an orphaned collared aracari
chick being rehabilitated

so i'm just going to ask that we all just ignore that i skipped blogging about the last 2+ years of my life. they were really pretty awesome years, so if you're interested in them, check my facebook page for pics or just call me up and ask. 

a howler monkey in the rain

moving on to what's happening now... i just got back from having a fabulous time with natalie staples in belize working at casa avian support alliance, a rehabilitation center for sick/orphaned native wildlife of belize! it was an absolutely amazing experience and since i failed to blog about it then, you should check nat's blog to find out all about our day-today craziness as well as the amazing things she's continuing to do out there.

a rufous-tailed hummingbird drinking

i would definitely recommend belize to anyone who is up for an adventure and doesn't mind getting some bug bites along the way. it is definitely the greenest place i've ever been and as a person who loves wildlife (and birds in particular), it was even beyond my expectations. getting to see wild parrots and toucans flying about in their natural habitat and see several species of trogon, motmot and hummingbirds with all of their brilliant colors made it all a surreal experience. i was daily snapped back into reality, though, as natalie and i had to face the actuality that many of these amazing creatures were getting hurt or orphaned due to human encroachment on their habitat. therefore, we took our job seriously and did our best to rehabilitate and re-release all of our patients back into the wild and shed many tears when we realized we could not save them all. 

yucatan banded gecko

while falling head over heals for life in the jungle, i was able to walk in the footprints of an ancient people that once had a thriving civilization right in the middle of it. i have always been passionate about archaeology and anthropology, and actually made a very difficult decision in college to focus on conserving the future rather than studying the ancient past. i am very happy with my decision and know i am doing what i was made for, but i do still have a great respect for all who do what i gave up and i love to indulge in my other interests whenever i can so that i don't go overly crazy (yes it's probably too late for me, i know). being in belize afforded me the opportunity to visit several amazing mayan sites including actun tunichil muknal (a possible sacrificial cave site), el pilar (an unexcavated city), xunantunich (a beautifully excavated city) and cahal pech (another excavated city). i would recommend that anyone going to belize take the time to check out some of these sites, because remembering the past is the key to making a better future.

mayan ruins at xunantunich

so during all of my "adventures" i got to see that life in a "3rd world country" really isn't so bad... in fact i rather liked it. i got to spend a lot of quality time with one of my best friends (dang it i miss you nat!), meet some really awesome new friends, discover a love for the rum and coke, see more new and amazing bird species in a month and a half than i have in the past 2 years, and i never got one botfly larvae.... i think. thank you belize for changing my life for the better and i will certainly be back very very soon. *muah*

guess who gets to go play with these guys?! that's right... hopefully me come next week. updates to come soon.

apparently i've been slacking again on writing on here but i will be updating it soon! i am off to tennessee tomorrow and i'm hoping to have lots of good pics and stories to put up here! i could have had a sweet tale about a wonderful birding trip to see amazing birds i've never seen with bob mccormic (see you made it into my blog despite it all!) but luckily i somehow thought the trip was on sunday when it was really on saturday! thus the pictures you see are of birds that i would love to have had the chance to observe but i totally blew it. go me!!!

in other news, laura and i saw an osprey 2 days ago down at tempe town lake on the south side of the az-202! i wonder if it's the same kid that hung out at our house a while ago. either way, i wish the poor thing good luck in this hot hot weather!

in other other news, laura and i went down to tucson to look at some burrowing owl burrows that are going to unfortunately have to be removed because construction is going in there. it looks like there may actually be babies this time and i'm going to miss it because they're doing the removal when i'm gone. *SIGH*

in the saddest news of the day... i had my first vehicular avian incident. now i think i'm one of the most proactive anti-bird hitting people around. doves, quail and the occasional flicker are constantly flying at my car in an attempt to die but i dodge their every attempt. unfortunately my skills could not save the poor grackle that suddenly swooped down at my car as i went 80mph down the freeway. my braking attempt failed and it is no longer with us. i ask that we all please have a moment of silence for the poor thing. *CRIE*

so today was officially the hottest day of the year as of yet (114 degrees of fun) as well as the first official day of summer! so it was extremely odd when laura and i were driving back from liberty and noticed a large raptor in the tree behind our house and realized it was none other than a juvenile osprey!! poor kid! obviously her parents didn't tell her to migrate back up north for the summer. i don't have high hopes for her survival either (as you can see she's panting up a storm and drooping her wings severely), so we will be keeping a close watch on the poor thing.

