Rescue group helps save pelicans

Lusby’s Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center is aiding freezing birds

Friday, Feb. 9, 2007

Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Reid Silverman St. Mary’s County animal wardens Maria Rupp and John Miedzinski immobilize a pelican in Ridge on Tuesday morning. More than 50 of the birds stayed in St. Mary’s instead of migrating south for the winter and are now dying with the onset of the cold weather. Lusby based Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center is helping the birds on their way to a motorized migration to Florida. E-Mail This Article | Print This Story Click here to enlarge this photo Staff Photo by Darwin Weigel Above, Ron Wexler holds one of the pelicans rescued from freezing in Ridge in St. Mary’s County at his Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center in Lusby Tuesday, Feb. 6. Wexler’s group and other volunteers are taking the pelicans to Florida.

As winter approached but the weather didn’t significantly change, a flock of brown pelicans stayed in this area instead of flying to warmer climates for the winter months. When the cold weather suddenly hit this region, the birds lost their food supply — the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries — and quickly weakened from lack of food and not being able to withstand the cold temperatures.

At press time Thursday, more than two-dozen of the large birds had been captured and taken to a rescue facility in Calvert County, where they were given shelter, food and medical attention. Many of the birds have now been taken to Virginia, the next stop on a journey that will eventually get them to Florida.

So far, said Ron Wexler, who runs the Orphaned Wildlife Rescue Center in Lusby, about a dozen pelicans have died from either malnutrition or exposure. No birds, he said, have died after being rescued.

On Wednesday, several teams of volunteers joined county animal wardens at Smith Creek and Jutland Creek in Ridge, near Scheible’s Marina and Courtney’s Restaurant, and were able to capture more than two-dozen birds. Later that afternoon, two trucks carried many of the birds to the Red Oak Nurseries in Montross, Va., where they will be temporarily housed in one of the greenhouses there until they can be taken to Florida.

‘‘We have 20 birds here right now,” said Gary Hutt, owner of the nursery, ‘‘and more are coming.”

Hutt said the greenhouse where the pelicans are living is ideal for use as a temporary shelter.

At night he can regulate the building’s temperature to stay at 55 degrees — a comfortable and safe low-end temperature for the warm-weather birds — and during the day the greenhouse won’t become overheated because it has built-in ventilation.

Since winter is a nursery’s normally slow season, Hutt only had to move a few items out of the greenhouse to make room for the birds.

‘‘This is no big sacrifice” to the business, he said. ‘‘It just takes some extra effort, and I think my employees are getting a kick out of it, having the birds here. They’re pitching in and helping, too.”

As a safety measure, Hutt had a low-power electric fence strung around the greenhouse, to deter foxes and other wild animals from attacking the birds at night.

Food for the pelicans, Hutt said, is being donated from several sources, but he said the number of birds he’s able to care for and the length of time he can house them depends on how long his supply of small, fresh fish remains available.

Some of the pelicans taken to Lusby needed medical attention. Those birds are still at Wexler’s facility and are being cared for until healthy enough to be moved to Virginia.

On Saturday, Wexler said, trained volunteers will surgically remove frostbite-damaged and other injured skin from several of the birds to prevent later infection.

‘‘The pouch under their bills is just skin,” said Wexler, ‘‘and on a few of the birds the skin froze. We need to remove it before it becomes infected. Also, some of them lost skin off their feet, or the webbing between their toes was torn open” from the ice on the creek. ‘‘We’re going to take care of that, too.”

Like Hutt, Wexler is relying on donations of fish to keep feeding the pelicans in his care, and he also needs monetary help to buy more medicine for the sick birds.

Wexler received six 50-pound boxes of frozen fish on Wednesday from a Virginia charter fisherman, but ‘‘that will only last so long,” he said. Wexler needs fresh or frozen whole fish, ‘‘five, six or seven inches long, max,” he said, so the birds can digest their meal without regurgitating the fish they’ve eaten. He also took delivery of a case of antibiotics needed to care for the pelicans, but his operation had to pay for the medicine and his reserve funds are rapidly being depleted.

Wexler said there are still about 15 pelicans to be rescued, but it should be a little easier to capture them because some of the local residents and businesses — like Tom Courtney at Courtney’s Restaurant — are feeding the remaining birds along the shoreline, which draws the birds to land and makes them less timid as humans approach.

E-mail Paul C. Leibe at pleibe@somdnews.com.

E-mail Meagan Boswell at mboswell@somdnews.com.