Welcome to the latest issue of the MLWC newsletter.
We hope to provide interesting articles and fun features, a look into the world of the creatures around us and the efforts required to help them when needed. Your comments regarding what you like and what you might like to see in the future are welcome. This is for your interest and enjoyment.
View from the Chair of the Board
At the last MLWC Board Meeting I was elected to succeed Bernard Murphy as the Chair. I wish to thank the board for trusting me to fulfill the duties of this position. I also want to thank Bernard for his outstanding work throughout the past two years, and I hope I can ‘fill his shoes’, so to speak.
If we have not met, you may be wondering, “Who is this guy?” Well, I’ve been an educator for 43 years, retired principal of the Twain Harte Schools. I volunteer and work as a substitute teacher in Twain Harte and have been on the MLWC Board for the past year. Also, some of you will know me as Cynthia’s husband, as she has been volunteering with Laura for many years.
MLWC is an outstanding nonprofit organization with no paid employees. We are funded by donors and staffed by wonderful hard working volunteers who are lucky to be guided by the passion of Laura Murphy. I thank you all! Now let’s have a great spring accomplishing our mission of wildlife rescue, rehabilitation and release. Our wildlife thanks you! Mike Woicicki
Winter Newsletter Updates:
Sassy Squirrels
In the last newsletter, we told the story of the squirrels found as babies in September, who were in a large cage outdoors as of that writing. The warm weather came, at the beginning of February, so they were allowed to leave the cage and venture out into the great wild for the first time in their lives. Nest boxes were placed in nearby trees, so they could overnight there or back in the cage, and nuts and other food were scattered around regularly. At least one of them is burying many of the nuts for future reference. How wonderful for them to be out and about and learning the way of the world on their own.
Red-Shouldered Hawk in Spacious Digs The juvenile Red-Shouldered Hawk was moved from the 30’ cage to the 50’ in February and is quite at home in her new surroundings. She has demonstrated her ability to hunt live prey, and flies the length of the cage easily and often. Two of her primary flight feathers and one tail feather were recently imped (see Hawks at Home in our Winter newsletter), but shortly after imping, all three feathers molted naturally, so now we wait for them to regrow. We hope the natural molting process will encourage the feather we could not imp to regrow on its own. We hope to be releasing her in a month!
The Odd Couple, with feathers For a month one recent summer, we had in care together an uncommon pair, a Bushtit and a Western Kingbird. They came to us one day apart, and they were released one day apart. Both were young orphans, uninjured and in need of just the time and care to grow up a little. The uniqueness of their friendship was due not only to their disparity in size – the Kingbird came in weighing 24 grams, the Bushtit 5.3 grams – but also because Kingbirds are best known for their aggressive defense of their territories.
Bushtits are colonial; they live in colonies of ten to 25 birds which are in almost constant motion and ever chattering. They make circuits through their territories of perhaps two to three days, gleaning insects and spiders from tree branches. One of the smallest birds on the continent, Bushtits eat up to 80 percent of their weight each day, sometimes including seeds and nectar, but arthropods are their mainstay. Since they’re so highly social, they don’t do well alone at all and are hard to keep alive in care. Thus, being paired with the Kingbird seems to have been a blessing for the tiny Bushtit.
The nests of Bushtits are distinctive, rather like long, dirty socks, and hold five to seven eggs. These pendulous nests are ten to twelve inches long and take two weeks to two months to construct, from bits of twigs, grass, lichen, and moss, held together with spider webs and lined with fur and feathers. A neighbor of our director cut one out of a tree, not knowing what it was, and brought it to her for information. Finding it was an occupied nest, he took it back to a tree, climbed onto his car roof, and zip tied it onto the branch from which he thought it had come. Our director then heard the parents in a nearby tree. So the nest was once more removed and relocated to the correct tree, where the parents resumed care of the nestlings with no apparent qualms.
The kingbird and bushtit in care here both progressed well, and, as noted before, in a month they were able to be successfully released. It’s doubtful they continued their friendship after that, but they helped each other grow up, and that’s surely a great gift.
“Bushtits are bird children that never grow up….To see a flock of these merry mites trouping over the bushes, you would think they were playing an endless game of tag,”
- William Dawson, 1923 (Beedy et al. 2007)
We had in our care, one recent spring and summer, two fascinating Great Horned Owls. The boy fell out of a nest in Tuolumne, and though we placed him in a nearby tree for the parents' continued care, he would not stay there. With a rainstorm coming, we brought him into care, weighing 620 grams. A volunteer picked up the girl the same day in Groveland. The owl was on the ground with no sign of a nest and maggots in her ears, which were quickly removed by Dr. Wes Whitman. She was a very vocal girl, weighed 380 grams, and was about two weeks younger than the boy. The pair were in care four months, as they take a long time to mature.
