The Bird Rescue Center

FREEDOM FRIDAY!
One little bluebird needed more time. A month later, three were ready to fly. 💙

For years, Western Bluebirds have raised their young in a nest box along the County Farm loop. While monitoring this summer’s family on July 29, we watched one youngster leave the box and flutter down across the drive. This little bird wasn’t quite ready.

We quickly transferred the youngster to our partners at Native Songbird Care & Conservation for specialized care. Just shy of a month later, the news arrived: our bluebird was ready for release, with two fellow young bluebirds joining in!

A dedicated NSCC volunteer brought the trio back, and we stood quietly to watch them take flight. We have our suspicions about which birds we’re spotting now, but one thing is clear: the youngsters are fitting into the flock beautifully.

Behind that return to the wild is a community of wildlife hospitals, skilled caregivers and volunteers working together. We’re grateful to be part of it.

Have you spotted Western Bluebirds near your home or on a favorite walk? Tell us where, or share a photo in the comments. 📷

TRICK OR TREAT?
Bird-safe Halloween Decorations

Our first Halloween decor verdict: TREAT! 🎃 Window clings break up reflections so birds can spot the glass before a collision.

A-N-H-U is the species abbreviation used to identify Anna's Hummingbirds. As the name suggests, this film will give you a glimpse at caring for them in our clinic. As you watch, keep in mind this is but one of the 130 or more different species that come through our doors each and every year. We do our very best to give each one of them a second chance to fly free. See the full film: https://www.birdrescuecenter.org/anhu

Five days a week. Five years and counting. One extraordinary member of our flock.

Meet Annabel, one of those people who helps keep the Bird Rescue Center soaring.

Annabel helps care for our Ambassador Birds and serves as an Ambassador Educator, introducing these remarkable birds to the public and sharing what they can teach us about their wild counterparts.

Our Ambassador Educators don’t simply wing it. They undergo extensive training to safely handle Ambassador Birds and travel with them to community events and presentations, always keeping the birds’ well-being at the heart of what they do.

And Annabel does it five days a week, as a volunteer.

For five years, she has given BRC an extraordinary amount of her time, care, and dedication. They say birds of a feather flock together, and we feel incredibly fortunate that Annabel chose ours.

Thank you, Annabel, for helping our birds, and all of us at BRC, soar a little higher.

In this first post on Forensic Feather Education, we’re taking a closer look at stress marks: visible lines or weak points that can form across a developing feather when normal growth is temporarily disrupted.

Once that feather is molted, it can offer us a small record of what happened while it was growing. For wildlife rehabilitators, details like these are another piece of the puzzle, helping us better understand the birds that come into our care. Sometimes, even a discarded feather has something to tell us.