When Doves Cry (Mynahs Too)

May 12, 2006
By Yu Shing Ting

When Linda Leveen rescued a baby bird nine years ago, she had no idea that it would change her life. "It was a baby dove, about the size of an egg, that I found on the sidewalk down in Chinatown," she recalls. "There was no number to call and it took a long time for someone to help me. Finally I found a wonderful veterinarian in Mililani. After that, here I was carrying around this little baby to work because it had to be fed every two hours, and then someone else found a bird and said, 'Here, why don't you take this one too,' and it just grew like that." From there, Leveen connected with other bird rehabbers and discovered a whole network of people in the community who are rescuing birds. However, the need was and still is greater than the help available. So in 2003 she co-founded the Wild Bird Rehab Haven. "We were finding birds and rehabbing them in our own apartments and getting swamped," she explains. "We started to get to know other rehabbers and realized that everyone is just trying to take in as many birds as possible and feed them, but there's a never-ending number of birds coming in, so we realized that we needed to develop an organization so we could draw in more volunteers. "Our goal is to have a rehab center one day, rather than have to do it out of our own homes." Right now, the Wild Bird Rehab Haven operates as an intake center in a "pretty small" office in Moiliili. The limited space allows them to only take in a few birds at a time. Currently, there are about 50 birds there and a couple of hundred being rehabbed at homes of volunteers. "We get 15 to 20 calls a day," says Leveen. "Most of the calls we try to refer out to rehabbers. And we look for rehabbers in the neighborhood or the community where the people live who found the bird. "We have a network of about 30 rehabbers, and while we so appreciate that network, we need more. They can get filled up very quickly, especially during the baby bird season, which we're in the middle of right now. "Also, most people can't take 25 babies, most people can only take maybe a handful. And most are trying to juggle between work and feeding the babies and their own lives, so we always need more people to help." So what do you do if you find a bird in distress? According to Leveen, you want to first "very carefully" pick it up, put it in a container, cover it and let it rest. "Generally for the common birds that we see, such as the songbirds and the doves, there's really no harm that can come to someone who is just picking it up," she says. "Most of them don't bite. They might try to peck at a finger a little bit, but they don't have those strong beaks that hook-bills or parrots have, so generally they're going to be pretty easy to pick up." Next, you want to keep the bird warm by putting it on a heating pad, routinely checking that it's not too hot but warm enough. "If the bird opens its beak and is breathing hard, then move it partially off the heating pad, but they need to keep it warm," advises Leveen. "Other ways of keeping it warm would be heating a towel in a microwave or hot water bottles, but those are more temporary because those will cool down in time where the heating pad is more consistent." It's also important to hydrate the bird as most birds found are very stressed and very dehydrated. Leveen suggests using a sugar-water mixture, Gatorade or papaya juice - something that has a form of sugar in it. "And be very careful when you're feeding because generally when they're sick or stressed they are going to have trouble breathing and swallowing, and you don't want to choke the bird," she says. "We suggest that people use a straw or their finger and put drops of the liquid on the tip of the bird's beak, and it will usually just run down and seep inside the bird's mouth, and the bird can swallow it. And that should be done every hour or two." After that, it's time to call for help and assess what's wrong with the bird. Or you can take it into your own hands. The Wild Bird Rehab Haven is constantly recruiting volunteers to assist with the rescue and rehabilitation of baby birds or injured birds. The group recently held a free training seminar on baby bird care, basic injury and illness. The next workshop is not scheduled yet, but interested volunteers can sign up for individual training. "I think it's easy to find birds because we're an urban area, a lot of birds get injured or fall out of their nest," says Leveen. "There's a lot of trees being cut down. They nest in people's homes and they don't want them on their roofs. Sometimes they get poisoned. And getting hit by cars, that's a big one. It's just less and less of their own natural habitat." Jan Grosseto rescued her first birds about two years ago after finding a nest at Circle C Ranch in Waimanalo. "I guess they fell out of a tree and I didn't see a mother in sight," she says. "So, I took them to the veterinarian and they gave me syringes and food and told me how to take care of them. I wanted to find someone to do it, but instead they gave me things for me to do it myself." Four months later, four of the six birds survived and were released. But to Grosseto's surprise, they returned. "That's the rewarding part, they come flying to me as if they were pets, except they're wild," explains Grosseto, who is currently caring for three baby mynahs. "Some of them are marked. For example, one of my mynahs has a toe missing, so I know when she comes back. And sometimes on the weekends when I sleep in a little late, they sit in my tree outside my bedroom and screech like, 'Hey you're late! Where are you?' So I come down and give them food. "It's just so wonderful. When you lose one, of course, it's really painful. You become really attached to them. But each one you release, you know they wouldn't have made it had you not intervened somewhere. You see them happy out there having a life, and it's just so rewarding." Leveen couldn't agree more. "When there's a helpless bird on the ground it's almost impossible to walk by knowing it's just so vulnerable sitting there," she says. "And unless someone helps it, it can't help itself. Most of the time it's a simple infection, and all he needs is a little bit of basic care and he can fly back out to his tree and his family. "To think of it that his life would be over just because we didn't help him out, it's just not something that I could do." For more information on the Wild Bird Rehab Haven, call 447-9274 or visit http://www.wildbirdrehabhaven.org