In addition to working at the main site of the Sonoma County Wildlife Rescue, I’ve been doing one shift a week at the nearby Songbird Hospital, which is affiliated with the SCWR, but located at a different site (at the home of the woman who runs it and does most of the work).

I learned about the Songbird Hospital about a month ago, when I found a young crow in distress near where I park my car at home. In checking the SCWR website, I learned about the Songbird Hospital, and since crows are technically songbirds (taxonomically, if not based on the aesthetic merits of their songs :D), I decided to take him there. Well, turns out that he had a severe parasitic infection, and didn’t live through his first night at the center. The silver lining for me, though, was getting in contact with the woman who runs the Songbird Hospital (her name is Veronica).

I expressed an interest in doing some volunteer work there, and it turns out she is desperately in need of people to help out, so I’ve started helping her out feeding baby birds, and doing whatever other things need to be done at the hospital (things like sorting out mealworms, and setting up aviaries). Mostly, what I do is go from enclosure to enclosure in the main hospital room, and shove mealworms into the eager little gaping beaks of baby swallows, finches, flycatchers, thrushes and woodpeckers.

Considering how much I love birds, it’s not a big surprise that I really enjoy helping out with the songbirds.

Baby bluebirds, and a robin (the robin is the large one center front):

Black phoebe:

Northern mockingbirds:

Female Bullock’s oriole:

Ash-throated flycatcher with the bluebirds and Pacific-slope flycatchers: