In The Heart Of NYC, A Refuge For Birds (Classic)

[Music] New York is a loud city. Walking around Manhattan, you won't go 10 seconds about hearing horns, folks yelling at each other, or jack hammers. Maybe even some combination of those three. But underneath all that, there's another sound. One that's just as common, though not as iconic. Bird song. Birds may not be our number one association with the country's biggest city, but New York is often on list of best bird watching cities in the United States. And that's because it's actually a pretty diverse place when it comes to our friends in the skies. New York is home for at least some of the year, to over 300 bird species. And just like us humans, the birds have to navigate a lot too. And many birds get hurt, flying to skyscrapers, sickness from pollution, or just colliding with cars. And if a bird gets hurt, well, it's usually bad news. Most vets don't deal with wild animals. But on the upper west side of Manhattan, tucked between Broadway and Central Park, there's an unexpected refuge for hurt birds. My name is Baudelaire and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange, incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we go to New York City to the Wild Bird Fund and see how an organization that started in a cramped New York apartment is now helping thousands of injured birds feel like they're old selves. More after this. [Music] The story of the Wild Bird Fund starts in the early 90s when a woman named Rita McMahon spotted an injured Canada goose on the side of the road. Rita pulled over and put the hurt goose in her car. She didn't know what she'd do with it, but she knew she had to do something. First, she called around to see if someone or some organization could take the goose off her hands to care for it. And she was not able to find anyone. This is Catherine Quail, a bird lover and communications director for the Wild Bird Fund. [Music] She called and called. Nobody would take the goose. And she couldn't believe it. She couldn't believe there was no one who could help a Canada goose. Rita tried to care for the goose herself, but it just didn't work out. The goose didn't survive. But Rita was so moved by that experience that she went and got her wildlife rehabilitation license. Then she turned her apartment into a place to heal and rehab injured birds. She at one point had, I think, 60 animals in her apartment. Just to give you an idea that 60 birds, mostly pigeons, flying all over the place in a small New York City apartment. And finally decided that it would be best for her marriage if she moved the operation outside of the apartment. [Music] Almost 30 years later, the Wild Bird Fund has drastically upgraded its facilities. It's now operating out of a double storefront on Columbus Ave in Manhattan. And they've got all types of rooms especially made for their patients, a patient list that on any given day can include warbler, sparrows, woodpeckers, rogons, blue jays, ravens, and of course, Canada geese. To care for these birds, the Wild Bird Fund has an exam room, a small water bedroom with a pool and cages for birds like seagulls and an isolation area. Though one thing remains the same, the many, many pigeons. We have a basement downstairs and that is filled with our pigeon patients though. There are lots and lots of cages down there. How does a bird end up at the Wild Bird Fund? There are a lot of ways a bird can end up at the Wild Bird Fund. People find them on the street. People find all kinds of animals. A lot of pigeons obviously because the pigeons are the most common and they're big and they're on the sidewalk. So a lot of people find pigeons that are sick or injured. They pick them up and they bring them to us. Other times they find birds in the park. There are so many ways that an animal or bird can be injured in the city. And there's a real need for help for these wild animals. Today, the Wild Bird Fund operates with an army of volunteers, usually 40 to 80 at any given time. Working in the clinic or going out and picking up a bird if the person who spotted it can't bring it in. The Wild Bird Fund also has several vets who come in every now and then to do the things only vets are licensed to do, like surgeries and certain exams. All of this from a woman who decided to help her hurt candidate goose on the side of the road. And especially dangerous part of New York City for birds is Brian Park, just a couple blocks away from Times Square and just so happens to be where our office is. Only a few months ago I was walking back into the office from lunch when I saw a bunch of people huddled around something on the ground. As I moved closer, I spotted an injured bird that looked like it was close to dying. A woman that was in the huddled group was on the phone and from what I now know, there's a good chance she was calling the Wild Bird Fund. Captain tells me this happens all the time. Brian Park is surrounded by glass walls. And so they collide with the glass because they see the trees reflected in it and they think it's a real tree. They don't understand the architectural cues that a human understands to tell them there's a building here. So at this point we're treating about 1500 window collision victims a year. Most of them are migratory birds. A lot of them are three