in other news, nina and i set a liberty record for the most birds brought into the facility at one time with 170 individuals! this was thanks to our work with transwestern pipeline that is installing a natural gas pipeline throughout the state. despite its elevated level of environmental impact (sigh), they are attempting to comply with the federal migratory species act which protects all native birds within the united states. thus, they are basically pulling all nests in their path and the liberty biologists are helping them with this task and bringing them back to liberty for rehabilitation. so on this trip, 106 nests were pulled, most of which were doves and a little over half were eggs.

during this crazy baby bird flinging event, i had a slight vehicular incident. i apparently didn't properly check my tire positioning on one of the ramps and slipped off on the passenger side. it was quite nerve racking, but luckily it was a lot more embarrassing than anything else and i came out with little more than a slight scratch on my front tire and wheel. ah, the joys of off road driving.

so as always, it's been a busy year here at liberty. babies are everywhere you look and of course many of them are the cutest little things you've ever seen. we have gotten in a lot of mammals this year. unfortunately we don't keep baby mammals at the facility since they need 24 hour care, so most of them go to other rehabbers. the little peccary was one of the cutest things but already wild and nippy. it's amazing how long and razor sharp a 1-week old babys teeth can be! the ground squirrel, on the other hand was as sweet as can be other than the loud crying for food. poor thing. we even got in a kitten that was so tiny and soft that it fell asleep in the palm of my hand! of course we don't take in domestic animals but that doesn't always stop people from dropping them off!

it's also fun when we get in precocial babies. quail and killdeer are some of the funnest examples but we also get in ducklings and goslings from time to time. precocial means they can eat on their own and walk around as soon as they're hatched and dried off. these guys are always cute fuzzy versions of their parents and are nice because we don't have to spend as much time feeding them as the altricial babies.

speeking of altricial babies, we have tons of those as well. some of my favorites are the house finches that come with a fuzzy mohawk as soon as they hatch out of the egg! it's tough to miss-ID those guys. we also get in lots of mockingbirds who grace the orphan care area with their "MEEP" noise. i still laugh every time i hear it despite having heard it a million times. due to our contract with the transwestern pipeline, we've gotten in lots of eggs this year of various species. one of my favorite hatches was of a little towhee that popped up with the top of the egg shell still on its head!

we don't just get little guys in though. we recently got in a nest of hatchling ravens from prescott valley that got caught in a freak snow storm a couple weeks ago. they were completely covered in snow and came in ice cold and sopping wet. unfortunately hypothermia caught up to most of the chicks, but one made it through and is now a big, screaming, blue-eyed, and feathered nestling. he's doing great! we also recently hatched our very first roadrunner from an egg. coincidentally, we got in a 2-week old roadrunner the same day. we let them hang out together a bit to make them feel safe and comfortable. they have the cutest method of begging. i will have to tape it and put it up here.

as i've gotten older i've come to realize that just ignoring your problems won't actually make them go away. that is why i'm asking all 2 of you who read this blog to please help in solving an enormous problem that alaska's polar bears are facing. polar bear populations have declined significantly in the past decade, mostly due to global warming. this warming is causing the loss of important ice habitat which causes prey species to become more scarce pushing polar bears to either starve or drown while attempting to move to a location with more food. if this wasn't bad enough, they're now facing yet another threat to their habitat: arctic oil drilling. our current political administration is stalling on the process of adding polar bears to the endangered species list that they so desperately need to be on because they are trying to set up permits to allow drilling in the arctic which wouldn't be allowed if the polar bears were added to the list as all of the drilling is in their key habitat. of course i am 100% against drilling in alaska for any reason but the plight of the polar bear makes this even more critical to stop. if any of you would be willing to sign this easy petition (it literally only takes 1 minute) and to forward it to anyone you know, that would bring us one step closer to saving these truly unique and beautiful animals, but please hurry as it needs to be done by thursday, may 15th! besides, how can you say no to that face!!

