A berry nice bird rescue
Vet nurse Averil Osborne is adept at popping blueberries and corn kernels into the beaks of sick kererū.
Native pigeons are well known for being fat and greedy, so it’s a very bad sign if she can’t get one to eat.
Osborne helps care for native birds, mainly kererū, tūı¯ and moreporks, which are brought in to the New Plymouth Vet Group after being found injured or sick by people in the community.
On Monday last week, she arrived at work to find a miserable-looking kererū sitting hunched in a box in the clinic’s dedicated bird room.
‘‘It was found on Sunday at the end of someone’s driveway, not flying or trying to escape,’’ she said.
Osborne starts hand feeding it from a bowl of blueberries, corn and peas to demonstrate for the camera, and a small miracle takes place.
With each juicy berry, the bird seems to wake up. It gobbles the blueberries first, then starts on the golden corn kernels.
Osborne is thrilled – seeing the bird eating is the first step to recovery.
Birds often have injuries inflicted by cats, and kererū often have broken bones and concussion from flying into a window.
‘‘Quite a few of them smash themselves, if they hit something, they can cause a lot of damage to themselves.’’
When the birds arrive, they’re seen by a vet, before being X-rayed, given pain relief and antibiotics if needed, and fluid therapy and food. Those needing longer term care are set to Wildbase Hospital at Massey University, or to the Turakina Bird Rescue.
Vet Rob Mills said this kererū was likely just semi-starved as X-rays had not revealed any injuries.
‘‘It happens at this time of year, you get a cold, grotty period of time, they just get too weak.’’
The clinic has cared for about 1700 birds over the past decade, and Mills was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in this year’s Queen’s Birthday Honours for his voluntary contribution to conservation and wildlife care in Taranaki.
Recently, they also treated a tūı¯ (it was released) and a magpie that was too badly injured to save (it was euthanased). A speckled brown Japanese quail is another patient. It was rescued from a cat on Riversdale Drive. The little bird recovered, and vet clinic staff were trying to find its owner.
The happiest endings come when the birds are released back into the wild. Last month, Osborne and Mills watched two kererū that had spent six months at Wildbase, fly out of their boxes into trees at Brooklands Park, without looking back.
‘‘It was neat that we got to do the release, it’s a real privilege, one of the most exciting parts,’’ she said.