It Started With A Hawk

This is a little piece we put together to introduce the new logo for the Itasca facility. This is where it all started and we are very excited to be working with the Village of Itasca.

So where have we been?

First our apologies for not keeping the posts as current as many of you would like. But we have been quite busy increasing our capacity to save more lives. On April 1st we were getting back to posting and we had just had our 2nd anniversary at Northerly Island. Things were really running smooth. And by April 3 all of our plans were going to change to a new and exciting direction. On April 3rd we got copied on an email that explained that the Village of Itasca was planning to terminate the Raptor Education Program at Spring Brook Nature Center. Several years earlier they had discontinued rehabilitation of Birds of Prey to reduce the financial burden on the taxpayers of Itasca. The Village of Itasca was one of the last municipalities that was funding rehabilitation.

For those of you who don't know, Spring Brook has had a rich legacy as a facility that provided great animal care, wonderful education programs and an excellent raptor internship program. That internship program has launched the careers of several of today's wildlife rehabilitators. And one of those rehabilitators happens to be our own Founder, Dawn Keller. Dawn started her rehabilitation and education career as a volunteer at Spring Brook Nature Center and has always been a strong supporter of the program.

So what does this have to with Flint Creek Wildlife? After we heard the news we realized that the program was too important to just go away. So we put together a proposal to offer the Village of Itasca a way to keep the education birds on display at the nature center and to restore the legacy of the internship and rehabilitation programs by privatizing these programs. Privatizing allows the village and the residents to continue to enjoy the beauty and majesty of the Birds of Prey at no cost to village. In exchange Flint Creek would get use of the clinic at the nature center and access to all the caging on the property. On May 20, after many meetings and presentations to different groups we entered into an agreement with the village to immediately take over the raptor program.

So for the last 4-5 months we have been working out the agreement, updating the facility to support rehabilitation, cleaning up the clinic and the cages, making sure the caging is adequately cleaned and predator proofed, painting, repairing perches, we hosted a wonderful Eagle Scout project to increase the air circulation in the Rehab Cages and Rehab Flight Chambers, updating logos and brochures, working on web content updates, caring for nearly 200 animals, running the rescue and recovery programs at Northerly Island, putting on education programs that were previously booked by the Spring Brook staff as well as our own programs and handling between 80-100 calls a day. Sorry but posting had to slip...

So how does this Save Lives? We needed additional flight chamber capacity and have been in a capital campaign to raise the $100,000 to build a state of the art chamber in Barrington. Currently, we have not raised the capital to build the new flight chambers. The Itasca facility will provide us with 3 additional flight chambers so we are able to get more birds into prerelease caging faster, this reduces their time in rehabilitation and allows us to handle a higher volume of injured birds annually. The clinic in Itasca also gives us a 3rd location for the public and Animal Control Officers to drop off injured patients making it more convenient for many of the areas we serve.

It has been such a pleasure to work with Mayor Gigi Gruber, Trustees Mike Latoria and Jeff Aiani who chair the Nature Center committee, the Village Administrator Dave Williams and the entire Village Board. We are very excited about the possibilities that we have ahead to enhance the educational opportunities and to provide excellent care to injured and orphaned wildlife.

We hope that you can find some time to visit with our educational birds on display in Itasca. The nature center is located at 130 Forest Ave in Itasca, Illinois.

We will be accepting patients by appointment only, to make an appoint please call our main number at 847-842-8000 or 888-FLINTCREEK (354-6827). Please remember that we are not a part of the nature center staff and they cannot help you with an animal emergency.

If you would like to volunteer please checkout our volunteer page on flintcreekwildlife.org and keep an eye out for announcements about the upcoming Raptor Internship Programs as well as updates on our Itasca facility.

If you like interesting trivia here is a piece of Flint Creek triva: The redtailed hawk on display at the nature center is "Old Red". When Dawn volunteered at Spring Brook, before she founded Flint Creek, she used to fly "Old Red" in the Raptors in the Skies program. "Old Red" in flight is the Flint Creek Wildlife Logo. "Old Red" is now retired and on permanent display at the nature center.

See you soon at our new Itasca facility.

Flint Creek WIldlife Rehabilitation's Education Birds at Itasca's National Night Out Celebration

05-11, a Red-tailed Hawk, and Junior, a Great Horned Owl, appeared at Itasca's National Night Out Event. Both birds were a big hit among the event's many attendees.



National Night Out focuses on crime and drug prevention. The Itasca Police Department, Itasca Fire Department, Health World and many other important groups were featured at the event.



I do regret to report that Junior Great Horned Owl was arrested at the event for illegal mouse trafficking. He was booked, printed, his mug shot taken, and he and his handler were put behind bars. Fortunately, we promptly made bail and were released.