so guess who FINALLY got internet at her new house?! that's right - ME!! now in case you're wondering why this is so important... it's because now i can actually get back to blogging and attempt to catch up on the last year i've missed. attempt being the key word, but at least you'll get to see some cool pictures. just to lay the groundwork for what has happened: i left maui in may, came back to az for a week, and then jetted off to maine to work with seabirds for audubon's project puffin on some of the coastal islands out there, and then made it back to az in september and have been the lead wildlife biologist for the research & conservation (r&c) department of liberty wildlife rehabilitation foundation ever since.

now, although i know most of you have been waiting for maine pics for some time, i think i need to wait on that for a little bit. first i will talk about what i've been doing recently. the r&c department works hard to solve human/wildlife conflicts in a positive manner for wildlife as well as for the humans involved. we work closely with aps and srp, two of the major electrical companies in arizona and we have contracts set up with transwestern pipeline that's laying a natural gas pipeline in arizona as well as freeport mcmoran/phelp's dodge which is one of the world's leaders in copper production plus many more construction companies. it is kind of a strange concept, being aligned with companies that tend to be considered harmful (mostly for good reason) to the environment, but how else can we ever make these companies responsible for their actions and be forced to change to more environmentally friendly practices?! although it may cause my bitterness level to rise, i know that my work here is really important to the wildlife this department is working to save and that's what's really important to me.

so with all that, here's one example of what i do... on monday i performed a nest move of a red-tailed hawk nest that was located on an extremely dangerous utility pole configuration. most raptor nests on poles are located off the electrical componenets and are perfectly safe, but sometimes they are located right in the path of high voltage that can and will cause electrocution and even ignite the entire nest on fire. instances of nests burning and killing all of the young as well as the adults are well documented. thankfully, aps and srp have realized that not only is it morally wrong to be electrocuting wildlife, but it is also illegal under federal law. the migratory species act protects all native birds and prohibits anyone from disturbing, harming, killing, owning, etc. any of these birds. in fact, it is even illegal to have a feather or nest of a native bird. i, for one, am extremely thankful to the government for this law as it is the only thing really holding anyone accountable for their actions involving birds and is the only thing keeping many of our native birds from becoming extinct.

so back to the nest move... we initially investigated this nest at the end of march and discovered, after watching the female's behavior, that she was still sitting on eggs. unfortunately, moving a nest of eggs is not often successful due to the fact that the parents often don't feel too invested in the eggs and will often abandon if disturbed and re-nest in a different location. thankfully, srp was willing to wait until the nest hatched to actually move the old nest. so, they turned off the electricity to the nest pole and put up a platform on another pole nearby that will eventually house the moved nest once the babies hatch. despite what many think, birds will not abandon their homes once they're touched by humans and we have had a 99% success rate with them returning to nests with babies that have been moved a short distance from the original nest location. so, we monitored the nest for the past month awaiting signs that the babies had hatched. finally, at the end of april we saw signs of the female tending to young and scheduled the nest move. it went brilliantly! first i removed the three tiny (3 to 8 day old) chicks from the nest and then moved the intact nest to the new location. we then replaced the chicks into the nest and left the area to monitor the parent's reaction from a distance. after a short time the parents came back looking confused. the male even brought food with him. finally, after about an hour and a half, the female finally built up her confidence to jump into the nest with her young and began feeding them! it was an amazing process to be a part of, especially because after seeing the equipment on the original nest pole we realized an electric surge had taken place at some point and knew that without turning off the power to the pole and moving the nest, it certainly would have gone up in flames!

so obviously it's been quite some time since i last wrote, but i plan on getting back into the mix of things. since my last post i have said my farewells to maui, moved over 5000miles to maine to work with seabirds on maine's costal islands and am now back in arizona again!

i will definitely post some pictures and fun stories from my time in maine, but for now i just wanted to put something out there to tell everyone i'm still alive and doing what i love to do: work towards saving wildlife! thank you for all of your support with my many adventures and the ones i still have to come. i have included a beautiful picture of an osprey simply because i can!

so baby season is now in full force. we have the last of our nene on the way. i have included a picture of our newest gosling to hatch. she was the only fertile egg of the two her mother laid and it was such a tiny egg (1/3 the size of a normal nene egg) we didn't think it would make it full term. she made it though and popped out in perfect health despite being incredibly tiny. it will be interesting to see if she ever grows up to be a normal sized nene. either way, her mother loves her and showers her with affection. i guess it pays to be the only child!

