Thomas Sweets, the executive director Key West Wildlife Center, joined Good Morning Keys on Keys Talk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s going on at the center.
It is certainly baby bird season right now.
Sweets said, “It’s getting busy. I was down on Geraldine Street in Bahama Village this morning. A little fledgling Mockingbird had gotten into somebody’s apartment and I had to get him out of there. And then I was up to Rockland Key for the Monroe Concrete Company. They had a laughing gull that was down with a bit of a wing injury that I was able to rescue. And then we got a call from Summerland again about another baby bird, another baby Mockingbird, that looks like it’s not doing so well. It’s down on the ground. It’s a fledge, but it looks like it may need a little help as well. So, boy, it’s been a very, very busy morning, running around all over town.”
Remember, just because a baby bird is on the ground does not mean they’re in distress and in need of saving.
Sweets confirmed, “That is correct. And in fact, we’re getting a lot of birds fledging right now. They’re leaving the nest. So they spend some time in the nest, but as soon as they can get out of it, they do. They want to get on the ground right now. We’ve got the white crowned pigeons, a lot of them downtown. They’re nesting downtown in Old Town, and we’re getting a lot of them leaving the nest. And we’re starting to see the songbirds, the grackles and the northern mockingbirds. They’re starting to leave the nest. This is sort of the first wave of the baby season, and it is normal and natural for these birds to leave the nest and be on the ground. Their job is to sort of be camouflaged. In the sake of the songbirds, there, you’ll see them jumping around and squawking and making noise, and usually the parents are nearby. They will dive bomb you and things like that. With the doves and the pigeons, it’s going to be a little different. Their job is just to sort of hide and remain quiet. You won’t see the parents as much. The parents are going to be out during the day gathering up seeds. They will come back once or twice during the day and feed the baby, fill up the baby, and it sort of looks like they’re attacking them. They’re down there and they’re they’re basically regurgitating seeds into the baby doves and pigeons. So, yes, it’s a busy time. If at all possible, the best thing is to allow the parents to finish the job of raising the young. You don’t want to be a baby bird napper, but sometimes they do get into trouble, or they’ll end up nesting in places that aren’t so great. They’ll end up fledging, in a parking lot or on a street or a busy road. And in those kind of cases, we are certainly here to help. People can call us and we can talk them through. There’s usually some things that go into determining whether a baby bird really does need the help, body language. Are the eyes open? Is the bird alert? Is he hopping around if it’s a songbird, or is he just tucked away somewhere, if it’s a dove? So there’s a lot of different factors. A lot of times, we’ll ask people to take a picture and text it to us, and then we can get a better idea of what’s going on and if the bird really needs help, or it just needs to be situated someplace safe and allow the parents to continue the care.”
The season for baby birds has only just begun.
Sweets said, “Thankfully, they’re only on the ground for a short period of time. They will start taking short flights. Generally, it’s between a couple days, or maybe five days, depending on how developed they were when they left the nest. There’s a lot of factors that go into it, but yes, we always try to keep the babies with their parents whenever that’s possible. If they’re in a bad place, they usually can be moved without disrupting the parents. A lot of people think that if someone touches a bird, the parents are going to abandon it. But that’s just not true. It really isn’t. You can move a bird if it has to be done. And we certainly can answer those kinds of questions and help with that situation. That’s 305-292-1008, that’s our 24 hour rescue line. And you’re always going to get a live person, and we will respond to your needs.”
What other rescues have been happening recently?
Sweets said, “We’ve had quite a few great blue herons and a couple of great white herons. I think that’s due to the fact that these are younger birds. They’re not quite a year old yet. They were born last season, and the first year of life is always critical for these birds, and if they can survive through that, then they have a really good shot of making it to adulthood. And we’ve had quite a few recently, great blue herons. We had one rescued down on Stock Island, down in a backyard, unable to get out of the backyard, a little bit weak and a high parasite count. We’ve had, I think, another great white heron that possibly was struck by a vehicle, but that bird has been responding well to treatment. We had a little cattle egret come down and land on a boat that was out in the sanctuary waters, and he was just tired out, exhausted, and had a high parasite count, and he rode on that boat all the way into Ocean Key Marina, and we were able to get that bird into treatment. It’s still very busy at the center. We’ve really the tail end of the brown pelicans, because that season sort of stretched along a little later than usual this year. So we still have some brown pelicans in care. We’ve got quite a few herons. We’ve got some egrets. We’re starting to see these baby birds coming in. So yes, it’s really a busy time, and anybody that needs help with these situations, just give us a call and we will do our best to figure out the situation and get the bird help if it needs it.”
Has the pelican migratory season passed?
Sweets said, “That is true. Usually we would be farther along. Most of them with most of the first years would be gone, doing their little mini migration up into other parts of Florida, but we are still seeing some juveniles around town. I think it’s just weather related. I think just the way the winter ended, some of them sort of delayed, heading back north. So yes, the pelicans have moved on. But right now we’re sort of dealing with the tail end of that. The pelicans are social, but they don’t really get a lot of parental teaching. The pelicans basically leave the nest and they have to go on their first migrations. They learn from watching other pelicans, wherever they end up. That’s another good reason why you shouldn’t be feeding pelicans at fish cleaning stations or anything like that, because if a young Pelican sees that, then they sort of figure that’s the way they’re supposed to get their food, and they will end up being beggars for life. All the species are a little different. The pelicans don’t get as much parental training, they sort of get on the job training by watching other pelicans. But the songbirds, they’re very social up to a point. Once the parents, they do get turned loose, and they do sort of live an independent life, but they are more of a communal species. The songbirds, the grackles, or the northern mockingbirds that we see so much down here, they will actually raise other birds babies, if, like, when the fledglings go out and they leave the nest, if they venture a little too far and they end up in another bird’s territory, you will see that they will have communal parenting going on. So that’s sort of interesting. They’re all sort of different when the goal is to get them released. Some of them are very independent. The Great Blue Herons, the great white Herons, they really establish a territory and they defend it. Once a year they will get together socially for breeding time. A lot of the birds are like that. The cattle egrets, the herons, they sort of spend most of the year independently, but during the spring, they will sort of meet up socially for breeding season. A lot of that happens up in the Everglades, for birds in the Keys. But our goal is to get them rehabilitated, and then return to the wild and they go back to the wild, and they can pretty much slot right back into the wild behavior. I mean, we try to find good places for them to go back. The double crested cormorants, we try to take them out into the sanctuary to release them, because you see a lot of very healthy cormorant populations out there. So we try to give them the best shot that they can to sort of get back to being fully wild after we release them.”
The new facility at the Wildlife Center is amazing, but need for help and support from the community never stops.
Sweets said, “We are so thankful for everyone who supported us in the building of the new building. And the new building, it takes a lot of upkeep. We’re still really, really busy with all of these different birds, so we really rely on the support of the community, not just for the building of the building, but for continuing on and keeping the structure in good shape going forward, and allowing us to do all of these rescues and rehabilitation. We serve the community, and we benefit from the generosity of our local Keys community, and we can’t say thank you enough for everyone that supports us. We cover from mile marker 0 up to 33 and there’s always expenses, especially going out there and getting these birds rescued from people calling when they’re in distress. So any type of support that we get from the community, we are just so thankful. We strive to do our best to provide the best services we can for Key West and the Lower Keys.”
For more information, click here: https://keywestwildlifecenter.org/