05-11 posed in an Itasca police car. We didn't let 05-11 drive the car despite her repeated requests.






All j0king aside, we hope that you enjoy the pictures!







Signed,




One Handler Happy to be Out of Jail

Come see our Wildlife 911 Program at Northerly Island

This Saturday June 14th at 9:30 am we will be presenting Wildlife 911 and several of our education Birds of Prey at Northerly Island. Wildlife 911 is a program that describes what wildlife rehabilitation is all about and gives you a glimpse into the types of patients we treat at our 3 locations with some case study examples. (yes, we now have 3 locations which explains why we haven't posted in a while... more on that in upcoming post). We will also have the bird hospital open so that you can see where we treat the migratory birds that are recovered by our unbelievably dedicated Rescue and Recovery teams after colliding with downtown buildings. We hope to see you on Saturday!!

click here for directions to Northerly Island

Injured Hooded Warbler Treated at Flint Creek Wildlife

As many of you know, Flint Creek Wildlife operates rescue and recovery teams that pick up injured birds that collide with windows in downtown Chicago. These teams of trained volunteers leave the comfort of their homes and beds early in the morning to save the lives of birds.

It was Saturday morning when numerous volunteers patrolled downtown looking for injured birds. One of the teams had a particularly special find - a female Hooded Warbler - a first at Flint Creek Wildlife.

We are happy to report that the Hooded Warbler, like 90% of the live birds that our rescue and recovery team bring to Northerly Island for treatment, made a full recovery and was released!

We didn't want to stress the bird by taking his picture, but the below link contains an excellent photo of a female Hooded Warbler.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Hooded_Warbler_dtl.html

For information on how to help us save the lives of birds, please visit our website at http://www.flintcreekwildlife.org/.

Dawn

Happy Anniversary to Northerly Island!!!

Today is the second anniversary of Flint Creek Wildlife's bird hospital at Northerly Island. Our sincere thanks to the Chicago Park District for donating the space for our bird hospital, the City of Chicago for its ongoing support of our work, Chicago Animal Care and Control for being such exceptional partners, other fine Chicago organizations like the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Grant Park Conservancy, the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium for supporting our work and last BUT NOT LEAST our wonderful volunteers! We'd also like to thank three individuals whose hard work and vision were instrumental in advancing the initial concept of a bird hospital - Bob O'Neill, Robbie Hunsinger and Maddy Fields-Gollogly.

We started with two bare rooms (see photo left) and today have a fully functional triage center that saves the lives of 90% of the birds that are admitted. We have come far and with your support we will continue to grow. Looking back, it's amazing what we've accomplished in two short years:

- Created triage center capable of treating over 1,000 birds annually (see photo below).

- In conjunction with the Chicago Park District, we've added new educational programming and bird walks at Northerly Island.

- Established rescue and recovery teams that aid injured birds that collide with city buildings - in many sections of the city that never before had coverage.

- Offer a variety of educational programs for local schools and organizations.

- Work with Lincoln Park Zoo and the Field Museum to help injured Peregrine Falcons (managed under Mary Hennen's Field Museum Peregrine Project).

- Provide tours of the bird hospital and an overview of migration in concert with educational programs offered by the Shedd Aquarium.

- Implemented many, many internal improvements to deal with lots of phone calls and lots of data!

- Partner with Chicago Animal Care and Control in many ways, including treating injured wildlife that arrives at their faclity and having them help us with transport of injured birds in the city.

- Work with dowtown building managers and fine organizations like Birds and Buildings Forum to mitigate bird-collision risks and address procedures if birds collide with buildings.

- Have improved bird survival rates dramatically as compared with when birds are transported to the suburbs for initial care.

Thanks to all of our supporters and volunteers for helping us save lives. We simply couldn't do it without you!

Dawn

Great Horned Owlet Falls

Earlier tonight, we received a call from a nice couple in McHenry County advising that they had a baby owl that fell from a tree. We went out to assess the situation.

After a physical exam, we determined that the owlet was in fine physical condition - no broken bones or other indications of a problem. Mom and Dad Owl were both present and watching the physical exam from two nearby trees - both disapprovingly, I might add.



We couldn't locate the nest, but the owlet was old enough to be out of the nest (a brancher) so we got an extension ladder and propped it against a tree that was in between the trees from where Mom ad Dad Owl watched. As darkness fell, I climbed the tree and placed the owlet in the crook of the tree.



The homeowners emailed me just a bit ago to advise that the owlet had climbed even higher into the tree.



In conjunction with the homeowner, we will keep an eye on the owlet over the next several days to make sure that Mom and Dad continue to care for it. We will take it to our rehabilitation center, if necessary, but it's always better to leave them with Mom and Dad when safe to do so.
Kudos to McHenry County Animal Control for ensuring that the owlet call was handled by a federally licensed facility!


Dawn