Dozens of baby herons rescued from collapsed Oakland tree.
Dozens of herons, egrets nested in Oakland ficus
The last of dozens of traumatized baby birds were rescued Friday afternoon from a huge tree in Oakland that split in half, sending nests and eggs plummeting to the ground as heron and egret mothers flew around in futile desperation.
Bird lovers saved as many as 88 snowy egret and blackcrowned night heron fledglings, nestlings and eggs after the ficus, which served as their rookery, partially collapsed Wednesday in front of the post office on Jackson and 13th streets in downtown Oakland.
The tree, which has been there for as long as a century, was ordered chopped down after the remainder was deemed a danger to pedestrians, prompting a major effort to collect the stranded chicks.
The drama happened very close to where tree trimmers hired by the U.S. Postal Service were accused in 2014 of feeding baby birds into a wood chipper after sawing off branches of ficus trees where egrets and herons were nesting.
The two species are federally protected under the U.S. Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
Twenty of the dewyeyed creatures were killed and 18
others tumbled to the pavement during the initial collapse Wednesday, officials said. Over the past couple of days, 50 snowy egrets, 22 night herons and 16 eggs were collected by volunteer birders and experts with the nonprofit International Bird Rescue, which operates a rescue center.
Rescuers spent Thursday and Friday cutting branches, collecting nests and capturing the last 19 terrified juvenile birds that were hopping from branch to branch as their distraught mothers and fathers swooped around the tree.
“The parents are flying in, some of them are actually feeding these babies, and others are looking for parts of the tree that aren’t there anymore,” said J.D. Bergeron, executive director of Fairfield’s International Bird Rescue, which coordinated the rescue. “It’s absolutely traumatic for the parents.”
He said 40 or 50 heron and egret parents were still flying around Friday, landing on the roof of the post office building and on nearby trees.
Bergeron had been at the scene since Wednesday with coworker Michelle Bellizzi after a “frantic woman” spotted the tiny herons and egrets scrambling around the fallen ficus and called the rescue center.
“There are baby birds in trouble everywhere,” she told rescue center officials.
They were joined by volunteers with the Golden Gate Audubon Society, professional tree trimmers, Oakland city officials and Postal Service representatives in the effort to save the tiny birds.
Bergeron said it is common for herons and egrets to nest together in large groups. He guessed there were 50 to 60 nests, each containing two to four chicks, in the tree before it fell. Although half the tree was standing when he got there, it’s a busy street and experts determined that the rest of the tree was in imminent danger of falling, so it had to be taken down.
Bergeron worked with arborists and tree cutters hired by the Postal Service on Friday, cutting away branches one at a time and moving upward until they cornered a crowd of cowering juveniles still too young to fly. Others managed to fly short distances before being collected, he said.
“We’ve got a whole bunch of young birds,” Bergeron said. “They are hard to catch.”
Clinic staff and volunteers at the Fairfield rescue center were preparing enclosures for the incoming patients, some just days old and requiring intensive care in a warm incubator. Helping the injured birds recover will also be a challenge, Bergeron said.
The plan is to care for the birds until they are grown and ready to be released into the wild, probably in six or seven weeks.
“This is obviously something you would never want to do except when you have to,” he said. “But I feel really encouraged that the post office and city made decisions that they didn’t have to make to protect these birds.”
Donations to help care for the chicks can be made through the bird rescue website at www.birdrescue.org.