In my time with Wild Nest Bird Rehabilitation I have been able to help with baby birds, juvenile birds, and adult songbirds. I have learned how to feed baby birds worms and formula, how to catch an escaped bird, and about the diets of the many species of songbirds that are in our city! I think seeing firsthand how many species of songbirds are in our city has been extremely interesting. As baby season is now upon us, I have definitely found being in the baby room to be the most satisfying and fun task. The baby birds are on 15, 30, and 60 minute feedings and there are so many of them! It can be very tiring to feed all of them because as soon as you finish feeding them you have to start the entire process over again, but I really enjoy it. It is very calming to be in a silent room with only the sound of baby birds chirping. I did unfortunately witness a Blue Heron get put down. It was definitely the sad part of volunteering with Wild Nest. Unfortunately not all the birds can be saved and putting suffering birds down is the most humane thing to do. Rounding on all of the birds is also very interesting. Everytime I have gone into  volunteer something is different. Birds grow up so fast and this makes it so you can follow a birds journey to recovery, which is extremely rewarding. 

I do feel that my time with this organization has made an impact. Wild Nest is such a busy organization, so I feel that every volunteer that is able to contribute any amount of time is absolutely helping with the mission of Wild Nest. There would truly be no one to do what is done everyday at Wild Nest without volunteers. This has made it so I feel that I am actively helping with the mission of Wild Nest everytime I am there volunteering. I am very hopeful that our project will contribute to Wild Nest. Bird collisions are such a major contributor to bird deaths nationally. While it can be easy to blame the big glass buildings in our cities there are far more houses that have glass. Raising awareness of the windows and glass in our homes and how they harm birds can hopefully have a dramatic effect on reducing the amount of birds that die because of these windows. Allowing access to our powerpoint, that will include important statistics on window/bird collisions and the things everyone can do to prevent bird deaths from window collisions, I believe would further Wild Nest’s mission. This would hopefully reduce the amount of deaths and injuries from window collisions and allow for our bird population to improve. I wish I could include images of all the beautiful baby birds, but I am not allowed to. We have as of Wednesday baby woodpeckers, nuthatches, mockingbirds, blue birds, cardinals, and robins to name a few. They are also so tiny and so amazing to be around!