Disaster struck this week at a large heron and egret rookery in downtown Oakland, CA. A large ficus tree split and partially toppled on Wednesday, sending dozens of baby birds tumbling to the ground. A concerned citizen saw these birds in crisis and immediately called our San Francisco Bay-Delta wildlife center to come to the … Read more
Celebrating Baby Herons and Egrets – Modern-Day Dinosaurs! The connection between the today’s birds and their ancient dinosaur ancestors was first suggested in 1860 with the discovery of the feathered dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, in Germany. Today, when we look at the baby herons and egrets in care at our wildlife centers, that relationship couldn’t be more … Read more
Why how she’s grown! Mara the murre has tripled in weight since she was rescued in Marin County in late July. She arrived into care hungry and anemic and weighing only 240 grams. Her latest weight: 720 grams. This Common Murre was named for one of our volunteers who was walking her dogs on the … Read more
Dear Supporters, Thanks to people like you, Mara is slowly recovering from starvation. We’re hand-feeding her every day, filling in for the role her father would have played. She’s also swimming with a rescued adult murre who is acting as a surrogate parent during her recovery. We continue to monitor her progress daily, but it … Read more
Meet Mara: Young murres like Mara have been flooding our Northern California wildlife center for the past two months. Little Mara was named after her quick-thinking rescuer who was taking a morning walk on the beach and spotted something peculiar bobbing in the water – it looked like a tiny penguin. Springing into action, she … Read more
Dear Nature Enthusiast, Did you know that March marks the beginning of Baby Bird Season at International Bird Rescue? As early as the end of February, our clinics will begin flooding with thousands of orphaned baby birds. Due to human-related impacts such as habitat destruction, predator attacks from free-roaming cats, and abandoned nests due to … Read more
Just when we thought baby season was starting to slow down, these three orphaned Green Heron chicks came into care this week because of human kindness. After the mother heron was struck by a car near Glendale, CA, a Good Samaritan scooped up the brood and delivered them to our Los Angeles wildlife center. The … Read more
Our two wildlife centers are inundated with baby birds, but we also have a large number of not-yet-hatchlings! This week’s photo shows the egg incubator at our San Francisco Bay-Delta wildlife center with a variety of eggs in it. The top row has a number of Western Gull eggs from the ongoing Bay Bridge demolition … Read more
This week we have a nice surprise in the fuzzy silver face of a young diving bird called a grebe. While we are not yet sure if this chick is a Western Grebe or Clark’s Grebe since the two species look quite alike at this age, we are quite sure he is adorable! This “grebe-ling” … Read more
After 46 years, it sometimes feels like we have seen it all… but our patients can still bring surprises! American Coot chicks are perhaps some of the oddest babies we get at Bird Rescue. They start out with fire-engine red and yellow head feathers and grow into a relatively drab, dark gray with black heads and … Read more