On a recent afternoon at the Golden Gate Recreation Area’s Ft. Baker, International Bird Rescue released its 1,000th Blue-Banded Pelican, with wonderful help from bird lover Ken Blum and his family! #ROO, a juvenile, was released alongside a fellow juvenile pelican. Surrounded by porpoises, gulls, cormorants, grebes and sea lions at Ft. Baker, the two … Read more
An update on the penguins impacted by the SELI 1 oil spill from our friends at the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) in South Africa: Since the SELI 1 caused a major oil slick off Table Bay on Saturday, 1 September 2012, SANCCOB (the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation … Read more
Little Blue Penguin in the Rena Spill, photo by Curt Clumpner By Barbara Callahan, International Bird Rescue In the early morning hours of October 5, 2011, the MV Rena, a large cargo ship carrying 1,368 containers, struck a reef in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty, spilling several hundred metric tons of heavy fuel and … Read more
With the one-year anniversary of the Rena Oil Spill nearing, we received good news in our inbox from New Zealand a few days back on a trio of Little Blue Penguins oiled by a recent diesel spill. Here’s the news release, courtesy Bryce Lawrence of Hawke’s Bay Regional Council: Penguins Safely Returned Home Hawke’s Bay … Read more
Phalaropes have been washing up along the shoreline and coming in to International Bird Rescue’s Los Angeles Center, unable to stand. Once stabilized, the Phalaropes have been receiving tube feedings, as it is very hard to get this species to eat on their own. They are then moved to an indoor, cool water hospital pool, … Read more
Turkey shot with arrow rescued from WildRescue on Vimeo. Rebecca Dmytryk, founder of WildRescue and a near-20 year member of International Bird Rescue’s response team, writes this guest post on a young wild turkey shot with a target arrow (out of season, and thus illegal: a reward has since been offered for information leading to … Read more
This adult Sora Rail arrived at International Bird Rescue’s Los Angeles Center with a fractured wing and a leg injury that prevented him from standing upright or even putting weight on the wounded limb. He also had a small hole in his left, upper mandible, and was reported by his rescuer to have been cat … Read more
After she was rescued from a highway tunnel by park rangers in Yosemite National Park, a wayward female Brown Pelican was delivered to International Bird Rescue’s San Francisco Bay Center on July 18. When she arrived at the center, we determined her gender and age by the length of her bill. She was an after-second-year … Read more
It’s been an extremely busy summer for both International Bird Rescue’s wildlife care centers in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. But while Brown Pelicans have recently taken up most of the spotlight (as well as the fish), we continue to care for all types of aquatic birds — seabirds, shorebirds, waterfowl, you … Read more
Last year International Bird Rescue spent 6 months helping to manage oiled bird rehabilitation efforts from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone saw the disturbing pictures of the heavily-oiled pelicans captured in Louisiana. Over 90% of those birds were rehabilitated and released back into the wild. Because the Gulf area … Read more