Paws 'N Claws
News from All Things Wild Rehabilitation, Inc.
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What's in this issue:
Buy a Raffle Ticket and Help an Animal
Meet Abbott and Costello
Best Friends Forever
Well-Meaning Isn't Enough
Register for the Basic Wildlife Rehabilitation Course
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Meet Abbott and Costello
By Maya Higa
American crows are members of the corvidae family consisting of over 120 species throughout the world including crows, jays, magpies, ravens, jackdaws, and many more. Corvids are notorious for their stout bills, gregarious vocalizations, and their exceptional intelligence.
Abbott and Costello are two juvenile American crows who serve as educational ambassadors at All Things Wild. The birds are siblings who fell out of their nest as babies and imprinted on humans during their rearing. Imprinting is a form of learning in which an animal identifies with the species that provides care during a critical period of development. In birds, imprinting on humans greatly decreases their chance of survival in the wild because they are less likely to be able to find food on their own, migrate effectively, fit into social hierarchies within their species, or mate successfully. Because of how deeply imprinted Abbott and Costello became, they are not releasable.
In order to be successful ambassadors, Abbott and Costello have undergone socialization, enrichment, and various forms of training. For socialization, the birds are introduced to new people regularly to ensure that they are comfortable around anyone they encounter while out on education programs. They are also provided with daily hands-on contact and play by the staff at the ATW center. For enrichment, the birds are introduced to new toys and puzzles regularly to ensure they are stimulated. Because crows are so intelligent, Abbott and Costello need to be challenged regularly to avoid stress behaviors incurred by boredom, such as pacing and feather plucking. They enjoy playing with balls, water, paper, and are regularly fed in a puzzle feeder. Much of the crows’ enrichment is based on natural behaviors in the wild such as shredding, scavenging, and pecking.
For training purposes, Abbott is trained with a clicker and Costello is trained with a whistle, using traditional operant conditioning methods. The clicker and whistle serve as “bridges” in training to let the birds know that they performed the correct behavior and will be rewarded. Currently, Abbott and Costello are trained to fly from one handler to the other so that they can do flights in educational programs.
Abbott and Costello are full of life and personality! In the future, we hope that they will aid in spreading our message to respect and look out for our native wildlife while helping people to fall in love with American crows.
Click HERE for more information on American Crows.
Postscript: We are training Abbott and Costello to draw some of the winning raffle tickets during our live Virtual Program on December 5. For more information on our program and raffle click here, and don’t miss the Crow Basket in our raffle.
About the Author: Maya is a recent graduate from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo. She completed her falconry apprenticeship in June 2020. Her passions are conservation and bird of prey rehabilitation with a focus on public education. Maya was an intern at All Things Wild Rehabilitation for the Summer of 2020 and joined our Board of Directors in August.
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Best Friends Forever
Stevie (left) and Penelope are going to be parents.
Two little opossums came into rehabilitation last spring. One, a boy, was blind or almost blind, an injury that occurred before he was rescued. We named him Stevie Wonder. The other, a girl, was also permanently injured with a deformed front limb that slows her down when she tries to walk. We named her Penelope.
Stevie and Penelope were raised with other orphaned opossums, fed formula with a tube, and kept warm. After everyone was weaned and when it came time for release to the wild, everyone got to go except Stevie and Penelope. Because they are unable to survive in the wild, we decided to keep them as education ambassadors to teach other people about the Awesome Opossum!
Stevie and Penelope have been together sharing an enclosure since last spring. Lately, however, things have taken a different turn. Stevie was getting skinny, temperamental, and making clicking sounds with his mouth. Penelope was hissing at him frequently. Concerned and baffled about what was going on, the staff brought them inside the center for observation.
Well, what was going on, we quickly learned, was they were about to mate. And they did. “Yay,” exclaimed one of our volunteers. “We are going to be grandparents!”
Opossum pregnancies last less than two weeks. The tiny young opossums crawl out of the birth canal and into the mother’s pouch where they permanently attach to one of thirteen nipples. They will stay attached for up to 2½ months.
Now that everyone knows what was going on with the two opossums, Stevie and Penelope are back outside in their large enclosure. For their picture (above), they were snuggled together in the nest box as though nothing had changed. Hopefully, we’ll have future updates on Penelope’s pregnancy in our newsletter.
Click here for more information on reproduction in opossums.
Postscript: Stevie and Penelope will be featured in our online program on December 5, see more information here.
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Well-meaning Isn’t Enough
The white-winged dove was fed the wrong food.
Last spring, a woman found a new-born white-winged dove on the ground. She picked up the baby and took it home, keeping the tiny baby warm. She fed the baby Similac, a human baby milk replacer, which she later mixed with oatmeal. As the bird grew, she worried that he wasn’t getting enough protein, so she switched to dried mealworms. As the bird continued to develop, he just didn’t look right, so she contacted a local wildlife rehabilitator. It was difficult for the woman to give up her pet dove, but eventually she relented and put the bird in the knowledgeable hands of the rehabilitator.
As a well-meaning and kind woman trying to help the little dove, she did everything wrong. First, birds don’t nurse and don’t drink milk, especially not milk designed for humans. The oatmeal wasn’t so bad; however, the bird needed other nutrients. Doves are seed-eaters. Although many birds eat insects, doves are not insectivores. Dried mealworms provide some nutrients for insectivorous birds like chickens.
At All Things Wild, we give the baby doves and pigeons a product called Exact, which is commercially available. Exact is a powder formula made for hand-feeding pet birds like parrots, but it works very well for our wild doves. (You can send ATW some Exact for our orphaned baby doves at our Amazon Wish List.)
Now that the dove is in the hands of a wildlife rehabilitator, correcting all the nutritional deficiencies will take time. The elongated beak signals a calcium deficiency. Surely the bird has a Vitamin D deficiency as well, having never been outside in the sun. The first time the dove saw a dish of seeds, he ate hungrily.
 The bird’s poor condition is the result of nutritional deficiencies.
This is a healthy white-winged dove and what the little dove should look like.
The moral of this story is that, if you care about a wild animal, you will not attempt to raise the animal yourself but turn him over to a knowledgeable wildlife rehabilitator, like All Things Wild. There’s a lot of misinformation about wild animals on the Internet. And, besides, it’s against the law in Texas to keep a wild animal in captivity without a permit from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
Do the right thing. Well-meaning isn’t enough when a helpless wild animal is involved.
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Registration is Open for the Basic Wildlife Rehabilitation Course
All Things Wild Rehabilitation is excited to announce that registration is open for the basic wildlife rehabilitation course taught by instructor(s) from the International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council (IWRC).* The course will be held at the ATW center in Georgetown on February 20-21 (Saturday and Sunday), 2021.
The class will include lecture topics on:
- Introduction to wildlife rehabilitation
- Basic anatomy and physiology
- Calculating fluid therapy
- Handling and physical restraint
- Stress and the basic shock cycle
- Initial care and physical examination
- Standards for housing
- Zoonoses
- Euthanasia criteria and release criteria
To receive a course completion certificate, students must successfully pass the exam, lab, and homework with 70% or higher.
You will receive the Wildlife Rehabilitation: A Comprehensive Approach and Minimum Standards for Wildlife Rehabilitation books with this order.
*Students do not have to have any previous wildlife rehabilitation experience to attend the course.
Covid-19 Alert
IWRC and ATW want all students and instructors to remain safe during the Covid-19 pandemic. As such we will adhere to the strictest guidelines on group gatherings as stated by the State of Texas and/or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. When signing up for this class, students should be aware that there is a likelihood the class and lab will be moved to a fully online format.
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