our final nene nest of the season is currently at day 24 of a 30 day incubation period. nene, like other waterfowl, are somewhat unique in the way they incubate their eggs. they actually only lay one egg a day but they allow their eggs to sit in the nest without being incubated until they have laid their entire clutch. the eggs can actually lay dormant and not begin growing or die as long as no excess heat is provided to them. this is efficient for nene since they are precotial birds (their young can get up and run around very shortly after birth) and need all of their young to hatch out at the same time so that they can all forage together. this clutch is special in that it actually consists of six eggs which is the most laid so far this year. i know the picture only shows four, but there are a couple more down there staying warm beneath the bark. also, don't get to thinking nene find magical nest tubs full of saw dust out in the wild. normally they would form a scrape on the ground and add a few twigs and some leaves to lay their eggs in, but for some reason we take the eggs out of their own nest and place it in the tub.

our puaiohi have also been going baby crazy. the young parent reared chick has finally fledged and you can see it's cute self covered in juvenile spotted feathers. it will keep those for about six or seven months until they molt into adult plumage. i have also included a picture of our first hand raised chick at day two. this is an example of an altritial bird (one which is completely helpless at birth, unlike the nene, and needs constant parental attention to survive) as it is featherless except for a little fuzz on its head and can't even see. an interesting fact that can be seen in the picture is that for its first three days of life we feed it nothing but cricket gonads. apparently that is the most nutritious part of the cricket. who would have thought!?

i will leave you with a cute picture of a non-native but still interesting creature i often find running around the facility. it is a rainbow skink and they are quite small, only about three inches. this one was hiding out on some old a-frames we put in nene pens so they can hide out from the rain.

it's been one crazy week so far. the topic of today's blog will be 'alala! mostly because i love them, but also because they've been such hight maintenace lately. let me first introduce you to the newest member of the mbcc family: kiwa'a (kih-vah-ah). she's quite the catch. intelligent, beautiful, knows how to make all of the right caws, but also a bit of a man-eater. she is the new girlfriend of kela (kay-lah) and has already given him a run for his money. i did introductions between the two on friday and things started off great. she solicited him, he solicited her... "whooing" ensued (male crows actually make a "whoo" noise to the females during the courtship process) and copulations were attempted (but he fell off twice). everything was sunshine and roses and i could see new life being created on the horizon and then suddenly it was all shattered. who knows why, maybe she can't help but sabotage every relationship she's ever had or maybe she's just turned on by violence, but kiwa'a decided to bring the honeymoon to a screeching halt. she began to viciously attack kela to the point that she slammed him into the side of the enclosure four separate times causing him to plummet fifteen feet to the ground each time. in the midst of this lindsey and i are running around trying to catch falling crows and break up the madness. finally kela was snagged up and rushed out of the aviary from his crazed girlfriend. she was eventually ushered back into her side of the aviary and he was returned to his. all over right? wrong! i went to go check on him to see how he was doing and he was so scared that he was found laying on the ground hiding under a rotting log. poor guy! not really the best "first girlfriend" experience a guy can have. don't worry. he's doing better now and him and kiwa'a even sit next as close to each other as they can get despite a hatch and wall being between them. hopefully she deserves his forgiveness.

in other crow news, kauila (kah-ooo-weee-lah), has finally had his surgery to remove his eye with the burst cornea. it's a definite bummer that it had to come to that, but at least he won't have to deal with the extreme pain it was causing him anymore. since even vain crows don't get the luxury of a glass eye, the vets ended up having to cut off the edges of his eyelids so that when they sutured them together they would stick and not just reopen like eyelids normally do. everything there is healing perfectly so we're all really pleased with that. unfortunately, his life is not back to normal yet. right after the surgery he developed very severe swelling on his left wing. we don't exactly know how it happened. some think he cooked it under one of the heat lamps, other fear he had an alergic reaction to a venomous bite, but whatever it is, it's serious. his wing has completely swelled up with fluid to the point it's seeping out of his feather folicles. at least it appears that it's beginning to heal as it is scabbing over in some places. it's just a bummer that he was almost to the point of not having to be caught up for meds for a while and now he's back to square one with not only meds being given but also salt wraps, physical therapy and massages. some day he'll get to go back to his big aviary next to his gorgeous girlfriend, but it appears it won't be any time soon.