When they were old enough, the Great Horned Owls were trained to catch live prey. They are actually the top predator of North American birds, with Golden Eagles a close second. These owls prefer to hunt rabbits and mice, but will fiercely attack any animal they can subdue and carry, up to three times their own weight: snakes, other birds, and mammals, including cats and small dogs. They’re one of the few predators of skunks and porcupines. Great Horned Owls weigh more than any other owl in the Sierra, up to three pounds, and have a wingspan up to 44 inches. They use a wider variety of nest sites than any other bird in the Americas, and these are the nests of other birds, in trees or in cliffs.
The owls were soft-released together in August in Tuolumne. This means food was provided on a platform above the cage door to supplement what they were catching on their own, just as their parents would back them up in the wild. For almost a year they would come and go, away for perhaps a week and in the trees around the cage for a few days. The female's vocalizations made it easy to know when they were in residence. Eventually they stopped coming altogether, so we knew they were succeeding in caring for themselves and were strong, independent birds.
Local girl makes good!Janelle Betzenderfer, a native of Twain Harte, has been deeply interested in animals all her life, and has now succeeded in creating a life where she is involved with them in several ways. She works at Live Oak Veterinary Hospital on Mono Way in Sonora, she volunteers with Mother Lode Wildlife Care and ReHorse Rescue, and she attends Modesto Junior College, in the veterinary technician program.
Her work with MLWC includes going to the main location, where she helps with feeding and care of birds and squirrels, going to other caregivers’ homes to help them with animals, transporting new animals when they come into care, and sometimes going through the intake process with a new creature. Janelle has volunteered with us for about a year and a half, and that has led her to a particular appreciation of hawks, owls, and squirrels. Her extended family has followed her example and were instrumental in building our 30' flight cage last year. She’s happy that in fulfilling her dreams she is able to help animals in need.
We’re so happy for you and happy to know you, Janelle!
We'd like to salute Julie Eggert, who recently retired from being a valued volunteer with MLWC. Julie was one of our founding members, after having been a volunteer and Board member with Rose Wolf Wildlife. While working with us, she picked up, transported, and cared for birds. She's also been working with Friends Of the Animal Community, and will continue volunteering with them, fostering puppies and little dogs. We are grateful for all she has done for the birds and for us over the years. Best wishes for a happy and rewarding life!
If you haven't received an email version of this newsletter and would like to, please go to our website, www.mlwild.organd click on the Newsletter link, enter your name and email address, and click Subscribe!
Credits
Most of this newsletter was written by Helen Engledow and edited by her and Laura Murphy. Mike Woicicki provided the photo of himself. Larry Bodiford, Sharon South and Laura Murphy provided other photos.
Upcoming Events
We are still on the waiting list to have a booth April 9th and 10th, 2016
at the Home and Garden Show at the Sonora Fairgrounds. We hope to see you there!
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Come for a Parade and Family Day,
Saturday, April 16th,
Downtown Twain Harte
Registration 10am, Dog Parade 11am
There will also be an agility course,
fun booths and us.
Sponsored by Twain Harte Rotary and Twain Harte Business Association. ___________________________________
We'll be in two places on April 30th, starting with the Sonora Spring Festival From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in downtown Sonora. This event is free to the public and includes arts and craft vendors, live music, street entertainment and a hair and fashion show. So join us as we swing into Spring with this family fun event.
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Also on April 30th, another group of volunteers will be taking tickets for the Porch Take Over Event with High Gravity Homebrewers at Standard Pour in Standard from 1-5pm Come prepared to taste some home-brews and learn about the process from the brewers themselves. All proceeds benefit Mother Lode Wildlife Care!
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Clean out your closets, garages and barns. We will be taking donations starting mid-April for theTuolumne Spring Festin Tuolumne Depot Park, May 14th & 15th from 8am - 8pm.
There will be music, food, and a huge rummage sale, and we'll be raffling off some artwork.
Come find a priceless treasure and help out our cause in this lovely spring weather.
Consider the other kingdoms.
The trees, for example, with their mellow-sounding titles: oak, aspen, willow.
Or the snow, for which the peoples of the north have dozens of words to describe its different arrivals.
Or the creatures, with their thick fur
their shy and wordless gaze.
Their infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be.
Thus the world grows rich, grows wild and you too, grow rich, grow sweetly wild as you too were born to be. ~ Mary Oliver ~
Wish List
Reliable Volunteers
Kleenex, paper towels
Old sweat-shirts or sheets
(Thanks for all the towels and t-shirts)
Astroturf
Rubbermaid shelf liner
Gift cards - Lowe's
old ice chests (we use these to transport donated frozen mice)
