Today at IBRRC

Below is "Holding One", where most of the indoor birds are kept. there is another bigger area, "Holding Two" for major bird events like oil spills. None of the birds are open to viewing in order to lower stress, or in the case of baby birds, to prevent imprinting.

Holding One, looking the other direction.

Jeanine, Tina, and I had a Great Blue Heron as one of our assignments today. I brought it up from Santa Cruz on Thursday, along with a loon, and a duckling. Here Jeanine is holding it's foot.

I am drawing blood from a vein - often tricky to find. I asked Monica, our intern from Norway, to take a picture. She proceeded to take a bunch. Blood information is essential for making decisions such as washing, release, first night out, etc.

Since the heron was somewhat dehydrated, finding the vein was even more difficult. Jeanine, in the middle, is an interpreter for the deaf, and Tina was a CHP officer until injuring her back. We're a diverse group of volunteers, which makes it all the more fun.

Blood, at last! From here, the little crit tubes go into a centrifuge, and then are read.

Checking the head. This heron had some head injuries. He was found in a mall on Soquel Ave. in Santa Cruz - definitely not a healthy sign.

Jeanine checks the pupils for reaction to light.

A look in the mouth to check for dehydration and parasites.

Then outdoors for the first time to "Spa 5". Here I'm giving him a vitamin.

Then a little tubing of water to help hydration. This is a real test of dexterity, as you have to make sure you get the tube past the glottis (trachea), hold the tube on the syringe so it doesn't pop off, press the plunger with your chest, all while being bitten. With wild birds, there is an infinite number of ways to screw up.

Finally, the heron gets to hide in his new outdoor enclosure. Can you spot him in the middle of the picture? They are masters of hiding in plain sight.

Next, I did a little repair job on this Surf Scoter's pool door. Self releases are an embarrassment to staff, and usually not good for the patient.

Indoors, we have these 3 baby Green Herons - and a lot of other birds.

This is a baby Great Blue Heron in the ICU, where he can be kept toasty warm. Well, that wraps it up for today.

Back to the Pallisades

I had a nice hike, today, back up to the Pallisades area above Calistoga

The howling wolf rock formation above has caught my eye before.

I often have lunch at the spot where this picture is taken. It is off of a side trail, near a little hidden cascade, with only wildland in sight.

I looked up this plant when I got home. It is called Virgin's Bower, and is a woody vine that can get up to 35 feet tall. Native Americans mashed the leaves and bark to make medicinal soap and shampoo, and boiled the leaves to apply to sores and rashes. Tea was made from its leaves or bark for heaadaches, sore throats and fevers. Dried seed floss is an excellent tinder and the stems have been used to make string. Heck, it must have been the Native Americans' Walmart!

I looked this butterfly up, also. It is a Chalcedon Checkerspot. At higher elevations, its catterpillars can hibernate for several years. That's all.

Hot Chicks!

As part of our bird care today, Deborah and I had these two little chicks in an incubator to care for.


The one in front is a killdeer, and the other one is an avocet. The killdeer weighs 14 grams, and its body is about the size of a ping-pong ball. The feather duster is a surrogate mommy. In the dishes are live tubifex worms, and meal worms. The photo looks blue because of the ultra violet light in the incubator. So cute!

Peli Release

Today, I got to take two pelicans for release at Fort Baker, below the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. There were just two other people in the immediate area. They seemed to be tourists from Eastern Europe. They thought the pelis were my pets, and that I would be taking them back home after I let them splash around. As the pelicans finally flew off under the Golden Gate, I said, "Goodbye, have a nice life." The tourists thought I was talking to them, and they wished me a goodbye, also.

A little stretch and look around after the long ride from IBRRC in Cordelia.

"You go first." "No, you go."

The pelican on the left had a broken lower mandible, and had to wear a hideous fixator for days that looked like the outrigger of a canoe. The pelican on the right, Nick and I brought up from NAR in Santa Cruz around two months ago. She was very sick, and had a foul smelling cheesy infection in her pouch. They faced certain death - now look at them!

"Well, shall we do it?"

"This is a nice view, but let's get the flock out of here."

Let's Float

They paused for a little floating - salt water at last!