Hi everyone.
As Jason said, my name is Shannon.
And I will be talking about wildlife rehabilitation
of birds.
So I did my internship at Blue Mountain Wildlife Center,
which is up in Pendleton, Oregon, which
is in northeastern Oregon very close to the Washington border.
What this organization does is it
takes in injured, orphaned and sick birds.
And it helps rehabilitate them and ideally release them back
into the wild.
And it takes a wide range of birds
from raptors to song birds and everything in between.
Additionally, this organization does some education
where they have some birds that live on site permanently.
And people can come and take tours
and learn about why those birds are there
and why they can't be released.
And sometimes the director of the organization
will bring those birds to schools or camps
and do a similar presentation there.
Additionally, this organization serves a very large area,
approximately the size of New York State.
So we get a lot of birds from a very large area.
As an intern, my duties and responsibilities
included feeding and giving water to the animals,
doing treatments to make sure that they were getting better,
intakes when we got new animals, lots of cleaning
and sometimes releases.
And up there you see a picture of an ordinary goshawk, which
is one of the permanent residents.
So first and foremost feeding and water.
One of the main things that the interns did
is we took care of the baby birds, which sometimes mean
they needed to be fed as often as every 30 minutes, usually
formula.
And that began at 7 AM and ended at 8 PM.
So that kept us very busy.
Also, we provided food for the animals
in the clinic that had not been moved outside yet.
And that also ranged from formula and seed
to animals, such as mice.
And we would also feed the animals outdoors.
So every morning we would feed the songbirds seed and fruit.
And then once for a couple of weeks when one of the employees
was gone, I was actually designated
to take care of some of the animals outside.
But she usually takes care them.
They received most meat, like rabbits.
All the more intensive things we did were treatments.
So we would treatments up to three times a day, morning,
noon, and evening.
And first we would weigh the animals
to make sure they weren't losing weight.
We would then give them medicines
such as oral medication or sometimes injections.
And we would give them foods and special fruits they needed
to make sure that they were hydrated
and getting all the nutrients they needed.
And if necessary, we would change [INAUDIBLE]..
And you can see here myself and another intern to feeding
a baby American kestrel.
You can't really see the kestrel,
so I put a picture of them down the bottom.
One of the really fun things that we did
were intakes, which is when we got new birds.
And the first things we would do is look at them
to see if we can immediately tell what was wrong with it.
If not, we would anesthetize it and palpate it.
That is where you feel it, starting at the center
and moving along each wing, to see if you could feel
any broken bones or injuries.
We would then do a radiograph, which is basically
an X-ray to pinpoint any fractures
or breaks in their bones.
And then for the larger raptors, we
would draw blood to do lead tests
and populate total packed cell volume and [? see ?] buffy coat
and do total protein, which gave us
some information about their immune system.
As they were waking up from the anesthetics,
we would give them injections, often vitamin A and D complex
and vitamin B. Sometimes iron if they have really low packed
cell volume, and then oral medications
which ranged from antibiotics.
Everyone would get anti-parasite medication.
Some would get anti-inflammatory.
Some would get pain meds.
And you see here a female juvenile bald eagle
who is under anesthesia.
And the bald patch on her wings is just where we drew blood.
As I mentioned before I did a lot of cleaning, which I mostly
bring up to point out that wildlife rehabilitation
is not the most glamorous job.
So I cleaned kennels and cages.
And I swept and mopped floors.
And I did lots and lots of dishes.
And when we had time, which was not very frequently,
we would go outside and rake some of the outdoor enclosures.
And, of course, we would constantly be doing laundry.
In here, you see a baby merganser
with a dish of meal worms.
And as you can see, the blanket that he's on
is already very dirty.
One of the really rewarding parts of my internship
was doing releases.
So when a bird was getting better,
we would test fly it and see if they could actually survive on
it own.
And if it was deemed releasable, we would let it go.
So here I have a short video of myself releasing a white owl.
So, this white owl came in while I was there.
And we had it for about six weeks.
It had a broken wing, and we weren't sure
if it was ever going to fly again.
But obviously it did.
So, that was really great.
A few interesting cases that I want to bring up that I thought
were really cool during my internship,
on the left you see a ring-billed gull, which came in
and it had swallowed a fish hook.
So what we did for this was we gave it
some mice and some extra fur from other mice
in the hopes that it would make a pellet, which it would
[? cast, ?] and it did.
And the pellet did contain the fish hook, but also
a lure and a rock, as you can see in the picture there.
In the center, we have five Vaux's swifts,
which we got towards the end of my internship.
They were a pain to take care of because
their aerial insectivores, which means they only eat insects,
and only while flying.
So we had to force feed them.
And we had to be very careful not to fracture their jaws
because their very small.
And then in the top right, you see a picture of a bird
that we had a really hard time identifying.
If anyone wants to guess what kind of bird it is?
Anyone?
It's actually a brown-headed cowbird.
But it's very small, so we had a really hard time figuring out
what that was.
And then below it we have a common night hawk, which
actually had to be euthanized.
But it's one of my favorite birds.
So I wanted to be with it.
So I faced a lot of challenges during my internship,
the first of which was emotional challenges.
We had to euthanized a lot of birds, which
was very hard to deal with.
And sometimes we just didn't have the resources to take
care of some of the birds.
They could potentially recover, but we
didn't have the manpower or the technology
to help them get there.
And that was really challenging knowing that these birds could
possibly be saved but we simply didn't
have the resources to do that.
Additionally, I faced physical challenges.
Like I mentioned, I worked from 7 AM to 8 PM, of course
with some breaks, but basically everyday.
I had one day off the entire [? time. ?]
So it was just physically exhausting.
And then I faced personal challenges.
I had to learn-- we didn't get a formal training when we began,
so I had to learn on the job, which was frustrating when
I didn't get the full picture.
And I often made mistakes.
We also had to learn to work independently.
So we had a running list of what needed to be done everyday.
And we would just do whatever we could when we had time.
And then I had to balance responsibilities
with the other intern who was there.
So sometimes one of us would do dishes.
And some of us would get to work with the birds.
And we did work out a good system for that.
So overall, I really enjoyed my internship.
And I would highly recommend it for anyone
who's interested in wildlife rehabilitation.
And as you see here is a northern baby spotted owl,
which is very cute.
But thank you for your attention.
And I'll take any questions.
We'll hold the questions until the end.
OK.
[INAUDIBLE]
OK.
Thank you very much.
[APPLAUSE]