Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Injured birds need your help. And so do the volunteers and organizations that save them. Here’s what you can do

It is almost a certainty that at one point in our lives, we will encounter a bird in distress. While we should make every effort to leave fledglings with their parents, sometimes birds are orphaned, injured or sick to the point where they need our help. Problem is, most of us are not veterinarians, nor can we afford the cost of taking such victims to a veterinarian. Enter the wildlife rehabilitation centre.

Most towns and cities these days are home to some kind soul or caring organization willing to volunteer to accept sick and injured birds and nurse them back to health. Often, kind local veterinarians offer their services to repair injuries or cure an illness and get the bird back on the wing in the wild. It is a humane and laudable tradition.

Still, some might point to the numerous studies that say more than a billion birds are killed by slamming into windows and by predatory domestic and feral cats each year in North America alone. (Yes, you read that right: “more than a billion.” Estimates can be hard, but some studies claim the number is as high as two billion.) How can rehabilitating and releasing several hundred wild birds each year possibly make a difference, even when multiplied by small wildlife rehab centres across the continent? It is only a drop in the bucket for the overall conservation of birds.

Does that make rehab centres a waste of time, energy and goodwill? Absolutely not. Indeed, rehabilitation efforts like these serve several valuable purposes in helping and protecting birds.