Rocky brightened spirits in bleak year
Ravensbeard Wildlife Center, which nursed the celebrated Rockefeller Center Christmas tree owl back to health, gets a financial boost after her stay
All it took was answering the phone and posting an item on Facebook.
And, just like that, the rescue of a tiny Northern saw-whet owl dubbed Rockefeller had the Ravensbeard Wildlife Center and its founder, Ellen Kalish, in the national spotlight.
Rocky was discovered in the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree two days after it had been cut down in Oneonta and was being moved into place in Manhattan. A workman recovered the owl and his wife sought someone to take the bird.
“It was just like every other call,” Kalish said. ‘It was, ‘ Okay. ... Okay. ... You don’t have the owl now. ... Where’s does your husband work?’ In my mind, I was thinking maybe I could meet the husband somewhere if it was local, and when she said the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, I almost dropped the phone. I was like, ‘ What? There’s an owl in Manhattan and you’re calling me?’
“She lived up here and I guess my number was the first number to come up. It could have been anyone to have answered that phone,” she added. “It was just such a wonderful story and I wanted to share the story with my Facebook followers like I did all summer with the releases we had.”
The post, slugged “A Secret in the Rockefeller Center Christmas
Tree,” on Nov. 17 went viral — fast. The item quickly made its way into the New York City tabloids and onto television.
It didn’t take long for Kalish’s voicemail file to fill to capacity. Emptying that mailbox became a daily occupation.
“I think things now are finally calming down and it’s looking like I’m having my life back together,” she said. “It’s been really fun and the comments and the cards have been so heartwarming, so full of hope and grateful for what I do. It feels as though it’s the first time people have ever heard of this, of wildlife rehab. I’ve been doing this for 20 years.”
After getting the underweight Rocky back to strength after the bird went three days without food or water, discovering that he was actually a she after reaching the female weight category and consulting with owl experts, the decision was made to release the owl. On Nov. 25, the day before Thanksgiving, Rocky flew away with only a handful of people watching. A video of
her release was put on Ravensbeard.org.
“I took her out of the crate. She sat on my hand for almost four minutes,” Kalish said. “There was nobody near her, so she felt comfortable. She flew right up into the nearest pine tree, which is what I was hoping for.”
Some people believed that Rocky should be brought home to Oneonta
“One person said, ‘I will pay for you to bring it back,”’ Kalish recalled.
“All adult owls and birds of prey we take back to where they came from, because they do have a waiting mate, whereas saw-whet owls don’t,” she explained. “They have a new mate each year and they’re nomadic. They do not have a family waiting for them. They’re off once they are able to hunt on their own, off finding their new territory.
“It was also a first-year bird. It was born in the spring, so she’s going to have to find her own place. It wasn’t probably a resident of Oneonta in the first place. She was just passing through.”
Added Kalish, “One of the experts told us that we should not take it back there. It was the end of the (sixeight week) migration season and she was on the tail
end of the migration. If we brought her back up north, that would put her back three or four days in the migration. He said it’s best to release them a little further south of where you are and they will be fine.”
A media star for 10 days, Rocky has resumed her anonymity. Kalish chose not to put an identification or tracking band on her.
“We thought about and, in the long run, we just didn’t want anyone harassing her or seeing a saw-whet in the wild and trying to catch it to think maybe it was the Rockefeller bird,” Kalish said. “Who knows? People are weird. We did not want any trace of this bird to be out there, to have something bad happening.”
The diminutive owl with the big eyes was a ray of light to a bleak year just as the holidays were starting.
“It was like a little lightbulb in the middle of the dark in the year of 2020,” said Kalish, who understood that Rocky’s size had a lot to do with it. “I said that to a few people. If it was a great-horned or a barn owl, it wouldn’t have made half the splash that it did.”
And the public didn’t look at Rocky and see a predator with talons.
“Even the tiny ones are voracious carnivores and marvelous hunters,” Kalish said. “People look at this little Furby face and say, ‘Oh, how cute. I want one for my living room.’”
All wildlife rehab cen
ters struggle. Like sanctuaries, they rescue but cannot charge for their services. They are at the mercy of donations.
Kalish used her own money for a sizable feed bill in October. Ravensbeard, which takes in injured, ill and orphaned animals, will normally house 100 birds each year. It was 150 by May and, with the economy hurt by COVID, donations were down.
Kalish has eight educational birds and a hedge hog appropriately named Sonic for lectures, but those events had been limited to the virtual world in 2020. She did do a segment called “Rescued Birds of Prey” for Dan Shornstein’s Ashokan Field Campus education program.
Rocky provided a financial boost.
“When this came along, it just totally changed everything in a positive way,” Kalish admitted.
“My son is in advertising and he was like, ‘Mom, people are banging down doors, asking for Christmas ornaments with Rocky’s picture on it. We have to do something,” she said. “I thought, ‘This is great, a wonderful way to raise money for our center. We need new caging. We’re actually renting right now.”
To meet the high demand, there are now mugs, ornaments, stickers, T-shirts and phone cases with the now-iconic image of Rocky wrapped in an orange scarf for sale on the Ravensbeard website. All proceeds benefit the organization.
Three weeks ago, Kalish and lifelong friend Gideon Sterer agreed to write a children’s book on Rocky’s adventure for Little, Brown and Company. Renowned children’s illustrator Ramona Kaulitzki will do the art.
The center was forced to relocate five years ago. It set up a temporary rehab shelter, but is hopeful of finding a permanent home.
“We are looking to stay in Saugerties,” Kalish said. “We want to get something that we can grow into. We’re looking for at least five acres, if not 10. We’re still getting our plans together. We’re hoping to do something by the early spring.”
Rocky provided a muchneeded spark to 2020.
“Every bird is our teacher and we learn something new from every new case that comes in. This one was just a great little story. She looked healthy enough that I felt good that she was a candidate for release,” Kalish said.