How to rescue a swan from a deep pit
‘Birds are not like helicopters, they can’t fly straight up’
BURNABY — A trumpeter swan is safe and recovering at the Wildlife Rescue hospital in Burnaby after a harrowing day spent trapped at the bottom of a Vancouver construction pit flooded with polluted water.
The young swan crash-landed Wednesday at an environmental remediation site at Alberta Street and Fifth Avenue.
“They were just shutting down the site for the evening when one of the workers saw something fall to the ground out of the corner of his eye and heard a loud thunk as it landed,” said Yolanda Brooks, spokesperson for the Wildlife Rescue Association of B.C.
“They don’t know if the bird hit something … but it landed head first with its backside in the air.”
The bird managed to right itself and stagger around.
Believing the bird would eventually take off once it recovered, the workers left the bird safe within the barriers of the work site.
On Thursday morning they arrived to find the bird still there but paddling at the bottom of a six-metre pit full of polluted water.
The steep sides of the pit made it impossible for the swan to gain the lift it needed to fly out.
“Birds are not like helicopters, they can’t fly straight up. They need space to move forward in order to take off,” Brooks said.
The workers called Wildlife Rescue and then spent several hours draining the pit to make it safer and easier for an attempted rescue.
The Wildlife Rescue’s two-person capture team descended down a ladder into the pit Thursday night.
They quickly cornered and caught the swan with a net.
The 14-pound bird was carried up the ladder by hand, put in a kennel and transferred it to the Wildlife Hospital in Burnaby.
Brooks said an initial examination by wildlife technicians revealed no broken bones, but the bird will be closely monitored in the coming days to assess its feather and skin condition.