inches long, three navages long, beautiful little songbirds that are migrating. Some of them are hawks and even geese. Any bird can fly into a window. And though Brian Park is especially dangerous, New York City itself is dangerous because it happens to be right smack in the middle of birds' migration path. New York City is right on the Atlantic flyway, which is a major like highway for birds to migrate from Canada down to South America. The birds have been flying through New York City since before New York City was here. Now there's this, the city emits this huge beacon of light, this huge glow. And birds are attracted to light like moths are attracted to light. And so the city draws them in. It draws in the birds with this beacon of light. And what happens is when they come, you know, the, we have great habitat here, but it's surrounded by glass in most cases. Like the window issue, a lot of the reasons why a bird would end up needing the wild bird fund services are human-caused environmental issues. Like lead poisoning, which gets to birds by lead in the soil, water, and the paint on some bridges. Lead poisoning drastically affects a bird's health. Birds that eat on the ground or that are dependent on the water, such as, you know, swans and geese and ducks, they're really susceptible to lead poisoning. When a bird has lead poisoning, they struggle with coordination, they become weaker, and their wings begin to droop. That was the case with a white swan named Moby who calls the ponds of Prospect Park and Brooklyn home. Not one, but two issues manifested in this one bird. Lots of people know him there and we're looking out for him and saw when he wasn't doing well. And we got him. Moby was brought into the wild bird fund in January of 2022 because of a fish hook he accidentally swallowed. He underwent surgery and was back at Prospect Park just a couple of weeks later. In early 2024, some folks noticed Moby was a little wobbly and not his usual bubbly self. He returned to the wild bird fund where the folks found out he was suffering from high lead toxicity. After a few weeks of treatment, Moby was once again back to his old self. Moby was a success story and success for the wild bird fund means that the bird gets to the best possible outcome for some that means flying again. For others, it's bringing a painless end to their suffering. What's the success rate for birds brought into that WBF? If you had a like ballpark? Yeah, it really varies. I would say overall it's probably somewhere around 35-40%. That may not sound like the best percentage in the world, but consider how many birds the wild bird fund takes in. Captain tells me that the wild bird fund during their slower seasons gets about 10 to 20 birds a day. At their busiest during migration periods, they get over 100 a day. I don't even like to talk about success because in some cases, there are a lot of patients that we get in who are just dying. They're dying. The reason that the person was able to pick them up was because they were dying. Most birds, if they're even a little bit healthy, you will not be able to pick them up. You will not be able to catch them. So once someone is picked to bird up, that bird is already typically in pretty bad shape. So with a lot of the birds we get in, they cannot be helped. And for those that do make it through their stint at the wild bird fund, Captain says the staff is very careful about reintroducing the birds to the wild. We don't just let them go. We don't open the door and just shoot them out onto Columbus Avenue. But yes, the goal is to release them back to the wild. The importance of the wild bird fund is twofold. First and most obvious is the help it provides to thousands of birds in need. The second reason is the help it provides people. People who see a sick and injured bird and just want to do whatever they can to help it. Like Rita that night, she saw the Canada goose. Something special happens when someone picks up a wild animal in the city and brings it to the clinic and find that there's a whole world of people inside the clinic that are ready. to help and can help. They become much more connected to other birds in the city, to other wildlife. They become more aware, perhaps, of the natural environment around them. Some city dwellers are simply not that aware of the wildlife in the city. And suddenly, once they've rescued an animal, they do become aware. And it can create a really strong connection between people who are so surrounded by a human built environment and the actual natural world that also coexist in that environment. The Wild Bird Fund runs entirely on donations. So if you're interested in supporting their work or just checking out what it is that they do, visit their website wildbirdfund.org. The link is in the show notes. This podcast is a co-production of Atlas Obscura and Stitcher Studios. Our production team includes Johanna Mayer, Dylan Therese, Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Camille Stanley, Manolo Morales, Gabby Gladme, our technical director is Casey Holford. Our theme and end credit music is by Sam Tindle. This episode was sound designed by me and mixed by loose Fleming. If you want to learn more, be sure to visit atlasobscura.com. There's a link in our episode description. And my name is Bo DeLair.