yesterday's wildlife volunteering report (dead animal handling, no animal death)
yesterday's volunteering was mostly dull. our rehabber has been assigning us jobs, so I cleaned outside enclosures--one flicker, who was FREAKING OUT OMG and I therefore tried to keep it as brief as possible, and one owl who beak-clicked at me but seemed otherwise unconcerned about my presence, so I did a bit more in there. still, both put together took less than an hour.
yesterday's wildlife volunteering report (dead animal handling, no animal death)
so I took a seasonal project to clean the boots for Raccoon Nursery 1. there's three pairs of rubber boots on posts outside RN1, because raccoon contagion can be LITERALLY DEADLY so wearing your own shoes when the nurseries are in use is Discouraged. the boots were pretty clean already, though. I scrubbed and disinfected them anyway, and washed out a couple of spiders.
yesterday's wildlife volunteering report (dead animal handling, no animal death)
and then (the actual dead animal handling part) our rehabber gave us volunteers a brief training/orientation on how they splint breaks in bird wings and legs, what they look for when birds are brought in, etc. she demonstrated with a seagull and crowned kinglet, both previously deceased. they use coathangers to splint larger birds' legs, and paper clips for smaller ones!
yesterday's wildlife volunteering report (dead animal handling, no animal death)
and, that was pretty much it. we have several owls, mostly barred but one great horned; an assortment of smaller birds, mostly flickers, pigeons, gulls, and crows; and we just got in a bald eagle that has a broken clavicle (I think?), whose prognosis is very iffy because of the injury. basically they can't do much for it; either it'll heal right, or it won't, all the vets can do is wait and see. :/