Category: Wildlife Rehabilitation
Finch conjunctivitis requires isolation, too
April 8, 2020[caption id="attachment_271348" align="alignnone" width="576"] A recent patient, an American Goldfinch, with conjunctivitis.[/caption]
Wildlife rehabilitators are well aware of the potential for disease transmission between humans and wildlife as well as between individual animals- it is a calculated risk we take in the course of our daily work.
For example, we routinely practice isolation and quarantine in the wildlife clinic when we admit an animal with a contagious disease such as finch conjunctivitis, as was the case with this female American goldfinch. She arrived in early March with both her eyes so swollen and crusted she could hardly see. She needed…
Cooper’s Hawk Rehabilitation
April 1, 2020
This beautiful juvenile Cooper’s hawk was brought to the Wildlife Clinic in late February after being found on the side of a busy highway. Thanks to the quick actions of a kind rescuer, he was able to receive prompt attention, including treatment for head trauma and surgery to repair a wound on his chest. When he arrived, he was not even able to stand, as shown in the first picture. But after nearly 4 weeks of healing, and some recovery time in our flight cage, he was successfully released on March 17th.
It is because of the quick thinking and…
Saying goodbye to our patients
March 27, 2020[caption id="attachment_271325" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Flying squirrel 19-1849 receiving a feeding[/caption]
It’s hard to say goodbye to patients who have been with us for a long time, and this flying squirrel was cared for at the Wildlife Clinic for 129 days!
Last November we received 2 baby flying squirrels, both with their eyes still closed. They had been found in an attic, and unfortunately the finder was not willing to attempt to reunite them with their mother. Both babies were thin, dehydrated, and hypothermic on arrival, and sadly one little squirrel didn’t make it. We were able to help this little…
Wildlife In Winter – When Things get Rough
February 5, 2020By Rebecca Michelin, Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation
With “baby season” for most species beginning in early spring, juveniles should be mostly self-sufficient by the time the fall and winter rolls around, and be able to sustain themselves through the colder months or to make a long migration south. As they learn to navigate the world without parental support and guidance, the first fall and winter can be brutal on young animals. [pullquote]The winter months are the time of year when we see some of the most challenging cases at the Wildlife Clinic, and many times they are a result of young,…
Helping an injured bird
October 29, 2019By Rebecca Michelin, Director of Wildlife Rehabilitation
You may have heard the devastating news- a study published this month in the journal Science reports that the total breeding bird population in the continental U.S. and Canada has dropped by 29 percent since 1970.
While there are numerous factors contributing to this decline, human-made alterations to the landscape have certainly played a significant role, and we see the results of this clearly at the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center. Since mid-August, the wildlife clinic has treated nearly two dozen birds, from mourning doves and woodpeckers to warblers and vireos, all…
Celebrate Winterfest at the Schuylkill Center
January 31, 2019By Mike Weilbacher
This Saturday-- Groundhog Day, appropriately enough-- the Schuylkill Center celebrates the reopening of our Wildlife Clinic with a family festival marking the day, Winterfest for Wildlife. Held at the Visitor Center on Hagy’s Mill Road and happening from noon to 4 p.m., the event includes nature walks, wildlife talks, face painting, wildlife-themed arts and crafts, storytimes courtesy of the Free Library, a bake sale, and more.
But the event kicks off at noon with a ceremonial ribbon-cutting. Since the Wildlife Clinic itself is typically closed to the general public as it is a hospital for ill and…
Red-tailed Hawks at the Franklin Institute: The Benjamin Franklin Parkway as Wildlife Habitat
July 13, 2017By guest contributor Christian Hunold, Associate Professor, Department of Politics, Drexel University
In the spring of 2012 I stumbled across a community of amateur naturalists who were drawn to Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway not by the museums or the cultural events, but by a pair of red-tailed hawks nesting on a second-story window ledge of the Franklin Institute. Grid Magazine had requested some pictures of the hawks, and so I spent one sunny afternoon in late May photographing the half-grown chicks huddled on the nest at the corner of 21st and Winter Street.
I recall feeling a little bored: where…
Good Forecast for Ridley the Screech Owl
May 17, 2016By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
On Monday, May 16, Cecily Tynan, meteorologist at 6ABC’s Action News, was running in Tyler Arboretum when she discovered a young screech owl on the ground, “squawking,” as she called it in a video she posted to Facebook (seen by 80,000 people as of this afternooon), and, clacking its beak at her.
She called the Wildlife Clinic at the Schuylkill Center, listened to the phone machine’s instructions, and smartly threw her outer garment over the owl’s head to calm it down, which is exactly what to do—and brought it to us in a box.
It…
Help our Wildlife Clinic Make it through the Spring
March 10, 2016By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
There are so many signs of spring. Here at the Schuylkill Center, skunk cabbage and lesser celandine, the latter a bright yellow flower, are already in bloom. A pair of bluebirds, the male an impossible shade of blue, examined nesting boxes last week, clearly house hunting, and a pair of Canada geese returned to Fire Pond, likely the same pair that raise their young here every spring.
The running of the toads across Port Royal Avenue is another benchmark here in Roxborough, but the toads have not awakened yet. Fear not: they are coming soon!…
SCH Academy Kindergarten partners with the Schuylkill Center
March 4, 2016By guest contributor Caitlin Sweeney, Kindergarten Teacher, Springside Chestnut Hill Academy
Springside Chestnut Hill Academy offers a variety of unique programs and student opportunities through The Sands Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL). CEL teaches entrepreneurial skills to prepare students for the ever-changing world ahead of them. Entrepreneurial skills are developed by channeling a child’s natural desire to learn by doing. Children are asked to look both locally and globally to solve problems by applying design thinking, collaboration, and financial literacy skills, as well as new media technologies.
Kindergarten’s CEL project this year was paired with our annual Animals in Winter unit. For this unit, each…
