Tom Sweets, executive director of the 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 the height of brown pelican season right now.
Sweets said, “Especially that little bit of a cooler weather snap that we had recently, that did affect the youngsters. We still, oh boy, we are busy. We’re still seeing some pelicans coming in for migration. A lot of times they’ll wait until the coldest part of the year to sort of really get pushed to head south. So we’re still getting some coming in, and a lot of those end up being weak and worn out, dehydrated, underweight from migration. We’ve got a lot better in the area now and they can get into trouble a number of ways. Again, just being first year youngsters, they don’t always have the best hunting skills. They can miss too many meals and get dehydrated. They’ll end up somewhere where you wouldn’t usually expect to see them, like a parking lot or on a road. Then sometimes we’ve got some fishing line entanglements with some of the pelicans, and then we’ve got pouch tears and holes from them being fed at fish cleaning stations. So this time of year, the focus at the Key West Wildlife Center is really the brown pelican and all of the migrants that have arrived, and we’re trying to keep them healthy and happy and hunting out there. We’re sort of winding down on the Raptor side of things. We still have some birds in care, and we’re still occasionally getting rescues. We’ve had a broad wing hawk recently. We’ve had a number of American kestrels. So yeah, we’re really at our busiest time of year for rescue calls, with the Pelican season really in full swing, and then our hawk season starting to sort of wind down.”
The center typically sees more than 1,400 rescues each year.
Sweets said, “We are up to 139 wild bird rescues, just for the first two months, or not even finishing the first two months. So 139 in two months, and that’s just birds that came in that we were able to rescue. We get a lot more calls about birds that people are asking about or concerned about, but end up not needing to be rescued or they fly away. So, it’s been a busy year. For Pelican season, that’s probably about right, we might be a little bit ahead, but we’ve had a really busy year so far.”
The center also has a new hospital, of sorts, that the community helped get finished.
Sweets said, “We are thankful the community supported us and allowed us the $2.4 million to get the structure built. It’s working out wonderfully. We’ve got the hydrotherapy room that helps with birds that are hit or impacted, and that have leg issues and that really helps them get rehabilitated and back on track. So that’s just one of the many things. We have a much nicer area to keep them. We’ve got some outside on the porch enclosures. So once they leave the critical area inside the clinic, then they can go outside and be treated, still out there, but be out in the sunshine and the air. So that really helps. We’re getting our clinic, our medical portion of our clinic, all up and running. We’re going to have a new gas anesthesia machine. We’re going to have a digital X ray up and running so that we can do all of these treatments at the center, whereas before, the great folks over at the Key West SPCA or our veterinarian would meet us up at the Marathon clinic to do surgery sometimes. So now we’ll be able to do all of that in house. So it’s definitely improving our ability to treat these birds all the way through the experience, from when they get admitted to when they ultimately get released.”
What are signs that a bird is in distress?
Sweets said, “Since we are really in the middle of Pelican season, you would want to look for pelicans that are not in places you would expect them down on roads or parking lots. If a pelican is staying somewhere on a dock on a property overnight, doesn’t leave by dark, that’s usually a pretty good sign. There are some exceptions to that rule. I mean, we do have night hawks and night herons that will sleep during the day, and you could see them on properties out at night. I sometimes see green herons hunting at night, but for the most part, if you’re seeing a bird, especially a pelican, sleeping on a dock after dark, that usually means that something is going on, because they generally all go off and roost in the mangroves overnight. In fact, one of our better rescue stories so far this month, there was an adult brown pelican down on North Roosevelt Boulevard, and the Key West Police Department responded. Two officers followed that bird in their cruiser, and they kept the bird from going back into traffic, where the Pelican certainly would have gotten hit. So we were able to get up there and meet the officers. The bird did fly over the railing of the North Roosevelt bike path into the water, but I was able to make the rescue. I think what had happened is that bird had been struck in traffic earlier and then was still on the road, and so he had some impact related head trauma. But that bird is already out of our clinic and out in our wild bird aviary, getting ready to be released. So great save by Key West Police Department on that one. But birds in the road, birds in the parking lots, really anywhere you wouldn’t expect to see a pelican. Or if they’re spending the night on a dock or on a property, that’s another pretty good sign that they need help.”
The big annual benefit for the Key West Wildlife Center is coming up Sunday, February 22 at 3 p.m. at West Martello Plaza.
Sweets said, “It is our biggest fundraiser of the year. It’s really crucial for providing our operational budget. And the thing is we’ve got this new building thanks to the generosity of the public. But it does take a lot to keep that building up to the standards that it needs to be, keep it maintained, keep it staffed, so it doesn’t just end with that building. We really ask for the public support, and this is a great way to show it at our biggest fundraiser of the year on Sunday, February 22, It’s for the Birds. It’s always a fun event, live music, auctions, all kinds of things, great food. So we’re really looking forward to this year’s event, and it seems like things are going well towards that. So we hope to see everybody coming out. If you haven’t arranged to be there yet, we would really invite you to come out and support our wildlife rescue and rehabilitation operations. We appreciate the community’s support so much. We really do work to rehabilitate and release these birds. We just did a brown pelican release, our second group of the season, already getting turned around and back out there. So yes, it really helps all of these donations and this event, really helps us with all of our operational funding for the year. So if you’ve ever called us, if you’ve ever relied on us, we ask for your support again to keep us really being able to provide the best service we can for the Key West and the Lower Keys community. We cover all the way up to mile marker 33 and it does cost a lot to do these operations for us. And we are nonprofit, so we really do ask for the community support, and we appreciate it each and every bit, every time we rescue a bird or get a bird released. So thank you so much.”
For more information, click here: https://keywestwildlifecenter.org/