Tom Sweets, executive director of the Key West Wildlife Center, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5 FM this morning to talk about what’s happening at the center.
Baby bird season is upon us and there’s a lot to know. The most important thing is if you see a baby bird on the ground, it doesn’t mean you need to intervene.
Sweets said, “That’s the big message that we want to get out to the public. We have different types of native nesting birds here. We have the doves. We have the pigeons. We have the white crown pigeons. We’ve got the songbirds, mostly the northern Mockingbird and the grackles, the boat tailed grackle and the common grackle. They are all slightly different, but it ends up sort of being the same situation. At some point, the baby birds are going to leave the nest. A lot of people think that the birds fall out of the nest, and that that can certainly happen after a storm or high winds, or even if the nest is just not built that great up in a palm tree, you could get baby birds that fall out too early, and they do sort of require some care, but mostly what we’re talking about are the small birds. You could pretty much hold them in the palm of your hand. The doves and pigeons are going to land on the ground, and their job is just to remain camouflaged and pretty much sit in the same place all day. You won’t see the parents as much as with them. The parents will be out gathering up food, and then they will come back and feed them once or twice a day. So really, the pigeon’s and the dove’s job is just to remain motionless on the ground and try to use camouflaged. The songbirds, the grackles and the mockingbirds, they are going to be hopping around making all kinds of noise, and you will see the parents tending to those songbirds a lot more than you will to the doves and the pigeons. So that is a normal, natural thing and it’s a period that all these baby birds have to get through. Thankfully, it’s a very short period from the time they leave the nest until the time that they’re completely flying and on their own. A lot of people see these birds down on the ground and they think something terrible or bad has happened, but it’s not. That’s really where they belong is on the ground. Certainly there’s situations where if they’re down on the middle of Duval Street or they’re in some busy roadway, then yes, we certainly can help intervene. Usually it just requires moving the birds a little bit to get them back into a safe area.”
What should someone do if they think a bird is sick?
Sweets said, “What we will ask is if someone is worried about a baby bird or a fledgling on the ground, then we’ll get them to take a picture with their phone, and then we can text. That’s really helped us, in fact compared to years ago, when that really wasn’t an option, it really makes it a lot easier, because we can get a look at the condition of the bird, and the age of the bird, and see what’s going on, a lot easier and make a decision based on photographs. So we really appreciate all the people out there looking out for baby birds in distress and taking their picture and checking in with us, because that definitely helps us determine very much more detail than we would just be able to sort of guess over someone’s description on the phone.”
The brand new facilities at the Key West Wildlife Center are open.
Sweets said, “We’re open today, as a matter of fact, to the public to come and explore the indigenous park and see our operations here. So yes, we are glad to be open after the community supported our raising the roof program, where we got the new clinic built and we did some major renovations to our wild bird aviary. We welcome the public that helps support the whole project.”
Donations always help the wildlife center.
Sweets said, “It’s wonderful to have this great new facility, but we do have to keep it stocked and really right now, we’re sort of working on getting our hurricane supplies all finally stocked in, so donations, this time of year things slow down. A lot of people leave the island, not as many people around, and we definitely do need the support still. Go through our website or social media as well. Volunteers as well. Certainly, if somebody wants to volunteer, probably the easiest, fastest way to do that is just again, through the website, just shoot us an email, that way we can send it on to our volunteer coordinator. We’re always looking for support, after the great support from the community, we still do need that support on a year round basis. We’re always happy to accept volunteers and donations.”
The center is always helping animals.
Sweets said, “We do have right now we have an adult brown Pelican that was rescued in near shore waters, weak. He is actually rehabbing right now. We’ve got a couple of Osprey that we wanted to wait until after the Fourth of July activities before we got these birds released, but we should be able to release both the Ospreys and the brown pelican soon. Even with the baby birds, we’ve always got other patients, other rescues. Right now I’d say the biggest thing that we’re responding to, other than the baby birds, are we are getting some impacts, impact head trauma, from some of the songbirds, grackles, King birds. But it’s mostly dealing with all the calls and information getting out there about the baby birds. We appreciate all the support from the community in getting our new facility done, and we look forward to keeping it going at that level, and that does require volunteers and donations.”
For more information, click here: https://keywestwildlifecenter.org/