Gower Bird Hospital - Rehabilitation & Monitoring

Equal rights to a good life

Sometimes people ask why we treat birds that are considered “pests” such as feral pigeons, jackdaws and mallards. The policy of Gower Bird Hospital is that every individual deserves the same treatment.

We have learned a lot from these birds – diagnosing illnesses or injuries, wound management, housing, rehabilitation techniques and feeding preferences.

Just as our experience with mallard ducklings proved invaluable for the goosanders, if a rare species such as a chough is presented to the Hospital, we can draw on our vast experience of caring for jackdaws and give it a real chance of recovery.

Another question, and one we often ask ourselves, is “are we interfering with nature?”

Every patient is recorded on Gower Bird Hospital’s database. We now have more than 7,000 patients’ details on database and cause of injury or illness is always noted.

As you can see from the table below, only 20 per cent of birds and 33 per cent of hedgehogs are suffering from natural causes, most problems are caused through human activity.


 

Different aviaries cater for different species. Water birds such as swans, gulls, ducks and grebes, need access to water to wash, preen and ensure completely waterproof plumage.

Swan in one of the Aquapens - the water is kept clean by skimming the surface water off through small overflow drains.

The concrete floors are covered with Astroturf to prevent callouses forming on the feet.

Other birds need to forage in earth and grass and all aviaries must be big enough for them to fly to build up muscle tone. Part of the roof and walls are covered to provide shelter from adverse weather. A water bath ensures they can wash to keep their feathers in good condition. Shrubs provide cover and perching opportunities and the floor is earth with bark chippings and leaves to forage in. The food supply is topped up with earth worms, mealworms and other food supplements.

A rose coloured starling, a rare visitor to Britain was found in Horton, Gower. Although quite weak on arrival at the Hospital, he was quickly diagnosed as suffering from candida (a fungal infection) in his mouth and prompt treatment soon had him on the road to a full recovery.

Gower Bird Hospital specialises in the rehabilitation of sick, injured or orphaned wild birds and animals with the sole intention of returning them to the wild.

Once outside in a rehabilitation aviary it is still difficult to assess a patient’s true condition.

If the bird can see you it will modify its behaviour to disguise any weakness. This is because, in the wild, a predator will pick out a weak specimen as easy prey. Left alone, the bird will relax and again limp on the painful leg, drop the aching wing, close the sore eye or, if it is weak, simply fall into exhausted sleep.

Standing next to an aviary and looking in causes any species of wild bird to freeze or panic. This doesn’t give any useful information about its behaviour and condition.

All our aviaries are fitted with CCTV cameras for remote observation, enabling us to watch a patient’s natural behaviour for hours and truly assess its condition.

BEHAVIOUR STUDIES

Gower Bird Hospital’s lab with CCTV viewing monitors.


The use of CCTV also gives an excellent opportunity to observe behaviour.

Footage is recorded and studied, leading to great improvements in aviary design and the mental well being of our patients.

Students from Swansea University use the facilities at Gower Bird Hospital to carry out research projects. The welfare of our patients is paramount. No experiments are carried out to induce stress – we record normal activities at the Hospital and this behaviour is studied.

For example, hand reared blackbirds were observed in one of our aviaries and it was noted through the CCTV that staff walking past the aviaries would frighten the birds. The birds would stop whatever they were doing and take cover, remaining in hiding for several minutes. While this was a good fear response, it meant the birds weren’t feeding, socialising and exercising as much as they should. It was impossible to reduce the human traffic passing, so fine green netting (used for wind breaks in gardens) was fitted over the metal mesh walls of the aviaries and shrubs allowed to grow up the outside. This resulted in a much more secluded space inside the aviary and the birds were much less affected by passers-by.

Another important discovery was the amount of squabbling over high perches. At the time of recording only one or two of the natural branch perches were high in the aviary, resulting in the pecking order of the birds being a constant source of aggression. Simply providing more high perches for roosting restored equilibrium and reduced stress considerably.

All this may sound obvious, but without the CCTV, it would not have been observed and the improvements wouldn’t have been made.

During 2001 we were able to fit a camera into a privacy area in the treatment unit and for the first time we filmed a “flat” seagull’s recovery. A flat gull is suffering from food poisoning and appears paralysed – no movement in their legs, sometimes unable to lift their heads.

The normal procedure was filmed:

Initially the gull is tube fed with body fluid replacement. As the bird gets a little stronger, even though it can’t stand, we put it into a shallow bath of warm water for a few minutes where it will drink for itself, eliminating the stress of being tube fed. This also helps keep the feathers underneath clean as there is usually a nasty build up of green droppings. This goes on for a few days.

Eventually the gull starts to stand and eat and when strong enough to walk is transferred to an outside rehabilitation pool to gain strength and condition before release.

This has always been a successful treatment, but because the bird is only observed when having fluids we thought it would be worth filming its recovery. Our student Matt started the task of watching video tapes of a mostly immobile gull for 72 hours.

The bird obviously couldn’t tuck its head under its wing to sleep because of the temporary paralysis. We saw its eyes close, its head nod, its beak drop to the floor and then it would wake with a start. This carried on until its condition had improved enough to be able to turn its head into its wing.

The gull did not get any quality sleep for more than 48 hours!

We already provided rolled up towels for very sick flat gulls to rest their beaks on as they obviously needed it, but didn’t do this for birds that could hold their heads up as it didn’t seem necessary. Thanks to Matt’s research, all flat gulls now get pillows. This reduces stress, aids recovery and makes convalescence a lot more comfortable.

POST-RELEASE MONITORING

When patients are released they often fly off never to be seen again. Is it surviving well or will it be dead in a few days? Post-release monitoring is vital to ensure successful release back into the wild.

 A tiny radio transmitter is attached to the middle tail feather of the bird. This will naturally moult so the transmitter is not a permanent attachment, but stays on long enough for us to gain valuable information.

 A transmitter was fitted to the tail feather of Matt’s seagull. The seagull (“Fred”, as he was now nicknamed) stayed in the aquapen for a day so we could watch him through the CCTV to make sure he wasn’t distressed. After a few curious prods with his beak, he quickly settled down and completely ignored the transmitter. Confident that he was completely at ease, we released him at Swansea Bay where he had been originally found.

 Fred immediately soared into the air with obvious relief at having his freedom again, then joined a group of gulls already foraging on the sand. The first day out he flew to a landfill site at Briton Ferry (with Matt in hot pursuit!) and back to Swansea in the evening to spend the night on top of the Debenhams’ building. This became a daily routine with other trips to various parts of Swansea.

Matt & receiver in Swansea

 We are pleased with all our post release radio tracking projects so far, but this is an on-going study as every species is different.

 We would love to track gannets – every year young gannets arrive in an exhausted state. After feeding and time in the rehab pens they are released but what happens to such a specialised bird? They are on their way to Africa for the winter, so tracking them would be a very expensive project, needing a boat and crew capable of following their progress for a couple of months. Maybe there’s a bored millionaire out there who would fancy this adventure?

In the meantime we’ll carry on gathering all the information we can.

 Another important part of post-release research is ringing the birds.

After a lot of hard work, Gower Bird Hospital now has its own coloured leg rings for herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls. The rings are fitted by a British Trust for Ornithology-trained ringer. Each gull will have a normal BTO ring and a blue plastic ring with a white letter Y which will be clearly visible through binoculars. This means the birds will be identifiable by bird watchers and casual observers. We are looking forward to reports of sightings so that we can understand more about what our patients are getting up to after their release.