Some follow-up to the other rehab posts that have come in. [I get Tweeters in
digest form and am always a little behind the power curve in a conversation.]

Don, re joining a bird-banding operation, I've been assisting FWS at its 3 MAPS
sites within the Anchorage bowl where we've been banding passerines for 5 years.
It's also a good way to come into closer contact with birds, but in a more brief
and restricted way. I enjoy it because there's some of that thrill of the hunt.
Banding has taught me a lot about aging and sexing passerines but relatively
little about their behavior, life histories, etc., whereas I've learned a lot
about the latter in rehab. In rehab, one also gets to know individual birds and
they have surprisingly distinct personalities, even within a species.

As for whether rehabbers give to conservation efforts, it surprised me how many
volunteers we get who aren't plugged into a conservation network at all - and
who don't even know many different species of bird. We have several nurses, some
exotic bird owners, some artists, some guys who always longed to caretake a
raven or an owl... Not quite the greenie set. As they get more experienced and
more involved, that changes. For one thing, a lot of them get hit up to sponsor
me for Birdathon.

Sorry if I sidetracked the discussion by mentioning that some of my
acquaintances implied rehabbing was a misdirection of funds. That wasn't a
question in the original posts.

As far as washing oiled birds goes, Peggi has probably read my comments to the
WLREHAB list about the experience we had with that here. I found it quite
positive, learned a lot about sea birds, plumage needs, etc. and felt like those
squeaky clean King Eiders we sent back out to the Pribilofs had a darned good
chance of lasting ( at least until the spring waterfowl hunts along the western
coast of Alaska). They were plump, waterproof, able to maintain body temperature
in cold water with no haul-outs, had good blood values, no parasites and no
fungal infections. They were of course a mere 5% of the birds that were known to
have contacted the oil. The spiller was traced and fined an amount which
supposedly covers the whole operation.

I think there were many early efforts in wildlife washing that did not turn out
so well. If the rescuers don't know what they're doing and don't follow a very
strict set of procedures, they probably do as much harm as the oil did.

Chris Maack
Bird Treatment & Learning Center
Anchorage, AK
73201.3124 at compuserve.com