It is dark grey-brown all over. As it reaches maturity, in 3-4 years, the head becomes white with a dark orange bill. Herman the gull came to us at Wildcare with a gun shot wound in his wing.

Cormorants are dark colored seabirds with a long neck and webbed feet. Found along the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Baja, cormorant live on rocky coasts, bays and sloughs. The double crested cormorant can also be seen inland in lake, river and swamp areas. In an effort to help regulate body temperature, cormorants may be seen with their mouth open and throat pouch flapping. While out of the water, the cormorants often stands with wings outspread. To tell the difference between a double-crested and Brandt’s cormorants, look at the yellow throat pouch on the double crested cormorants and in the mature birds two (double) crests on the top of the head. The Brandt’s cormorant has a blue throat pouch and will develop long decorative white feathers in the breeding season.

Brown pelicans are huge water birds with a large pouch under their bill. Their wingspan is 7-8 feet. They fly low almost touching the water with their wing tips. Brown pelicans are on the federal and state endangered species list due to the use of the pesticide DDT, in the 1960’s. The pesticide got into the water and then into the fish that brown pelicans eat. The pesticide then caused extremely thin egg shells (or eliminated the shell entirely). Scoma came to Wildcare in 1991 with a severe wing injury.