in other news the rest of the crows are doing great (with the exception of ali'i who busted a toenail and dripped blood all over the aviary before we could catch him up and apply quickstop to clot the bleeding) and living life to the fullest. you can see nani (gnaw-knee) enjoying a tastey treat she enjoyed working for. we do our best to not only give the crows fun things, but also ones that require them to use natural skills they'd be using in the wild. nani simply knocked the jar down, stepped on it, and pulled the paper out, but others are more inventive. neile (knee-A-lay) ended up pulling out some paper and using a stick to prod the grapes out of her jar. such smartie pants'!!

it's been a crazy week so far. our puaiohi began laying a couple weeks ago which is exceptionally early in the season, but i guess they can do whatever they want in captivity. one of our female's eggs have proven to be infertile, but i saw her and her mate copulating the other day (which was a little embarrassing since they did it right next to me) so i'm sure future clutches will fare much better. one of our other females that we have affectionately named "green mama" due to her having a single green band also laid. She is actually the oldest captive pu in the program and was caught back in 1995 and is stud book number five! that's pretty impressive considering we're up in the 220's now. so, unfortunately she's probably past her prime egg years and is quite a bit tubby so she was not given a mate this year to make her egg fertile. we did give her an egg from another pair that wasn't sitting but unfortunately it seems the egg died early in incubation. i'm pretty bummed about it because green mama seems to have a very motherly instinct and really deserved to have a chick to raise this year. i have included a picture of green mama sitting in the big beautiful nest she built. now all of that is a little sad, but don't worry there is good news! our final pair to lay eggs seems to currently be doing much better than all of the others. i was on forest birds today and saw the female bringing the worms i gave her up to her nest and feeding her beggy little chick or two. i couldn't make out two distinct peepers, but puaiohi traditionally lay two eggs in a clutch so we're hoping that there are two little guys in there and one of them is a little younger and harder to hear above the sound of the older sibling. they are currently at day 6 from when we believe they hatched and they only have less than two weeks before they pass from their tiny, pink and helpless hatchling stage to being a full grown fledgling that can start to leave the nest and learn to forage with it's parent. birds never cease to amaze me with how quickly they grow up. one day they're depending on you for food and warmth and three weeks later they're ready to fly off on their own. speaking of flying, aren't fledgling nene stretching their wings hilarious! that picture is a few weeks old and our goslings have lost all of their fuzz and are hardly distinguishable from the adults now except for their "dirty" looking neck that hasn't grown in the adult white feathers.

in other bird news we have had some issues with one of our crows, kauila. he has had eye problems since he was brought back into captivity after his brief release into the wild. it seems to have stemmed from his eyelashes growing into his left eye and causing problems. unfortunately, these problems got worse recently when the cornea in his eye burst. i feel so bad for him because it's a daily battle to keep his eye intact. we give him medication all day and it gets better and better, but over night it collapses and deflates and we find him in the morning with a sunken in eye that is extremely painful and sensitive. i have included a picture of me holding him and it shows his eye at a good period where it is inflated and bright, but there is still a white unceration in the center where the cornea burst. i believe that he does, amazingly, still have some minimal eyesight out of that eye, but probably not for long because the vets from san diego are coming to do surgery on it. i will be glad to have the whole painful process over for him, but i worry he will have a difficult time maneuvering in his tall aviary with no depth perception. i will work hard to give him lots of awesome perches connected together so he can feel confident moving around and not isolate himself to one place in the aviary and starve. poor boy.

in happier news we received a new crow on friday. i don't have any pictures of her yet because i didn't want to scare her but i'll get some soon. her name is kiwa'a (key-vah-ah) and she is a super smart and very beautiful crow. she is the new girlfriend for our male kela (K-la). It's great to see that they have really taken to each other and hopefully they can be socialized soon and may actually become a breeding pair this year. i have included a very endearing picture of kela checking out the camera with interest and a second one of him being very masculine. male 'alala have chin feathers and head feathers that they fluff up when they are cawing and doing other sorts of "manly" crow things. isn't he handsome!