Treating injured birds across the valley

On a dark evening, a great horned owl flies in front of a car and gets clipped by the fender, breaking its wing. Once a death a sentence to wild birds, today the bird has a fighting chance at survival.

Thanks to Beth Watne, several veterinarians and a host of volunteers, Wild Wings Recovery of Kalispell is having remarkable success at recovering injured birds for their release back in the wild.

Watne, who has rehabilitated birds and other wildlife for decades, took over the Wild Wings Recovery organization from Lynn Vaught in 2012. Today the 501(c)3 nonprofit has 14 volunteers and treats about 100 birds a year, from hummingbirds to golden eagles.

The facility is licensed with both the state and federal governments and runs completely on donations.

About 90 percent of bird injuries occur when vehicles strike them. This year alone, Watne has treated nine ospreys, 14 great horned owls and about a dozen red-tailed hawks.

The owls and hawks hunt along roads, and when conditions get tough, they’ll feed on road kill. Law enforcement and game wardens often refer injured animals to Watne, and she credits the organization’s success to the efforts of three local veterinarians — Mark Lawson, of Columbia Falls, Dennis Dugger, of Kalispell, and Jim Thompson, of Whitefish. All three are highly skilled in treating wounded birds, and they donate their time as well, she said.

“They’ve done great work in repairing fractures,” Watne said.

Once the birds are patched up, it can take weeks to nurse them back to health. Some will never make it. Others with permanently broken wings can become educational birds, trained to become accustomed to crowds and to sit on a person’s hand. About 50 percent of the birds recover and are returned to the wild, Watne said.

The Wild Wings Recovery staff make limited contact with the injured wild birds so they won’t imprint on the humans taking care of them. Severely injured birds are first fed dead food to get their strength back, but once the birds are close to recovery, the staff switches them to live food. Depending on the species, that may mean live mice purchased from a local pet food store, or live fish — an osprey’s diet is almost 100 percent fish.

Watne’s husband, Bob, recently gave the organization a big boost, building a separate barn to house the birds, complete with running water and lights. The birds had been kept in chain-link enclosures covered with tarps until they recovered.

Watne conducts a host of educational programs each year. Last week, she was at Ruder Elementary School showing second-graders a hawk, a peregrine falcon and an osprey. In a later session, she showed students three different species of owls.

This past year was particularly tough for raptor nests. Wet conditions caused nests to collapse, and Watne nursed back to health two young bald eagles spilled from a nest near Whitefish Lake. The birds fully recovered and were released, she said. The eagles ate a lot of fish, and local fishermen stepped up and donated fish they caught.

One way people can help prevent birds from being hit by vehicles is to move any roadkill they find off the road if possible, or to contact the road department to have it moved.

While bald eagles are high-profile cases, the most common species she treats are red-tailed hawks and great horned owls. But she’s even treated birds as small as hummingbirds.

“They’re not easy,” Watne said. “We’ve had some success. We feed them with a small syringe a special formula that’s high in protein.”

To learn more about the Wild Wings Recovery group, visit online at http://wildwingsrecovery.org.