It was, in fact, a quiet, if not stifling hot, summer week at the Marathon Wild Bird Center. Everyone seemed exhausted by the heat and humidity, but we managed to keep laughing. Earlier this week we received a juvenile double-crested cormorant from a local marina. It is severely emaciated (starved) with a swollen joint at the foot. We are extremely hopeful that this particular bird will make it since it has been perky and alert since day one -- always a good thing!
Adult DC cormorants do not teach their offspring much in the way of life lessons before they basically kick them out of the nest at 10 weeks of age. By that time they are full grown (size wise) but with lighter feather color and brownish eyes. As they mature their feathers turn darker black and their eyes become dark blue then light blue. As "abandoned" youngsters they must learn to survive by watching others. If they hang out with the "smart kids" they have a better chance of finding themselves in good fishing grounds and quickly master the skills they'll need to catch these dang things! If they aren't paying attention they may end up with "the wrong crowd" cormies and eventually perish.
When a young cormie lacks the skills needed to catch its own supper it eventually doesn't get any nourishing food...or fluids for that matter because those are found in its food. Cormie's can drink saltwater, to some degree, because they have what are called salt glands behind their eyes that excrete the excess salt out of their system (ah, if only humans could do that!). However, a hungry, thirsty cormie who's basic body system is beginning to shut down due to emaciation is not necessarily thinking straight. The bird survives in this state by living off its body fat before its major organs start to fail. When the kidneys start to shut down the bird's blood is no longer being cleansed as it should. Without the toxins removed from its blood it begins to act, what else, intoxicated! This is the state we often find these young cormies in. Callers regularly say, "My kids are petting it right now" or "It's walking right down the middle of the highway". Red alert here! A cormie, in its right mind, would never allow a kid to pet it...but would rather bite it in the arm or, worse yet, take a stab at "fending off the enemy" by lunging for some one's eyes! An intoxicated bird senses no harm and is lack in judgement...hence the wandering down the middle of a busy highway.
Though we cannot show a cormie how to survive in the wild, we can, if we're lucky, halt its path towards death and bring the cormie back to health...to give it a second chance to learn to survive in the wild. How successful are we at this? Well, in reality, we just don't know. We have yet to receive a single postcard from one of our released cormies saying, "Hey, just wanted you to know that I made it. I'm an adult now with a family of my own! Thanks!" No kidding, not one postcard!
To do this we first follow a basic protocol. When the bird comes in it is examined for injuries. The cormie mentioned above didn't have any "injuries" but we did notice that its right ankle was more swollen than its left ankle. We dusted the bird for feather lice and checked inside its mouth for mouth lice. The Ortho Sevin dust we used to kill the feather lice worked and the mouth was free of lice -- good so far. Next we gave it 20 ml of lactated ringers that we injected under its thigh skin. This is a good way to start rehydrating the bird. We then slipped a tubed down its throat and injected 40 ml of a Gatorade-like solution to "wet its whistle"! This oral rehydrating process is repeated every 2-3 hours until we leave for the evening. The next morning we injected more fluids under the thigh skin and offered it some antibiotics (now that it was more rehydrated) to combat the swelling in its foot. What we absolutely DO NOT DO is offer it any fish until we notice that its urinates (pee) is coming out white, not yellow. When the urinates are yellow we know the bird is still dehydrated. By late afternoon on Day 2 we start to see white urinates and the bird is active...walking around its cage and looking at us like it's never seen us before -- even though it's been there for 24 hours or so. Don't forget it was "intoxicated" when it arrived!
After its 4pm tubing on Day 2 we offered it some soft, easy to digest fish. Not a lot, just two. It snapped them up from its water bowl like it thought we were never going to feed it! This is a good sign, but the biggest thing here is for us not to get over eager. Volunteers often think, gee, it really seemed hungry so I'll give it some more. But we don't! The body's response to solid food can be a shock so we have to give it time to adjust. If all goes well, meaning the bird doesn't regurgitate its snack in the next two hours before its next tubing, then we can increase the amount by two more fish. Another important fact here is not to stop giving the bird its fluids via an oral tubing because (1) it's eating or (2) it "appears" to be drinking water from its water bowl on its own. It should be two or three days of good self-feeding before the oral rehydration (at least three times a day now) is ended. And for that matter it won't hurt to continue to give it oral fluids in the morning to "cleanse its system" for another three or four days.
Well, that will have to do for now. It's Friday evening and time to go home. I'll be back in the beginning of the week to let you know how the little emaciated cormie with the swollen ankle from the marina is doing after this, what else, hot and humid weekend we're rolling into!
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